Abraham Lincoln said "Laughter is the joyous, beautiful, universal evergreen of life." I've always believed that, so I decided to explore the theology and ethics of humor-its place in our spiritual life. Why do we laugh at some jokes and not laugh, even get angry at others? Why do people get so serious about religion? Children and youth would like to know that, since the LACK of laughter may be the main thing that alienates them from church. The best humor pokes fun at our pain and fear. For instance:

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Back in the sixties a comedian named Dick Gregory turned political commentary into nightclub humor. While civil rights protesters (including me) were being pelted with firehoses and teargas, Dick Gregory pelted us with jokes. He came from a poor family, but his mother said we're not poor, we're just broke. If you're too young to remember the sixties, you've surely heard about the marches, demonstrations, and the freedom riders, some of who ended up dead. George Wallace symbolized hatred and violence as he blocked a doorway, denying black children entrance to a school, but Dick Gregory came to the rescue with standup routines like this:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I understand there are a good many Southerners here tonight. I know the South well. I spent twenty years there one night. I never believed in Santa Claus, because I knew no white dude would ever come into my neighborhood after dark.

David against the Goliath of racism, with his little slingshot, he defended the powerless against the powerful. He gave us the courage to laugh at the things that were scaring us. Genuine humor can take away the sting of fear and pain, energize the spirit, and change our perspective. Then came Johnny Carson to poke fun at all of us. When Ed told us Heerrre's JOHNNY, we knew that WE were going to be the butt of some jokes, but also that we'd be laughing with, never at each other and ourselves. We laughed at the foibles of humanity, our foolish posturing and pretension, our weaknesses and mistakes. Johnny was kind and compassionate, teaching us not to take ourselves too seriously with jokes about prune juice, and modeling humility by making himself ridiculous. I will never forget the duet he sang with Julio Iglesias-For all the girls I knew-maybe you remember it too. Dressed up like Willie Nelson, Johnny looked the part and sang it just like Willie, while he and Julio both choked back their laughter.

Some preachers think of themselves as standup comedians. They buy joke books and scour Readers Digest looking for funny stories. They hope this will add spice to a sermon and put people in a good mood. It seldom works because it's sort of like putting salsa on some bland, uninteresting dish-all it does is confuse the issue. The best humor, in my humble opinion, rises out of openness and honesty, not preparation. In fact, I believe hardly anyone can make it happen, you just have to let it happen, which is a spiritual activity.

Christianity has had almost as much trouble with humor as with sex. I'm named after my maternal grandmother Nancy Angelina, a farm woman from Kentucky who may have never laughed in her life, and believed most people were going to hell. She died before I was born so I never knew her, but I'm told that she was not much bigger than me and often wielded a switch cut from a peach tree. My mother told me that if she was ever caught playing cards, dancing, sassing grown-ups, wearing makeup, nail polish, shorts or tight sweaters-if she did anything on Sunday that looked like it might be fun, if she even cracked a smile on that day, Mammy would use her switch on her legs, making her dance with pain, and then sit her down with the Bible. Mammy was a "holiness" Christian, and I wish I could say that theology is now dead, but it still exists in mutated form in the Christian right-wing, where family life is pictured as a childish game, the laundry is always done and nobody ever gets seriously hurt. Mammy's husband, my mother's father, called (what would you guess?) Pappy, suffered more from the holiness outlook than he did from arthritis.

Now as usual I'm probably going to offend somebody, so I'm asking for immunity, sort of advance forgiveness. We have to be very careful with our humor because the politically correct stand over us with a peachtree switch, listening to our jokes, ready to make us dance with pain if we laugh AT certain people. They've cracked the switch against the English language. You can lose your job these days if you slip and use politically incorrect terms. I'm not short and deaf, I'm vertically and audibly challenged. God has no gender and pronouns are dangerous. But even as the PC's censor our jokes, meaning well-and they DO mean well, another camp in popular culture encourages us to laugh at other people's misfortunes.

Sitcoms and commercials offer a steady diet of slapstick humor that victimizes the innocent. When Johnny Carson got hit in the face with a pie, it was funny. We always knew that he knew it was coming. If you decided to sock it to me unexpectedly in the middle of my sermon, somebody might laugh but lots of others would be angry, including me! TV shows people sawing their furniture in half, getting hit on the head with a bowling ball, blowing up their lawn, or finding themselves naked in public places. A little boy breaks windows, a mother saves a moronic husband from falling off the roof, a young man sucks spaghetti up his nose. They expect us to find this funny, as if we don't give a thought to the real consequences of physical and emotional trauma.

Ironically, this brand of humor tries to remain politically correct, and therein lies an interesting discovery. Who is the butt of the jokes? Who can we ridicule without alienating the audience? Answers to these questions reveal the power structure of our society. It's OK to laugh at politicians and men of power, whose prestige is great enough to withstand ridicule. It's acceptable to laugh at those who have no power or voice, such as children, the elderly, and one other group which I'll talk about in a minute. It is not OK to laugh at most women because women have claimed their power and might SUE YOU, or Afro-Americans who have claimed their power and might call Jesse Jackson, or members of the gay community who are now claiming their power. I'm still waiting for the politically correct to protest the ridicule of my ancestors, the so-called hillbillies.

Dick Gregory would be quick to tell us the people of Appalachia, where I was born, are not just broke, they are poor. Their crossed eyes, missing teeth, and low expectations are the result of poverty, not the modern kind caused by drugs and crime, but ancient poverty, generation after generation of bare subsistence, no teachers and few doctors. Sometimes they chewed on a straw out of the haystack because there was nothing to eat. And just in passing, overalls went out 50 years ago, and the only member of my family who ever played the banjo is my Jewish son, who also plays chess and speaks Hebrew.

I'm sure somebody is now thinking, aw come on, Nancy, lighten up. OK, John Callahan helps with that. Here's a man who found himself in the depths of despair and rejected anger or tears in favor of laughter. His book is entitled Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, subtitle "The Autobiography of a Dangerous Man." The joke is, Callahan can't go anywhere on foot, since he is paralyzed. His cartoons invite us to laugh at people with disabilities, especially himself. This humor is politically INcorrect, and often obscene.

Callahan was a foundling, never knew his parents, and grew up in the care of a Catholic orphanage. A cartoon about this pictures him as an infant in the arms of a nun-the baby thinks, my mother is a penguin? A few years later we see him in a Catholic school, standing at the blackboard. Behind him stands a GIANT nun holding a ruler, as the little boy writes over and over, I am personally responsible for the agony of Christ.

I think of Callahan as the Johnny Carson of the alcoholic, drug-addicted, disabled, and poor, poking fun mostly at himself in that kind Carson style. His cartoons have the same healing power Dick Gregory tapped into, causing LIFE to return to wounded spirits. In the misery of pain and loss, he found grace. That's a Christian word not fully understood by many preachers. Let me see if I can summarize it now-why we laugh or don't, why some laughter heals and some wounds, why some brings tears of joy along with the smiles. Dr. Michael Beckwith in his book Practical Spirituality, says "Humor will put the smile of Buddha that is in your soul upon your face." Climb a tall tree in your mind and from that vantage point look out upon our world. You'll see terrible things, but don't pass judgment or seek solutions.

Try to detach emotionally. The Buddha smile is a smile of agape or detached love, a smile of acceptance. It says I'm not in charge, not called on to right all the wrongs. I am NOT personally responsible for the agony of Christ. Great comedians bring out the Buddha smile with parting lines such as How sweet it is! They call it entertainment, but the great ones know they are actually in the business of therapy and spiritual growth-ours, and their own.

After the death of my stiff-backed Methodist grandmother, Pappy continued farming for a few years, but eventually he gave up and came to live with us. This was a golden time for him and his daughter, my mother. He liked to sit behind the stove, under the stovepipe, and my mother would pull up a chair while I sat on the linoleum with coloring books or paper dolls. They never talked about Nancy Angelina, they talked about themselves, life, God, and sometimes little Nancy, whom they very well knew was listening. The love that passed between them, in soft voices and simple words fed my spirit, nourished my growing self, provided for me a lifetime store of optimism.

In the years to come I would suffer, go astray, and sometimes lose heart, but when I hit bottom, that store of love was always there. That's the source of my humor, and because it feels so good to me, I want to share it. You can do that too. We help each other in our spiritual journeys when humor rises out of real life, when we choose courage over fear, laughter over self-pity. A healing message is expressed in our principles-respect for all life, openness to each other and to the sacred, humility in the face of our foolishness and frailty, and the GRACE to laugh.

Rev. Nancy Holden
1004 Morgan Rd.
River Falls, WI 54022