Funny how unrelated things come together sometimes. A TV personality caused outrage by suggesting strikers should be shot.
Explanations about being satirical with a sharp edge, or words taken out of context, or apology that people were offended, didn’t redeem the situation.
They simply betrayed the dangerous deficits of compassion, understanding and ethical responsibility that can lurk in what is intended to make people laugh.
Then I had a discussion with some students about laughter. A sense of humour is an essential attribute if we want to learn, understand, enjoy and come to love human beings. Humour and humanity come from the same word family. What we laugh at says something unmistakable about what we live for and how we look at the world. Laughter with people creates deep bonds of togetherness, head nodding, hand-clapping, shoulder-shaking mirth, and joy in the oddity of things. Laughing at people is divisive, and tries to diminish the one laughed at.
The contrast of inhumane non-jokes about other human beings called strikers, and one of the nicest compliments I ever read couldn’t be greater: “he looked humanely forth on human life”. The greatest humorists manage to bring humour and humanity together. Then our laughter brings us close to tears, because we see ourselves, our ridiculous, wonderful , mistake-making selves, in their work.
Advent is the time we celebrate the birth and humanity of Jesus, ‘when God almighty, came to be one of us’. Christmas joy is because Jesus shows us the God who does not mock our humanity, but takes it and restores it, and redeems our own humanity in that great original act of generous love. Emmanuel. God with us.
The two images are carefully chosen - the one smiley amongst the blue down in the mouths - and the Annunciation (Botticelli) of what would become good tidings of great joy, to all peoples. The juxtaposition of humour, humanity and the redeeming touch of God.
As some one who likes to laugh I was drawn to read your latest blog. I think I have been watching too much Star Trek though as the Virgin Mary looks like she is being zapped by a stun gun. Is that just my own strange humour or the redeeming touch of God in my life today?
Posted by: Spiritualityand Hilarity | December 16, 2011 at 01:14 PM
Hello Spirituality - or is it hilarity:) Click on the painting and elnarge it. You'll see to the left of the pillar a small dove within the beam of light, and from the cloud a hand in the gesture of giving. You have indeed been watching too much Star Trek. This is Renaissance symbolism, theology in pictures, a page of high art in graphic novel form. Almost all early portrayals of the Annunciation have a beam of light, a dove, and the Virgin in the attitude of prayer. So I guess it's the redeeming touch of God on all our lives! Thanks for calling by and for the question - sorry about the didactic answer, but it is the right one!
Posted by: Jim Gordon | December 17, 2011 at 03:50 PM