PAGES Winter 2001 Editorial
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Editorial, Winter 2001 issue of PAGES:
"Looking Around Me"
I responded recently to an invitation to speak on "Humor Your Health" to some older friends. The week's news was full of pain — violent deaths in Gaza, in Jerusalem. Christians attacked in Indonesia, refugee teenagers from the Sudan coming here for a new home. Sorrow and hurt had tapped many present on the shoulder. Life is tough.
I spoke of endorphins — a combination of proteins "with potent analgesic properties that occur naturally in the brain." These pain-relievers are released during laughter. Controlled studies show the value of exercising our sense of humor as an aid in healing the body — and also the spirit.
But how can we express humor in the midst of pain? Seek out specially-gifted friends. Surround yourself with enjoyable reading. Open your spirit to God's view of the world.
Elton Trueblood in the classic volume, The Humor of Christ, calls for rereading the parables of Jesus paying closer attention to his sharp sense of the ridiculous in the foibles and hypocrisies going on around him on a daily basis! Jesus also used what I believe was gentle humor in his relationships with friends like Martha, Peter, James and John and as he struck up conversation with strangers. We read these stories as if Jesus spoke all this harshly. Reread them and hear the verbal play. Trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle — now that's funny! The woman at the well found the idea of drinking and never getting thirsty again a great joke — "Tell me about it!" she challenges Jesus — and we, too, easily love this Jesus who both laughed and wept.
Living and losing and leaving — these are misery-producing and we can get stuck. We may even end up physically sick! But if humor heals, we need more of it. (Humor can also hurt. Gentle, healing humor differs greatly from jests that jab.)
Was it comedian Bill Cosby who typically claimed, "If you can laugh at it, you can survive it!" One woman told me after the talk on humor, "I do that — I go into the bathroom and laugh out loud to make myself feel better. It works! I just hope no one hears me!" If they do hear this merry-making, they may get a chuckle, too. Hopefully, we laugh often at ourselves. It costs nothing — since it is at our own "expense"!
It was said of Tilman Smith when he died at 97, "He read widely, laughed heartily, cared deeply and committed passionately to the church." As we remember those who "went home" during this past year, it is surely their infectious laughter we recall, every one. How great a cloud of witnesses! We learn from those who go before us with humor lightening their walk of faith — for fruitful missions, for effective peace, for energies shared in later years and for restoration of spirit.
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