The Blessing of Laughter

I was at lunch with a friend at Johnny Harris’ restaurant, a Savannah institution, and we were deeply engrossed in conversation. When the food arrived, she said, “I’ll say grace,” and she began waving her hand over the plate making the sign of the cross.

“God Bless this food,” she began, picking up a bowl of Brunswick Stew, “and those who made this stew, including those illegal immigrants who picked these vegetables, underpaid though they were by the farmers, but God bless the farmers too, including the mass corporate farms that ran all of the family farms out of business!’

“And bless those Chinese sweet shops that used underage workers to make this China that our food is being served in. Especially those under the age of 14.”

By now I am laughing and she opens her eyes and begins to laugh. Then she spies my fried chicken, makes the sign of the cross and continues the blessing.

“God bless those who operate the chicken farms overseeing the cages that this poor bird lived his life in so that the profit margin could be maximized. God also bless the one that rung this chicken’s neck, ripping its head off, throwing it into a large garbage bag. God bless those that disposed of those garbage bags full of chicken heads whoever they are and however they do their work.”

I stared at her, still giggling, when she pronounced, “I’m becoming a Buddhist.”

“What kind?” I asked screwing my face up as if I had biten into a lemon. This wasn’t a religion that I am particularly interested in.

We both burst out laughing and continued our conversation. The prayer was a parody of something that she had read in Barbara Brown Taylor's new book "An Alter in the World." And the conversation turned serious and it took us in another direction.

She ate her Brunswick Stew. I consumed the headless chicken. And the conversation lasted a couple of hours, exploring the past, confessing the present and throwing wishful thoughts into the future.

You have to laugh, right? And you have to be willing to laugh at most anything, including yourself. Otherwise we would all become overwhelmed by all of the things that are wrong --- with our life, religion, where we work, the government, the world --- that we would all die of depression or from the sheer weight of everything that is wrong.

Of course, you have to laugh in the right places and with the right people. Otherwise you are being politically incorrect and that can get you sued, hated, locked up or crucified.

The job that I have is hard work. It is often joyous work, when people succeed against impossible odds. It is often heart-wrenching work when you’ve giving someone all that you have only to watch them fail. It is sometimes heart breaking work when they die and they shouldn’t have! And I give it my all because there is something very holy about the “least of these” that are easy to love in Church but become a completely different matter in real life. I’ve spent so much of my career publicly proclaiming that it is all right, we are all the same when it comes down to it, let’s all come together now and make one another better merely because we have gotten to know … one another.

Lately though, I have begun to realize that it takes more than a holy cause or good deeds or public successes to get you through. It takes laughter. Lots of it. And I have been fortunate enough to have collected these groups of friends who love to laugh. Gathering with them is every bit as important as prayer or voting or paying the I. R. S. on time. Without them and the spontaneous combustion of laughing with friends, none of us would be able to do what we do for very long.