Kirkepiscatoid

Finally! Something I can relax and lean back and chat about! Today’s discussion is about the value of laughter in our spirituality. She says, “Once we learn to laugh and play, we have come closer to understanding our laughing, playing God.”

1. Meditate on this question: “Is there enough laughter in my life?”

In short, HELL, YES! Along with my sense of loyalty, my ability to laugh, and make others laugh, and even be laughed at in a spirit of good fun might be one of my strongest suits of all. My laughter is infectious...no doubt about it. It is often a prelude to that “magic extra nanosecond” when those close to me look at me just a little longer, cock their heads and smile at me with that smile that says, “You are a wonderful and magic person in my life. You make me feel just a little more alive by just being you.”

I am sort of gladdened by that fact that, even though I look in the mirror in middle age and am starting to see wrinkles, they are in the corners of my eyes, not my forehead. It tells me that my eyes twinkle with laughter more than my forehead furrows with worry. That makes me feel good, in an odd sort of way.

I want to believe that part of what bonds me to the people close to me is that they love to watch me laugh, that they love for me to get them to laugh, when we laugh together that it is truly a holy moment. I want to believe, that if I dropped dead tomorrow, my ability to laugh and make others laugh would be a subject of discussion at my visitation and funeral. I want to believe that, when I’m long gone, those left behind will think of me and laugh.

2. In spite of what goes on in your life and in the world, do you “find life exhilarating?” If so, is there any relationship between this and how much you laugh? If not, are there ways you could reframe your experience in the light of our “laughing God?”

I have the ability to find some of the most obscure, exhilarating moments of life. Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly get “down.” I can be incredibly morose. But the laws of physics say that for every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That means for the deepest, saddest, hardest parts of my life, sooner or later, I will be laughing so hard I can hardly catch my breath, and the person with me will start to get tickled because I am so tickled with myself.

In the worst times of my life, I have never given up on the power of laughter. In fact, my sorrows are what has shaped my laughter. As I’ve said before, “Comedy = Tragedy + Time.” When I relate my comedic versions of some story in the Bible, or draw some funny parallel to myself with a Biblical character, God and I are laughing together. Those moments of connection when my friends and I are laughing together are another little glimpse of what Heaven is like for me. It is one of the purest forms of love—real love—I know. It might be the most real, the most tangible, of all the ways God shows his love.

3. Have you experienced God as a “God of ridiculous promises?” If so, how does it make you feel? Like you want to laugh or cry or perhaps be angry? What does that tell you? Why or why not?

Giving us the joy and delight of eternal life by the tragedy of Christ dying on the cross might be the most "ridiculous promise" of all. For God to allow the most precious thing in his realm to die, to suffer through that loss, and turn around and love us with a fierce love that doesn’t stop, it’s crazy. It makes no intuitive sense. But somehow through that, God continues to laugh. He laughs at us, with us, and through us. That makes me feel loved in a way I can barely describe. It makes me want to spread that love, and maybe my most precious God-bestowed gift is the unique way he fashioned me so I could see something truly funny in almost everything. One of the best compliments my friends give me is when they say, “You make me laugh---I mean REALLY laugh!”