"TAKING LIFE LIGHTLY"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, April 17, 2005

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Last week's sermon I called "Taking Life Seriously." The topic was a heavy one. We spoke of life-and-death issues. I promised I would lighten it up a bit this Sunday by looking at what it means not to take our lives too seriously.

I will begin by looking at ourselves as Unitarian Universalists. Let me speak for a moment to those here who may have been visiting us a while, observing this church and wondering if they might belong here. I recently ran across a list of indicators about being a Unitarian Universalist. It is offered in the form of the statement "You may be a Unitarian Universalist if . . .."

Ø You may be a Unitarian Universalist if you know at least five inclusive ways to say "Happy Holidays!"

Ø You may be a Unitarian Universalist if your idea of a "guys night out" is attending a rally for the National Organization for Women.

Ø You may be a Unitarian Universalist if part of your Easter brunch was unleavened bread.

Ø You may be a Unitarian Universalist if you refer to construction paper as "paper of color."

Ø You may be a Unitarian Universalist if the name of your church is longer than your arm.

Ø You may be a Unitarian Universalist if instead of filling out a church survey questionnaire, you re-write the questions.

Ø You may be a Unitarian Universalist if you take your day planner to church instead of your Bible.

It seems to me that the first step in not taking life too seriously is the ability to take yourself lightly. It means being able to laugh at yourself from time to time. This may be why so many of us seem to like Unitarian jokes.

Joking about ourselves, or even joking about life, is a product of someone who can take life lightly. It is a way of feeling some distance between yourself and the problems of the world that surround you.

It seems to me that religion has a somewhat similar function to humor -- it allows us to put to put life in some perspective. It should direct us toward a healthy outlook on life.

In the year 1418, at the Second Council of Constance, church authorities issued a rule that stated the following: "If a cleric or monk speaks jocular words, such as to provoke laughter, let him be an anathema."

Religion has been serious business for a long time. Much too serious, I believe. If religion is a human system for encouraging healing and wholeness, I'm not sure that can happen without humor and laughter. If I were forced to choose, here at All Souls, between having an evening meeting in which the participants discover some profound and weighty insight into the meaning to life, and another meeting in which participants share joy and laughter with each other, I know which meeting I would design. And, for that matter, which to attend. For most of us, there is no spiritual medicine in life more healing than to laugh.

Nearly 600 years ago, the church made a grave error. It warned that any priest who provokes laughter in church is an anathema. It seems to me that the opposite is true: any person who claims to practice religion -- the healing of the spirit -- must work in partnership with humor. To some extent, the purpose of religion and the purpose of humor are the same.

One of the ways that humor helps us to cope with life is to keep us humble. One essential quality of mature religion, it seems to me, is the ability to laugh at ourselves. If we can joke about ourselves, we know that we are not taking ourselves too seriously. We are not becoming fanatical. No one who is searching for the answers to the questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything should take themselves so seriously that they actually believe they have found it.

There is of course, a difference between jokes that make light of things that are important to oneself, and jokes that make light of things that are important to others. Jokes that offend others do not serve the purpose of healing. Ethnic or religious jokes, for example, are credible to the extent they help you look at yourself, but not if they demean someone else.

It is not, for example, healthy to me to tell jokes about Catholics, Mormons or Jews. It is neither healing to me, nor helpful to them to do so. It makes me uneasy whenever I hear a Unitarian Universalist tell a joke about others, even fundamentalists. Everyone has a right to joke about themselves, but not to joke at the expense of others.

I do have the right to tell jokes about Unitarian Universalists -- and there are plenty. Those jokes tend to go back pretty far in our history. One of my favorite quotable Unitarians was 19^th century jurist and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes. It seems his wife may be just as quotable. When Fannie Mae Holmes was asked why she was a Unitarian, she is said to have replied, "Because in Boston everyone has to be something, and Unitarian is the least you can be." A more contemporary example comes from humorist Garrison Keillor who said, "arguing with a Unitarian is like mud wrestling with a pig. Eventually you realize that the pig likes it."

Humor serves not only to keep us humble, but also to heal us when we hurt. We have all been there at some time or another, when we face a situation that feels severely burdensome to us, as if the weight of the world were on our shoulders. Perhaps we are with others -- friends or family members -- who are sharing the feeling of doom. The circumstances feel imprisoning and there seems no way out. And then someone lightens the load by making a joke. For a brief moment, the weight seems not quite so heavy and the task seems not quite so hopeless.

If you'll allow me to mention a politically incorrect source for a moment, it reminds me of a commencement speech given by Woody Allen quite a few years ago. He began with these words:

"More than any other time in history, we face a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

Humor relieves tension, lightens the load of fear, and gives us perspective that allows us to cope with life's absurdities. Life's incongruities are hard to take unless we can understand that it is designed that way, and not take them too seriously. Life doesn't make sense at times, and rarely makes sense to different people at the same time. That is part of what I meant in my previous two sermons when I spoke of not having a great deal of faith in consistency. Life doesn't deal in consistencies.

Nobody ever said life is a rose garden. If it is, the roses are full of thorns. But toning down the seriousness of it all, and adding humor to the perspective makes the burdens more bearable. Psychologist Herb True pointed out that "If you can find anything to laugh at when you are angry, you won't stay angry long."

Is this not also the task of religion, when it is doing what it ought to do? Like humor, shouldn't religion relieve tension, lighten our load of fear, and give us a perspective so we can cope with life's difficult moments? When the circumstances around us are discouraging, and incline us toward pessimism and negativity, we welcome something that will point us toward the positive, and help us not to take the negative signs too seriously. Religion and humor, when they play their respective roles properly, both serve this purpose.

We typically think of religion in most serious terms. It is, after all, about searching for life's meaning. On the surface, though, there is an absurd dimension to the religious quest. We turn to it to solve life's great mysteries, to understand life's meanings, to make everything make sense. Here we are: you and I live on a minor planet in an almost unnoticeable solar system of planets within a universe of an uncountable number of such solar systems. And on this easily overlooked speck in the sky, we are one of tens of billions of people who have lived here over time. And somehow we think we may be the one who gets it right! We may just be able to solve the mystery of life, the universe and everything! It does sound a bit silly, doesn't it?

Yet I love the quest. I have devoted my professional life to its pursuit. But sometimes I realize I need to sit back, observe, distance myself, and laugh at this outrageous human habit. As far as I know, we are the only animals that practice religion, the only animals that care about ultimate questions of meaning and existence. And as far as I know, we are the only animals that laugh. Maybe there is a connection.

I believe that there is. I am convinced that our ability to laugh is a healthy part of our wrestling with the questions of ultimate meaning. As Bill Cosby says, "If you can laugh at it, you can survive it." There is substantial scientific and medical evidence that a good sense of humor, even laughing out loud, is good for us, body and soul.

I probably don't need to detail the studies. It was first publicized by the prominent publisher and writer Norman Cousins 25 years ago when he discovered that watching comedy movies in the hospital bed helped heal him of a life-threatening illness. He spent the next dozen years of his life on the faculty of the UCLA medical school studying the effects of humor on healing. Numerous studies have confirmed his findings. Laughter can positively affect the immune system, it can reduce stress, it can relieve physical pain. Most of all, it can support a generally positive attitude that enhances ability for the body to heal. It renews the human spirit, which helps heal the body. People with a good sense of humor tend to live healthier lives, and live longer, than whiney, negative people.

It is an insight going back a long way. Fourteenth century French surgeon Henri de Mondeville wrote, "Let the surgeon take care to regulate the whole regimen of the patient's life for joy and happiness, allowing his relatives and special friends to cheer him, by having someone tell him jokes." Even Voltaire once pointed out centuries ago that "the art of medicine consists of keeping the patient amused while nature heals the disease."

Religion and humor tend to serve similar goals: to help us lighten the load of fear and worry, and to give us perspective that allows us to cope with life's challenges. Sometimes, humor seems to do a more effective job than the sober religions we depend on for meaning.

But taking life lightly isn't just about humor and joking. It is about framing one's attitude toward life. Motivational writer Chuck Gallozi put it this way:

When we can joke about life, it shows we put it in the proper perspective. That is, we take it lightly. Meaning, we don't take ourselves too seriously. Life is grand, but we're just a small part of it. We're important, mind you, but replaceable.

Taking life lightly doesn't mean living without passion. On the contrary, we want to burn brightly in the wind, before it blows us out. We want to embrace life and thank it for opportunity to love, work, and play. We want to dive in and plunge into its depths. Everyone dies, but not everyone lives, and we refuse to join those who merely exist. To be or not to be is not the question. To live or not to live: that is the question.

It is not death that we need to fear, but an inadequate life. Why? Because life is not lost when we die. It is lost while we live. It is lost in opportunities that we allow to slip through our fingers … Life expresses itself in action…

Those were the carefully crafted words of a motivational speaker. Here is how the psychologist and Holocaust survivor Vicktor Frankl said it: "Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time." Mark Twain may have put it even more succinctly: "Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

Then it isn't just humor that helps us take life lightly, and put perspective on it. It is a matter of attitude and orientation or outlook on life.

Dante's 13th century trilogy, entitled The Divine Comedy, is one of the greatest masterpieces of literature in history. It is the story of Dante's journey through the tortures of Hell, the lesser sufferings of Purgatory, and his final victorious arrival at the glories of Paradise. Upon first encountering The Divine Comedy, I was puzzled over the word "Comedy" in the title. There were very few humorous parts of the story, and certainly not enough to justify the word "comedy." It seems that the word was used in the special context of Dante's world. In his world, life was experienced as having only two alternatives. Life was fundamentally tragic, and those experiences that were not tragic were called "comedy." Comedy, in Dante's world, was the overcoming of tragedy. It meant victory; it meant happiness; it was Paradise.

There is, I think, a lesson in this use of the word. It is tragic to take life too seriously, so seriously that the effect is heavy and only grave and somber. It is tragic not to see and appreciate and laugh at life's absurdities and paradoxes. It is unhealthy to hold only the perspective that life is an immense burden, and a hopeless task.

There is a sense in which religion and comedy serve the same purpose. In both we hope to overcome tragedy. Both provide strength to face adversity. Both help us to cope with life's insecurities and uncertainties.

Religion is largely a coping mechanism, and as such it has often been filled with superstitions and inventions. In his book Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut treats this fact about religion with humor and sympathy. He invents a religion called "Bokononism," and makes it convincing. Bokonon, the founder of this religion, tells us to "live by harmless lies that make us brave, and kind, and healthy, and happy." The Bokononist Bible, the Book of Bokonon, begins with this warning: "Don't be a fool! Close this book at once! It's nothing but lies!" Then, it continues:

In the beginning, God created the earth, and looked upon it in cosmic loneliness. And God said, "Let us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what we have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was human. Human mud alone could speak. God leaned close as the human mud sat up, looked around, and spoke: "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.

"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.

"Certainly," said the human mud.

"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God. And God went away.

There is another function of humor in religion. Humor provides an excellent tool to critique our closely held opinions and beliefs. Much of this is due to the "distance," that is required in comedy. In order to joke about something we must, to some extent, be able to extract ourselves from our emotional ties to it, and look at it in a different way than we have before. Over the years, humor has been used to identify the ridiculous in many religious belief and practices. The following is one such example:

One of Mark Twain=s favorite targets was the concept of Hell. When asked if he was worried about whether he=d end up in heaven or hell, he thought about all the interesting people who were skeptics and unbelievers, and replied, AFor the climate, I=d prefer heaven, but for conversation, I prefer hell.@ When Andrew Carnegie insisted to Twain that the United States was a Christian country, Twain responded, AWhy Carnegie, so is hell!@ He once wrote that people must get into heaven by favor because, AIf it went by merit, you would stay out, and your dog would go in.@ Twain felt that Satan was not granted due respect:

I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair shot. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is un-American; it is French. We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who has during all time maintained the imposing position of the spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest sort.

I hope you understand that in all I=ve said so far, I do not wish to suggest that we ought to be able to laugh at everything. There are certain experiences in life which are so deeply intense and so profoundly moving, that to joke about them would be cruel. There are certain principles and values that are so genuinely crucial to life that demeaning jokes are inappropriate and insensitive. I am not talking about such cases as these. I am referring to our attempts to find answers to the questions of Life, the Universe, and Everything. This quest is important -- even necessary -- for the progress of civilization. It must be kept in perspective, and humor is an appropriate, even irresistible, means for doing so.

Frederick Neitzsche, the man who first reported in 1884 that "God is Dead," once claimed that AI will only believe in a God that knows how to dance." For me, this comment points to the fact that religion should always include some sense of frivolity, some sense of capriciousness.

We need something in life that allows us to overcome tragedy, something that inclines us to say "Yes" to life, even when life is not in a friendly state with us. The function of humor, and especially humor in religion, is precisely this: to help us keep a healthy perspective, to be able, in the sense that Dante used the term "comedy," to focus on that part of life which is not tragic, grave, and morose. In a word, to find hope.

After all, remember this:

You might be a Unitarian Universalist if are unsure about the gender of God

You might be a Unitarian if you think the Holy Trinity is "reduce, reuse, recycle."

You might be a Unitarian Universalist if have ever been in an argument over whether or not breast milk is vegan.

You might be a Unitarian Universalist if you know at least two people who are upset that trees had to die for your church to be built.