This is what laughter tells us first of all: there is a time for everything.
Karl Rahner
Hell, Mary, Fool of Grace, the Low Road's in thee! Based Art, thou, amongst women and based is the Fruit of thy Womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mutter of God, play for us shimmers now and at the Flowering of our Death. Amen.
Bradley Jersak shared this poem last week on his Facebook page, and the responses were… not uplifting, to the say least. (I’ll let you do your own research.)
Apparently, lots of folks took what I had said as mocking, derisive—as if I intended to desecrate the Hail Mary. But of course that’s not the case. Yes, there’s an irreverence at play, a Chestertonian silliness. But there’s a reason, is there not, that we say cheekiness is next to godliness? At least we should say that. Goofiness with contentment is great gain!
**
In a devilishly funny essay, “Evil as Person,” Robert Jenson posits that a person is “a moral subjectivity with a sense of humor,” and concludes that if, indeed, God is personal, then God must be “not only the moral intention at the ground of things” but also “the laughter at the ground of things…” The proof of this truth, he says, is experienced in prayer:
The difference between the impersonal moral world-ground and God is that we can talk to God, that prayer is possible. But prayer is, of course, a funny phenomenon, and in both senses: funny peculiar and funny ha-ha. Whyever, after all, would omnipotence enjoy our praises? And why do we need to petition omniscience? Surely God already knows what we want, and knows moreover what we need, and moreover knows what He is or is not going to do about it? If omniscience solicits our praises, if omniscience wants information from us, this can only be described as that peculiar kind of self-awareness and humility that we call humor. It is funny when God converses with us, paying real attention to our side of the converse. But He does do just that.
Finally, the difference between God’s character and the Devil’s is the difference between giggling with us and sneering at us:
It is the sovereign test: When the voice in the night tells me, “You are hopeless,” is it said with a laugh or a snicker? If the joke is on me and the speaker, then the preacher’s voice is God’s voice. But if the joke is on everybody around me, in that now they can no longer rely upon my good works, then it is that same bad comedian on the stage again, even if the stage is in the church.
That’s the spirit in which my “Hell, Mary” was prayed, should be prayed.
***
Cornel West is fond of saying that Socrates didn’t weep and Jesus didn’t laugh. Chesterton, at the end of his Orthodoxy, makes a similar observation, and offers this provocative speculation:
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”
Perhaps. But as I’ve tried to argue elsewhere, God is a giddy thing! And if we think speculatively along neo-Chalcedonian lines we can say that because his humanity was perfectly attuned to the Father’s desires, Jesus was not at the mercy of moods; he must have felt everything always all-at-once without confusion or separation or mixture. That means, among other things, that his anger, his grief never split his heart, never divided him from himself. All that he felt, all that came to be seen and heard in his countenance, his bearing, and his tone, all that his presence made those around him feel, arose from the holy gladness, the everlasting, inexhaustible joy that was and is the core of his being.
There’s wisdom in the Gospels’ refusal to describe Jesus’ laughter, to be sure. It allows us to hear what the Spirit knows we need to hear, to feel what we need to feel, as we read. But read the Gospels again, and notice how they make you smile. When Jesus rebukes Peter, “Get behind me Satan,” can’t you see the twinkle in his eye? When he rebuffs the Canaanite woman, “It’s not right to give the children’s break to dogs,” can’t you hear the hilarity in his voice? When he insults the Emmaus disciples, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart,” isn’t it clearly endearing? Remember, that very evening, as they neared home, they begged him to stay with them! So, at the end of the day, I cannot help but think that Jesus was always smiling, snorting, grinning, guffawing. How else explain how at ease women and children were in presence, how bold the miserable and the outcasts? Amber is exactly right:
And what made them feel safe? The clarity and depth of his moods, his tones. And only joy, God’s own joy, can give that.
****
In “Coming,” Philip Larkin wonders toward the new:
It will be spring soon— And I, whose childhood Is a forgotten boredom, Feel like a child Who comes on a scene Of adult reconciling, And can understand nothing But the unusual laughter, And starts to be happy.
Jesus, I believe, laughs like that, laughs with a laugh that is unusual but not at all strange, laughs with a laugh that sparks a too-deep-to-be-named happiness.
And that brings us back to Mary and my prayer to her: I too want to be a fool of grace!
I hope you’ll join us on the low road.
Lol. (Translation: yes, I’ll join you)
Deeply appreciate this. I wrote a paired haiku a few years ago that no one seemed to appreciate... I thought it was clever, but I suppose we usually think ourselves so. It's called "God Dam It", feel free to damn me for it. :)
"God Dam It"
God dam it, flood of
violence, violation—
keep those waters down.
Flood! Rise! Stop the drain—
waters drown all anxious pain!
Dam it God, baptize!