Laughter and Spirituality

On Friday evening, I went to Unity Center of Tulsa for the closing ceremony of the visit by the Tibetan monks. They were interesting and delightful and the thing that struck me was their joy in what they are doing. All week I have been thinking about spirituality and humor and remembering how pious but disrespectful we were at Holy Cross Academy in Scotland. I was wondering if it was a Catholic thing, or a Scottish thing – Scots do have a wicked sense of humor – but when I started digging, I found that humor is an essential part of every religion. In an article in Psychology Today entitled Laughter and Spirituality, Does Your Faith Have A Sense of Humor.

Renee Garfinkel, PhD, writes, “Religion’s public image is grim; it’s all fire and brimstone, and Dante’s Inferno. Severe, and reproving, religion’s reputation is largely one of humorless inhibition and pleasure-fearing. Even New Age religions, the self-described more spiritual “religion-lite” of the genre, even they seem to emphasize a life of what’s “good for you”, with a whiff of tofu and kale.

Religion’s grim attributes would present enough of a PR challenge without the added baggage of the folks who truly give religion a bad name: the holy warriors whose trade is terror, the cartoon-inflamed violent mobs. Pedophiles in the pews, corruption in back rooms, misogyny out front, and hypocrisy on a scale matched only by politicians – for the broad, news-reading public, this is face of religion. It isn’t a pretty face…

And it isn’t a complete face, either. Most religions agree that humor and laughter are central to a spiritual life.
Viktor Frankel, the founder of Logotherapy, who knew more than most about the depths to which humanity can sink, said, ““Humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, if only for a few seconds.”

Those “few seconds” are the doors that let spirituality in. This is a truth understood by great religious leaders and practitioners.

The Dali Lama’s photos often show him with a ready smile, giggling in interviews and laughing on stage. The popular televangelist Joel Osteen famously begins his sermons with. “I like to start with something funny…” in the tradition of good preachers and teachers everywhere who realize that laughter makes people more receptive to the message, and to the sense of connection with one another. There are yoga paths that emphasize laughter, and even a worldwide laughter yoga movement.”

But, I thought, this can’t be true of Catholicism. And then I found the transcript of an interview on PBS with a Jesuit priest, REV. James Martin, S.J., who wrote a book about spirituality and humor called, Between Heaven and Mirth in which he gives lots of examples of the use of humor in serious situations. He cites the third century St. Lawrence who when he was being burned to death on a gridiron over hot coals called out to his executioners, “Turn me over and take a bite, I’m done on this side.” Or St. Augustine who famously prayed, “Lord give me chastity…but not yet.” Fr. Martin said, “Have you ever been to Mass [or any other similar service] where the priest says (in boring voice) “And so we join with choirs of angels and their unending hymn of praise, holy, holy, holy Lord?” And you think, if that’s the way the choirs of angels are singing their praise we are in big trouble.”
So, this then spurred me on to find out more and I came across an interesting article entitled, The spirituality of humor, by Rich Heffern. As an interesting aside, he is a contributor to the National Catholic Reporter and you can find this blog:

The spirituality of humor
Rich Heffern  |  Apr. 27, 2010 NCR Today
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In New Mexico a few years ago I attended a conference on Native American spirituality held at the Santa Fe Indian School. Native peoples from all around the Southwest came for this yearly weekend gathering. After everyone had registered, inked in their name tags and found their seats, Joe Savilla, the convener of the conference, walked to the podium, surveyed the assembly with a grave face, then said, “Before we begin … does anyone have any good jokes to share?” Maybe four or five attendees shared, starting the conference off on just the right note. Then Joe followed with a prayer. I still remember some of the jokes. Here’s one:
A New Mexico farmer was visiting his Texas cousin’s ranch one day. The Texan, anxious to impress his relative, took him out on the front porch, spread his arms wide and said, “Why, I get in my truck in the morning and it takes me all day to get to the other side of this place!” The New Mexican shrugged and answered, “Yup, I had a truck like that once.””

He then goes on to give an interesting insight into the root of three seemingly unrelated words:

“Did you know the words human, humor and humility all have the same Indo-European root — ghom, best translated by the English word humus.

Humus is key to any ecological system, whether it be forest, grassland or glade, and it is vital to any garden. The best garden humus, of course, is a combination of rotting vegetable matter: kitchen scraps, autumn leaves, grass clippings. Mixed together and left to rot, the humus pile becomes a rich, fertile soil in which to grow vegetables. I garden every year and tend my humus, or compost, pile carefully. Daily I add to it, and every other week turn it and wet it, so that the microorganisms can do their work effectively, breaking the organic matter down into a rich, loamy, aromatic substance that, when added to the garden, works miracles.
One can readily see the connection between humility and humus. What could be more humble than a pile of rotting organic matter, destined to push up carrots, radishes and corn? Yet nothing is more helpful to growth. Humus is fecund. It’s willing to serve. It’s a kind of earthy parable for life. When living matter ends its service, it dies into the compost pile … and gives birth to new life. Earth swallows us up but at the same time it is a womb, a place where birth, renaissance and resurrection all occur. Our human adventure is similar to the sacred saga of humus.

Humor is also a kind of compost in which the organic elements of life mix, ferment and stew, either giving birth to new ways of seeing and understanding, or just reconnecting us with the humble humus of our earthly origins.”

He then goes on to tell a Sufi joke about the Sufi satirist, Nasruddin:

“One day a friend came to Nasruddin’s house (in ancient Persia) to borrow a donkey. “I’m sorry,” said Nasruddin, “but I’ve already lent it to somebody.” Just then the donkey made a loud braying noise from the back of the house. “Nasruddin,” the man said, “I just heard your donkey! It’s out back.” Angrily, Nasruddin asked his friend to leave the house. “What kind of friend are you?” he yelled after him. “You believe my donkey, but you don’t believe me.”

One of the important roles humor plays is as a reminder that we are human, that humans share qualities that range from nobility and altruism at one extreme, to avarice, selfishness and cowardice on the other. Humor is more often than not a kind of realignment with the force of life that laughs at our meager attempts to impose our own order on things. Humor reminds us all that, as humans, we share at our core the same frailties, vulnerabilities. Humor often thumps us on the head with the message that we are not in control.
Humor constantly reminds us of our humanity, and of the creative and spiritual potential within. “There is, in fact,” writes Jungian analyst Helen Luke, “no real spirituality without the laughter which a sense of humor brings.” Humor helps us literally to revel in our humanness. It offers new points of view on every situation. It takes the facts of our existence and plays with them in creative and insightful ways.
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands buttered and jellied side down. It was proposed to strap giant slabs of buttered toast to the back of a hundred tethered cats; the two opposing forces will cause the cats to hover, spinning inches above the ground. Using the toast/cat array, a high speed monorail could easily link New York and Chicago.

In the cafeteria at that New Mexico conference, my wife and I sat near two children. There was hush in the conversations; the voices of the two kids could be heard clearly in the room.

Q. “Why did the chicken cross the basketball court? A. He heard the referee calling fowls. What sits on the bottom of the ocean and shivers? A nervous wreck.”

The girls giggled — and the world, for the moment, seemed whole and complete. We humans grow from the energy of our laughter more than we grow from our gravity. The child, discovering the magic of humor, finds a new plateau from which to view life differently.

Heard any good jokes lately?”
Isn’t that wonderful? So I am reassured that, in my youth, our disrespectful, childish humor was just an exercise in humility and humus, contributing to our spiritual development, and I am going to finish today by reminding you that the next time you feel your day is sh. . . excrement, realize that this is just the compost to help give birth to a whole lot of new and wonderful possibilities in your life.