WANT A GOOD LAUGH?
…there are some things that must always be laughed at in life:
1. Laugh when people tell a joke. Otherwise you might make them feel bad.
2. Laugh when you look in a mirror. Otherwise you might feel bad.
3. Laugh when you make a mistake. If you don’t, you’re liable to forget how ultimately unimportant the whole thing really is, whatever it is.
4. Laugh with small children…. They laugh at mashed bananas on their faces, mud in their hair, a dog nuzzling their ears, the sight of their bottoms as bare as silk. It renews your perspective. Clearly nothing is as bad as it could be.
5. Laugh at situations that are out of your control. When the best man comes to the altar without the wedding ring, laugh. When the dog jumps through the window screen at the dinner guests on your doorstep, sit down and laugh awhile. When you find yourself in public in mismatched shoes, laugh—as loudly as you can. Why collapse in mortal agony? There’s nothing you can do to change things right now. Besides, it is funny. Ask me; I’ve done it.
6. Laugh at anything pompous. At anything that needs to puff its way through life in robes and titles…Will Rogers laughed at all the public institutions of life. For instance, “You can’t say civilization isn’t advancing,” he wrote. “In every war they kill you in a new way.”
7. Finally, laugh when all the carefully laid plans get changed; when the plane is late and the restaurant is closed and the last day’s screening of the movie of the year was yesterday. You’re free now to do something else, to be spontaneous,...to take a piece of life and treat it with outrageous abandon.
…laughter enables us to live in a highly structured world without falling prey to the manacles of the mind that blind our eyes and cement our hearts. Laughter gives us the freedom of the Jesus who foolishly questioned the authority of the state and smilingly stretched the imagination of the church. “The poor shall inherit the Kingdom,” he laughed. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman,” he smiled. “God is a daddy,” he chuckled. He danced from town to town, healing, making people smile with new hope, bringing invitations to people in trees and light-footedness to lepers. He invited guests to eat with him when he had no food. He taught babies and poked fun at Pharisees and
told winsome little stories, spiritual jokes, about women who would not let pretentious judges alone.
Day after day he smiled his way from one theological absolute to another and left the world with enough to smile about till the end of time.
—from Joan Chittister, There Is A Season (Orbis)
…there are some things that must always be laughed at in life:
1. Laugh when people tell a joke. Otherwise you might make them feel bad.
2. Laugh when you look in a mirror. Otherwise you might feel bad.
3. Laugh when you make a mistake. If you don’t, you’re liable to forget how ultimately unimportant the whole thing really is, whatever it is.
4. Laugh with small children…. They laugh at mashed bananas on their faces, mud in their hair, a dog nuzzling their ears, the sight of their bottoms as bare as silk. It renews your perspective. Clearly nothing is as bad as it could be.
5. Laugh at situations that are out of your control. When the best man comes to the altar without the wedding ring, laugh. When the dog jumps through the window screen at the dinner guests on your doorstep, sit down and laugh awhile. When you find yourself in public in mismatched shoes, laugh—as loudly as you can. Why collapse in mortal agony? There’s nothing you can do to change things right now. Besides, it is funny. Ask me; I’ve done it.
6. Laugh at anything pompous. At anything that needs to puff its way through life in robes and titles…Will Rogers laughed at all the public institutions of life. For instance, “You can’t say civilization isn’t advancing,” he wrote. “In every war they kill you in a new way.”
7. Finally, laugh when all the carefully laid plans get changed; when the plane is late and the restaurant is closed and the last day’s screening of the movie of the year was yesterday. You’re free now to do something else, to be spontaneous,...to take a piece of life and treat it with outrageous abandon.
…laughter enables us to live in a highly structured world without falling prey to the manacles of the mind that blind our eyes and cement our hearts. Laughter gives us the freedom of the Jesus who foolishly questioned the authority of the state and smilingly stretched the imagination of the church. “The poor shall inherit the Kingdom,” he laughed. “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a woman,” he smiled. “God is a daddy,” he chuckled. He danced from town to town, healing, making people smile with new hope, bringing invitations to people in trees and light-footedness to lepers. He invited guests to eat with him when he had no food. He taught babies and poked fun at Pharisees and
told winsome little stories, spiritual jokes, about women who would not let pretentious judges alone.Day after day he smiled his way from one theological absolute to another and left the world with enough to smile about till the end of time.
—from Joan Chittister, There Is A Season (Orbis)
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