Laughter is the Best Medicine

There is learning to be had in the very little things in life. And where one cannot learn, one can laugh. Like watching squirrels in the grass sprint to trees at the sound of a passing car in the street. Or the face that the guy at the McDonald's register makes when asked if the McNuggets are free-range chicken. Or the further surprise when his customer only wants a small fry and small soda. Or driving alone at night, and wondering about those sharing the road with you. In all of these occasions there is equal reason to laugh and to learn.

The squirrel scurries and has reason to scurry; it is likely her kin have met gruesome fates after such a noise as a car driving. And McDonald's is obviously catering to a unquestioning and relentlessly consuming populous, rather than the controlled and educated individual. And when alone, we find solace and companionship in the closest human contact possible, even if it is limited to passing each other while driving through Ohio on a dark, rainy night.

Thanksgiving is so completely that! It is the immense joys of laughter and feasting, inlaid with learning and growth. It is a time to remember that we are not alone, and to acknowledge both our elders and those that learn beneath us. In many ways, it is the Christmas rehearsal.

For if a holiday of thanks has so much joy, how much more must Christmas contain!

My uncle was an alcoholic. There is no complete certainty as to what drove him away, but it is certain that over a year ago, he fled the fingers of his vice and joined the AA. Since, we as a family have seen this prickly, over-opinionated doctor become a much gentler and humble man. And beyond the hope of quitting his vice, there is a great sense of spirituality that the AA has nurtured within him. Even he admits that it is a miracle that alcohol has left his veins.

He is the older brother of my mother, and they, along with their brothers, lost their father when my mother was only thirteen. My grandfather was an alcoholic. But there was no movement away. There was no hope for his recovery. His liver eventually received more poison than it could manage, and my grandfather wilted away.

Seeing the effect that it has played out into the second generation of children, the tragedy of such an occurrence is unavoidable. But it is not without hope. For in the learning of the human mind spring the seeds of hope. Over the holiday, I saw this hope in the eyes of my uncle. He is unashamed of this victory, but he also acknowledges that it is not his alone.

And as the holiday progressed, and we met numerous times as a large family, uncles and aunts, cousins and siblings, infants and toddlers, and one grandmother, there was such laughter. But when I laughed, I also watched the people around me. We all laugh in similar, and yet unique ways. And no one laughed harder than my uncle.

Sunrise

This morning there is hope.

If God's greatness is unfathomable, then perhaps even the most wicked of outcomes from humanity's misuse of freedom is nullified by a relationship with God that humanity's very existence provides.

It is not that the end justifies the means, it is that the means are swallowed within the end, and have become one with it.

Perhaps it is better to live a life ravaged by pain and tragedy then to not exist at all, for whether consciously or unconsciously, we are in relationship with God.

Sun Setting on Sanity

Our words emit through the same opening with which we ingest sustenance. It is a holy passage. The future progressed through the primordial. The transcendent through the disgustingly elemental. And yet it is one, and it is good.

This is not dissimilar to (at least from the male perspective) the concept of reproduction. Males expel their liquid wastes from the same opening through which they provide their contribution of spermatozoon. The sperm itself is little but an optimistic and random attempt at initiating the creation of life. And the cell itself results not from any but the most carnal of activities. Once the ovum is penetrated, development commences, generally requiring nine months to incubate a healthy specimen, and the end result being only the messiest and fleshy of outcomes.

Yet, from the opening of waste and the crevice of a womb comes forth that which is most capable of learning. First to understand kinetics, and then noise, and then words, and then ideas. Suddenly it is a mind empowered, and even ruminates on the notions of God and eternity. It is from the earth, made from the dust, and raised from the mud, and yet in its very design, destined to become metaphysically enlightened.

This is good.


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I do not understand the environment within which I have been born. My life has been subject to so much pain and embarrassment and fruitless episodes. I am a collected mess of skin and thoughts. This afternoon I am without any notion of direction, and wonder if my labors are even worth these fleeting moments. Why was I born with such enormous aspirations only to toil in the ordinary?

I do not subscribe to the belief that God finds within the end a justification for the means. Did the lepers cry out in pain as Christ healed them of leprosy? Did the blind man scream in agony as Christ removed his blindness? Healing came without pain. Creation, but in a breath. Whole planets turn without a sound. If only the means to my end could be gentler!

When the creator God saw what It had created, God said that "it was good." God is omniscient. All of creation, existence, the beginning and end laid before God. Still, God called it good.

I struggle to find comfort in this thought.

Starting with the tiniest of atoms, pitted in fatal contests, evolving in a cutthroat system, humans arose as the most capable and clever of species, and God chose them among all of creation to be endowed a gift of revelation.

God must have foreseen all the years of destruction and war. On a micro level, evolution is war. It was built into human nature from the beginning. When God chose humans, God must have seen all the shadows of humanity's darkest desires; every child murdered in Herod's quest to kill Jesus of Nazareth; every Muslim and Jew slaughtered at the hands of greatly misled crusaders.

But God said "it was good!"

I was recently told that one cannot possess faith without hope. But I have long struggled to have faith, and only now am losing hope.