Laughter of Love

Loving another can be demanding work; paying attention, listening deeply, holding your tongue, ladling cups of cold water. So I need and long for holy laughter to lighten and energize the work of love. And laughter abounds in the world!

In my world laughter came this morning when I went out to pick up the paper and looked up and saw a perfect crescent moon with a bright star just off its cusp. It came yesterday as my daughter regaled me with the latest anecdotes for the precocious words and actions of my grandchildren. I found it in reminiscing with friends the way we looked and the world used to be. I have heard myself laugh aloud when watching Maggie Smith in her role of Violet Crowley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, and when watching Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose as the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency of Gabrorone, Botswana. I burst out in laughter when I discovered that in choosing books from the library, while in deep in conversation with a friend, I had chosen three books which I had already read, and two books that were exactly the same as each other, and one I didn’t want to read at all! What a panoply of sources and subjects for laughter! I need to laugh if I am to have the energy and stamina to love.

The Psalmist reports that a delightful affect of God’s grace is a mouth full of laughter. (Psalm 126:1-2), and I can remember mouthfuls of laughter: at colleagues whose story-telling and mimicry recast completely the dire predictions of the institution; or at reports of the community spreading grace and love in tangible ways, beyond our wild expectations; at droll repartee bantered back and forth between co-creators of very transformational projects. I feel the effects in my body; as Anne Lamott says, “Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

In a world saturated with faux-humor, how refreshing it is to laugh genuinely with love at our human condition; Macrina Wiederkehr calls us “frail and glorious.” And I am painfully aware of the laughter that wounds the vulnerability of our frailty, both in public commentary and in private rejoinder, which crushes and kills. That abusive laughter has no place in the community of Love. But I am convinced that being open to a compassionate laughter in the celebration and recognition of human foibles and bumbling, in myself and others, added to a robust confident laughter in acknowledgement of the power and surprises of the mystery we call God, is a spiritual practice that gives and shares Life to the glory of God and to the world God loves.

So today I set forth to seek laughter in myself and in others, and to slay the Dragons of Doom and Cynicism and Derision in the world by letting the goodness of God, the hilarity of human beings, the kerfuffles of ordinary living be reason for laughter and rejoicing. And when I find it, I will open myself to it, participate in it and share it with others who are in need of some “carbonated holiness” for energy and stamina.

John F. Kennedy is reported to have said, “There are three things that are real: God, Human Folly and Laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third!” May we be given Vision and Grace to let what we know of God and Human Folly turn our mourning into Laughter, so that are mouths are full and are spirits have energy!