“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine” - Proverbs 17:22
There was a woman who went to see a lawyer about getting a divorce. The lawyer started to ask her some routine questions. “What are your grounds?” “Well, we have this big farm,” she replied. “Do you have some sort of grudge?” “No, my husband’s never built one, and we have to park outside.” “Well, does he beat you up?” “Are you kidding? I get up two hours before he ever does.” “Look, Lady. Why do you want to divorce him?” “Because I have never been able to carry on an intelligent conversation with that man!”
Humor: the ability to see that something is funny. It is a marvelous human trait that almost defies definition yet so distinctly separates us from the animal kingdom. A car drove up next to me at a stoplight the other day and two young ladies suddenly erupted in laughter that carried through two, rolled up windows. It hit me squarely. Not only do we as humans feel guilt so keenly as apart from apes, we also laugh; often, communally, contagiously, and at the slightest pretext. Someone makes a joke and the next thing we hear this unique and totally unintelligible sound emanating from one another that is somewhere between a sneeze, a cough, and a wheeze yet wholly different. And everyone’s laugh is just a bit different from the high pitched squeakers to the muffled snorters to the gasping gaffawers. Record, freeze, and separate out these sounds from a person’s normal speech, play them back, and it is almost as embarrassing as appearing in public in one’s underwear.
We find humor in such incredibly different situations. We see humor in the ironic. “I signed up for an exercise class and was told to wear loose-fitting clothing. If I HAD any loose-fitting clothing, I wouldn’t have signed up in the first place!” We see humor in the unintended. “Customers who find our waitresses rude ought to see the manager” (sign in a Nairobi restaurant). “Feeding animals picking plants prohibited” (sign in the Smokies). We find humor in exaggeration. Here are three exercises to help prepare you for a hospital experience: (a) drink a quart of Sherwin-Williams Eggshell One-coat Coverage Interior Flat White #2. Then have your child stuff his slinky down your throat. (b) Put a real estate agent’s ‘Open House’ sign on your front yard and lie on your bed dressed in a paper napkin with straws stuck up your nose. (c) Put your hand down the garbage disposal while practicing your smile and repeating: “mild discomfort”.
And who doesn’t love those misprints in church bulletins? “Don’t let worry kill you. Let the church help.” “Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.” We love to laugh at ourselves when words come out of our mouths that make no sense. “If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure” (Bill Clinton). “Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life” (Brooke Shields, during an interview to become Spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign). We even laugh at the obvious. “Why are men just happier people? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.” And we laugh at the mistakes of one another. Here are some notes from parents sent to school after children were absent. “Please excuse Ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels.” “Please excuse Lisa for being absent she was sick and I had her shot.” “Please excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.” Don’t laugh too hard. We are saving yours for future publication.
And then there are the things your kids say and do. A K5 student recently announced to her class that her family had cooked their cat in a pot. It turns out the cat was cremated, but not at home. And another was on a trip and declared his desperate need to use the bathroom while mom was pumping gas at a stop. She said, “Well let’s go, now!” And so he did.
Laughter is the delightful proof of our unique humanity; and good medicine to the bones. Practice daily.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Graveyard Exam
“Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other.” –Isa. 46:9
Last Friday some 22 of us, students and adults, stood in the graveyard of the First Presbyterian Church. And it posed all sorts of questions to us; sort of a well-stocked pantry in sod and stone of questions and queries that spoke to us from the ground. History has a way of doing that, placing us back in time and confronting us with difficulties and deep matters that are, in their particulars, largely unknown to us but yet entirely within the pale of possibility for us to experience once again in some form or another. This grave yard held a host of stories that ghosted our imaginations with things that go bump in the middle of the night of our comfortable lives.
There were tombs of the rich and famous, William Blount plus three Tennessee senators lying alongside common folk and at least one murderer. We have little choice with the company we keep once we are passed and are certain only that rich and poor, the famous and the infamous, will one day lay down their bones in the dust together having faced the great leveler, death. How do we then continue to look at questions of fame and status, achievement or anonymity, wealth or poverty in light of this common end?
We saw the graves of a common family, uncommon in only one respect. They had lost and buried six children over time, some just days old, others somewhat mature in years. How would I have done under such a burden as that? Would I have kept faith with my Lord, the woman I had married, and with life itself and the promise of fruitfulness? Where would I find the strength to continue on to bear forth those final two babies after the first four were gone?
We saw the concrete evidence of the plague of civil war that swept Knoxville in its train. We have little feeling for the depth of hostility that was wreaked across a once stable community. We heard how soldiers once grazed their horses in this sacred space, knocking headstones all about with careless indifference. Would we ever be so situated where the demands of blunt practicalities would compel us to sacrifice and trash our otherwise treasured traditions? How then would we do? We learned that when the Union Army finally “liberated” Knoxville, all of the local pastors except one were run out of town for their days of Confederate sympathizing. Will we ever be placed in time where ungodly causes are being championed by godly, theologically astute, men of position operating in the majority? How closely then would we cling to Truth and stand accordingly?
The tomb of Abner Baker tells a tragic story of politics, hate, and revenge. Abner’s father, Dr. Harvey Baker, was a physician who was known to treat Confederate and Union soldiers alike. One day a small band of Union bushwackers or renegades broke into his home and shot him through a closet door behind which he had hidden. After the war, Abner, who was a Confederate soldier, returned home and sought out his father’s killers. He found one downtown in the courthouse and killed him there. Confined to jail, Union sympathizers broke him out soon after and hung him. He is buried in this graveyard with the tallest of all the grave markers standing proudly over his resting place. On it is written, “A martyr for manliness and personal rights. His death was an honor to himself but an everlasting disgrace to his enemies.” A whole host of questions flew up at me. Would I, like Dr. Baker, receive friend or foe at my door in the middle of a deadly fight and be willing to bind up their wounds alike? Would I ever be so possessed of hate so as to take personal revenge for a great injustice? Would I ever be sympathetic to vigilante justice that would take the law into its own hands? And could I ever become complicit in crime by lionizing a killer in the name of “manliness and personal rights”?
History has a way of confronting us with ourselves. And so we go there to ponder our future.
Last Friday some 22 of us, students and adults, stood in the graveyard of the First Presbyterian Church. And it posed all sorts of questions to us; sort of a well-stocked pantry in sod and stone of questions and queries that spoke to us from the ground. History has a way of doing that, placing us back in time and confronting us with difficulties and deep matters that are, in their particulars, largely unknown to us but yet entirely within the pale of possibility for us to experience once again in some form or another. This grave yard held a host of stories that ghosted our imaginations with things that go bump in the middle of the night of our comfortable lives.
There were tombs of the rich and famous, William Blount plus three Tennessee senators lying alongside common folk and at least one murderer. We have little choice with the company we keep once we are passed and are certain only that rich and poor, the famous and the infamous, will one day lay down their bones in the dust together having faced the great leveler, death. How do we then continue to look at questions of fame and status, achievement or anonymity, wealth or poverty in light of this common end?
We saw the graves of a common family, uncommon in only one respect. They had lost and buried six children over time, some just days old, others somewhat mature in years. How would I have done under such a burden as that? Would I have kept faith with my Lord, the woman I had married, and with life itself and the promise of fruitfulness? Where would I find the strength to continue on to bear forth those final two babies after the first four were gone?
We saw the concrete evidence of the plague of civil war that swept Knoxville in its train. We have little feeling for the depth of hostility that was wreaked across a once stable community. We heard how soldiers once grazed their horses in this sacred space, knocking headstones all about with careless indifference. Would we ever be so situated where the demands of blunt practicalities would compel us to sacrifice and trash our otherwise treasured traditions? How then would we do? We learned that when the Union Army finally “liberated” Knoxville, all of the local pastors except one were run out of town for their days of Confederate sympathizing. Will we ever be placed in time where ungodly causes are being championed by godly, theologically astute, men of position operating in the majority? How closely then would we cling to Truth and stand accordingly?
The tomb of Abner Baker tells a tragic story of politics, hate, and revenge. Abner’s father, Dr. Harvey Baker, was a physician who was known to treat Confederate and Union soldiers alike. One day a small band of Union bushwackers or renegades broke into his home and shot him through a closet door behind which he had hidden. After the war, Abner, who was a Confederate soldier, returned home and sought out his father’s killers. He found one downtown in the courthouse and killed him there. Confined to jail, Union sympathizers broke him out soon after and hung him. He is buried in this graveyard with the tallest of all the grave markers standing proudly over his resting place. On it is written, “A martyr for manliness and personal rights. His death was an honor to himself but an everlasting disgrace to his enemies.” A whole host of questions flew up at me. Would I, like Dr. Baker, receive friend or foe at my door in the middle of a deadly fight and be willing to bind up their wounds alike? Would I ever be so possessed of hate so as to take personal revenge for a great injustice? Would I ever be sympathetic to vigilante justice that would take the law into its own hands? And could I ever become complicit in crime by lionizing a killer in the name of “manliness and personal rights”?
History has a way of confronting us with ourselves. And so we go there to ponder our future.
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