Things Dear to Us Are Worthy of Laughter
Real people respect the significance of being but do not turn to pillars of salt if they occasionally turn away from it. Significant things, ideas, and being, are kept at ease by authentic people. Dr. Jim Bradley, my mentor and formerly my history professor at Fuller Seminary, sets a great example. Dr. Bradley, who students say “looks a lot like Jesus,” is an incredible blend of scholarship, spiritual depth, and humility. I suppose the places where he sometimes is required to lecture have added to his practiced humility. For instance, my Early Church History class met in a large, old basement room where noisy, exposed plumbing pipes ran along the low ceiling and where an elevator to who-knows-where-but-not-here opened near the professor’s lectern and always to the surprise of occupants; always to the delight of a hundred or so gawking class members.
Once class day, as he frequently did, Dr. Bradley made a brilliant statement. The class, as it usually did, hushed to absorb the wisdom of this man’s thought. But unexpectedly, a sudden rushing noise yanked our attention ceiling-ward. The next sound was Dr. Bradley saying, “Every time I say something profound they flush the toilet upstairs.”
Hooray! Dr. Bradley is real. He knows weighty moments can bear laughter. His own dear thought held up well under humor. We do not plan to laugh at important things, only we find ourselves in situations where important things as well as important selves are subject to surprise. Incongruity does not necessarily turn minds from great things to small, as Spencer insisted, but rather it allows great things to remain great while we take a small break to notice a moment of surprise, a perfectly presented opportunity to laugh. Take it. That is my advice.
Recently, I was lecturing a gathering of community college personnel. Picture this. At the head table, I sat left of the lectern. Next to me was the college president. On the other side of the lectern sat the chancellor of colleges, and to her right sat my husband, David, who accepted the invitation to join me at this breakfast meeting.
Normally, David hears my speeches before they reach any audience, but not in this case. Here, he listened like everyone else, for the first time. Well, it is not fair to say that he listened likeeveryone else. He did not. He listened like a husband. At least, like mine. My lecture’s introduction quoted a dialogue a comedian imagined between Noah and God. It set up a question I intended to investigate: Who is this really?” At about the third line of exchange between Noah and God, I said, “And Noah said . . .”
“No honey, you mean, “God said,” said my dear husband from the chancellor’s side, genuinely unaware of what he was doing.
Shall I make an understatement? The eyes of the crowded room moved to the handsome, gray-haired man with the bright red face. They were interested in who it was correcting their guest speaker. Dave worked at disappearing. In the hush of this moment, I said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce my husband, David, who finds it necessary, even here, to correct me.” We all started laughing. This was an incredible moment.
David rose to his feet. Holding a cloth napkin over the nodding head held between his hands, he attempted to apologize. Laughter only grew greater as his embarrassment struggled for acquittal. Men howled; women wiped tears from their eyes. If there had been any question, this moment answered it. This audience and I were now solid friends. What a splendid punctuation this laughter allowed. No, not punctuation. Puncturation. Laughter wonderfully punctures any distorted sense of a moment’s worth, or any soaring sense of self-importance—if we let it.
Authenticity is not manufactured by mood or setting, rather, it is carried in character. Perfect settings do not a masterpiece make, although ideal settings do them justice. Masterpieces deserve good settings but are not guaranteed them. They are sometimes stored in basements, attics, stashed away and neglected. Masterpieces of human character appreciate perfect settings, too. But people seldom have the luxury of ideal settings. Real people laugh about dear things and in dear moments. Even about things and moments that hurt us.
Linda was dear to me. For twenty-six years we cherished our friendship. We truly loved each other. ON the first trip I made to be with her during her final hospitalization, we affixed a “do not disturb” sign to the door, unplugged the phone, told the nurses “no visitors,” then stretched out on her bed together to talk.
We began seriously. We asked ourselves if there was any unfinished business between us. We knew the possibility that Linda was dying. Anything unfinished? Needing discussion? Explained? Then the laughter began because we were plainly surprised by the silence that answered our intense questions. This friendship was very well tended. That surprised us. We laughed.
We allowed ourselves to follow our resting heads back in memory. We laughed over the day we decided “to heck with public opinion.” When we met one another in airports, we hugged joyously and shared a kiss. We often held hands as we walked through corridors, so happy to see one another. We laughed over friendship having to calculate its public behavior. We laughed at our won daring.
We very nearly winded ourselves that day in the hospital, laughing over the memory of Linda—soft, Texan Linda—pursuing a deliberately rude driver down a freeway. Having enough of his behavior, she succeeded in forcing him to the side of the road where she stood by his window shaking her finger under his nose and over his dropped jaw, scolding him, hot Texas style in the cold Colorado snow. No one can spout expletives quite like an enraged Texas woman, we agreed. She suggested if he couldn’t muster better highway behavior, he ought to at least remove his “Jesus” bumper sticker. She cringed in memory. We laughed. Hard.
We cried hard, too. We hated that her life was waning. We hated the terror ahead. This life-loving woman trusted well that God knew what He was doing, but she did not have to like it. Ah, how real; how not funny, her moments of handling fear in that hospital room. She created more than one obnoxious scene in the middle of the night in order to draw people to her bedside. Only when we figured how the possibility of dying alone frightened her was it arranged for people to share her room during the deepest hours of night’s fear.
I remember gladly that Linda and I spent nearly as much tine laughing as we did crying, even as we prayed. The time came when laughter no longer fit, But, while it did, it fed us relief, fetched memories for conversations, strengthened our love, and delivered us for as long as it could from the sorrow ahead. Dear, dear things, dear people. God protect us from fearing the nobility of laughter.
Coming up: Section SIX, Our Very Selves Are Not Only Significant but Are Hilarious
