UNIFYING LAUGHTER [M, 11-9-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

UNIFYING LAUGHTER                  [M, 11-9-20]

At the news of Donald Trump’s election defeat, so many people said, in one way or another, “I’m smiling for the first time in four years.”

I realized that no one, NO one, had smiled for four years. Certainly not Trump, even though he was president. Not his supporters, even though they had gotten what they wanted. The Trumpian way is humorless.

Trump’s idea of a joke, and that of his followers and enablers, is to ridicule someone, for being poor or handicapped or colored or gay or female, or, especially, fat.

Even when Trump’s followers chanted, it was not a chant of joy, like “We’re number 1!” It was always a chant of hostility, “Lock her up.”

There is no humor, no laughter, in that segment of the population. They don’t laugh when a pompous ass slips on a banana peel; they laugh when a peasant banana picker slips on the peel. They also dock her for a spoiled banana.

I got into more trouble in my years of ministry for my sense of humor than almost anything else. Yes, there was good reason. I told too many lame “Dad jokes.” Mostly, though, I was in trouble with people who thought there just shouldn’t be any laughter in church. Were they alive to do so, they would have voted for Trump.

I think, though, that when we got along, when I was able to bridge a division in the congregation, it was because I got people to laugh together. Sometimes it was because they got to laugh together at me.

Real laughter is a great unifier.

Almost half the voters in this election voted against laughter. They voted for the humorless candidate, the one who only knows how to laugh at people instead of with them. “Making fun” of someone is not really fun, even for the one who is pointing the finger. It corrodes the heart and the soul.

It is important that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and all of us who want to unify our country learn to laugh in such a way that it includes the folks who haven’t yet learned what real laughter is.

I recently “heard” a guy say that he was in a store, wearing his mask, of course, and at the cash register there was a sign that said, “Stand here.” He said, “I’ve seen too many Roadrunner cartoons to fall for that.”

Okay, so that’s probably not going to get everyone laughing, but it’s a start. Let’s keep it going. Let’s learn to laugh together.

John Robert McFarland