A Touch of Easter in Every Laugh

What if every laugh—especially the ones that sneak in during sorrow—held a hint of resurrection? Discover how humor can carry you through the dark and into something deeper.

Laughter was the love language in my family growing up. At dinner, it wasn’t unusual for one of us to time a joke to coincide with a sibling’s gulp of milk. For about a millisecond, mom would perfunctorily object. Her words were all…“Stop it!” But everything else about her was a flashing green neon sign that read, “GO FOR IT!” Once the milk was coaxed out of one of her kid’s gushing noses, nobody laughed harder than Mom. In a home where the humor spigot was always set to the “on” position, getting milk to pass through a nose was regarded as an accomplishment akin to Jesus’ turning water into wine.

A Spirituality of Humor

About the time that I began caring about spirituality, I started looking for elders to show me the ropes. Much to my relief, I kept running into spiritual mentors with seriously sick, and off-color senses of humor. Looking back, I think that I was worried that engaging in spiritual development might require checking my childhood habit of goofy laughter at the church door. I discovered that it was exactly the opposite! It wasn’t like my spiritual guides were always creating the humor, but they always seemed to catch the subtle beat of it…anywhere, and everywhere…especially during dark times. Around every corner was hiding some irony, or texture of goofiness for them. In each and every instance, these men and women displayed a stunning ability to laugh at themselves in a good-natured way. Having experienced themselves as the subject of Divine Delight, they were able to regard their own flaws as more funny than tragic, as evolving, not permanent. Their lightness of being didn’t get in the way of doing the hard work of evolving. It seemed to encourage that work. Armed with the capacity to laugh at themselves, there was no need to take a defensive stand when encountering the need to grow up some more.

Humor Research

In her psychometric studies of humor, Sonja Heintz noticed a dimension of what I’d noticed over the years. Her subjects, who worked on a regular practice of meditation, increased the amount of humor in their lives, as well as the quality of that humor. Like Abraham Maslow’s observations of self-actualized people, she noted a lack of sarcasm or cruelty in their sense of fun.*

An Easter Tradition of Humor

All the way back, when Christianity was nearly brand new, Saint Irenaeus, famously said, “The glory of God is [the human being] fully alive!” Researchers like Heintz and Maslow have shown that a significant part of being “fully alive,” has to do with frequent and abundant laughter. Maybe that’s why Eastern Orthodox Christianity places laughter at the center of their celebration of Easter. They regard Easter as the greatest joke of all time—when God pulled the wool over Satan’s eyes and raised Jesus from the dead. To honor this accomplishment, they tell jokes. Some start the ritual right after the late-night vigil services. They feast, party, and laugh at jokes until morning. Others wait till after sun-up. Some reserve the light-hearted ritual for the Monday after Easter Sunday.

Humor and Resilience

It seems to me that each and every laugh contains a little bit of Easter in it…especially when that laugh was coaxed out into the world during a dark time, or a dark set of circumstances. Time and again, I’ve seen healthcare professionals, in the most dire of circumstances, buoying one another up in a break room with some seriously funny antics. Time and again, I’ve found myself unable to cry over profound grief, when suddenly a well-timed bit of humor releases the laughter waterworks and lets some healing flow into me. You’ve seen this too. A story is shared at a deathbed gathering that sends everyone into convulsions of death-transcending laughter. The same thing famously happens at wakes and funerals all the time. In my childhood home, the dark clouds of alcoholism were never far away. Frequent and abundant laughter consistently broke through that darkness delivering a life-sustaining touch of Easter.

Laughter has a way of affirming that there’s more to life than the pain of this moment. Laughter refuses to believe that suffering is the whole story or the end of the story. Not by a long shot! There’s a kind of defiance in laughter that says, “I shall die, but that’s all I’m going to do for death.”**

*Thanks to Natalie Cunningham for helping me find this research

**Edna Saint Vincent Millay from her poem, The Conscientious Objector

Easter Exercises

Start or Deepen a Contemplative Practice

For starters, if you want more and better humor, begin a daily contemplative practice. Over the course of months, and then years, you’ll still notice troublesome thoughts and feelings passing through you. Progressively, you’ll notice that they’re less sticky. The change will start in your awareness of them. By observing them in meditation you’ll come to experience difficult psychological experiences as something you “have” instead of them having you. As Dr. Heintz’s research indicates, you are likely to find a deeper sense of humor taking root and flowering in your life where the rocks and weeds of semi-conscious negativity used to preoccupy you.

Tell a Joke

At Easter lunch or dinner, can you emulate the Eastern Orthodox and encourage a little joke-telling? My current favorite? A grasshopper hops into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, did you know that we have a drink named after you?” In an over-the-top excited voice, the grasshopper asks, “YOU DO?” “YOU HAVE A DRINK NAMED, STEVE?!!”

Collect Funny Stories

Whatever your religious tradition, can you emulate the Eastern Orthodox with some intentional humor in your next gathering? Ask your guests to come prepared to tell one of their favorite funny stories. If you won’t be gathering with anyone anytime soon, can you recall some of your favorite funny experiences in a journal as a way of reliving the humor in those moments?

Practice Improv

A couple of years ago, I took an improv class and discovered that I’m not very good at it…unless I’m with toddlers or older people with dementia! For example, when my kids were little, dinnertime was primetime for improv. Much to our delight, we discovered that green beans were magical. They made you jump! Broccoli had the opposite effect. It could make you fall into a deep, but temporary sleep. My friend Mike tells the story of his mother who was rapidly declining with Alzheimer’s disease. One night, while tucking her into bed next to his dad—her husband of forty + years—she worried that it might be a sin to be sleeping with that “strange man” in her bed. Mike comforted her, “It’s okay mom, I just called the Pope, he said it’s fine for you to sleep next to him. But the Pope also said, “No funny business!’” With that, she lifted her index finger and with a relieved smile she reiterated, “No funny business.” Next, she closed her eyes, smiled, and fell asleep.

Dialogue: Use these to dialogue with those in your life or share with Dr. Tom and the Sunday Morning Cafe community in the comments below.

• Can you think of a time when you laughed till you cried, and looking back, you realized that you were releasing sorrow or anxiety?

• The book of Genesis describes human beings as “made in the image and likeness of God.” Can you imagine the human capacity for humor as an aspect of the Divine Spark in all of us? Can you imagine God having a sense of humor?

• When have you succeeded at having a good compassionate laugh at one of your foibles or failures?

• What is a foible or failure you still haven’t figured out how to compassionately laugh at? Would you be willing to imagine the possibility of getting to a point where you could laugh about it? What do you imagine would help you accomplish this a little more?

• What are three of your all-time favorite jokes? Can you make it a point to tell at least one of them to someone?