Carbonated Holiness: Laughter is Serious Business
by: Carolyn Arends
Adapted from an article that first appeared in ‘Christianity Today.’
The day I threw out my kids’ old Sunday school crafts, I felt heartless and vaguely evil. But one can only store so much Fun Foam in a single house.
Still, there was one piece of art I saved. My daughter had cut out and coloured pictures of children engaged in different acts of worship, and glued them onto a sheet. (She was three; you were expecting decoupage?)
Bethany had been particularly proud of this assignment because of the gluing part. (I think she may have a future in adhesives.) The day she brought it home, I acknowledged the excellence of the glue-work and then asked her what the pictures represented. “Praying! Giving! Reading the Bible!” she shouted as I pointed to each scene.
I saved the best picture for last—a boy with his mouth open wide in song. Singing is my favorite form of worship. I knew it would be Bethany’s too, what with her mother being a singer and all.
“Laughing,” said Bethany, when I pointed to the boy with the open mouth.
I stood corrected. Laughing is my favorite form of worship.
I’ve been backing up my laughter-as-worship theory for a while, collecting quotes on the matter. I was compelled to stop reading Anne Lamott’s Plan B long enough to shout “Yes!” and scribble this line on a napkin: “Laughter is carbonated holiness.” And anyone who knows me will understand why I give a hearty amen to this wisdom from a comedian: “I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.” (In my case, there was an unfortunate incident involving Diet Coke, and it gives poignancy to the idea of laughter as carbonated holiness.)
But my favourite quote may be from Karl Barth: “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” Of course, Barth must have meant the good kind of laughter, born from joy or relief or the sweet surprise of community. There is also derisive laughter, rooted in pettiness or vulgarity or cruelty. It’s not hard to tell the redemptive kind—laughter that is reflexive, even involuntary worship—from the destructive kind.
A good laugh is a release—even if only for a moment—from worry, strife, and self. It’s a sudden, often unbidden confession that someway, somehow, all is well, or at least there’s a hope that it can be.
It’s telling that we talk about “gales” of laughter. We instinctively recognize that laughter belongs to the world of wind, or Spirit—unexpected joy arriving on the gust of a fresh current and carrying us to a different place from where it found us. That’s why I suspect that Lamott is right—laughter is holiness, it’s part of the life of God, and to laugh from your belly is to worship the Giver of all good gifts.
Trinitarian theologians use the word perichoresis to describe the happy fellowship of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Their relationship is pictured as a joyful divine dance. I can’t think about that holy dance without remembering certain jigs that have taken place in our family room. (For shy, repressed, reserved, uncoordinated, Canadian Baptists, we can really cut a rug.) When our kids were toddlers, Mark and I would twirl and spin them until they were helpless with laughter so hard it was soundless, and then we would laugh at them laughing until we were all worn out with gladness. If we’d have thought of it, we could have quoted the psalmist as we held our aching sides on the family room floor: “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. … The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy” (Ps. 126:2–3).
It’s serious business, laughter. It’s the kind of sacrifice of praise that puts our insides right. The old cliché is true: Laughter is a medicine that reminds us that our sickness will one day be healed and we shall be whole and holy. Until then, laughter is the Elmer’s Glue that attaches us to the goodness that inhabits this world, and to the gladness that hints at the world to come.
Carolyn Arends has released 14 albums and is the author of 3 critically-acclaimed books. She is also the Director of Education for Renovaré, an organization that nurtures spiritual formation and renewal. Carolyn lives in Surrey, BC with her husband Mark and their now-young-adult children, Benjamin and Bethany.
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