Brrrrr

Sorry I've been away day or two, Necessary trip to Calgary took all day. And it's really cold. I still love this weather (-27°C), but it seems to take more out of me than when I was sixteen.

Back to Susan Sparks on humour as a spiritual discipline. I unerlined this sentence in her introduction: "The spiritual path is not walked in the great halls of religion. At best, most of us spend an hour or so a week in formal worhsip or prayer. And et's face it: it's not hard to be pious for an hour."

 That resonated with me at a deep level, for sure. How many times have said, to otghers as well as to myself, "I can do dignity in short bursts…" as a way of explaining mny penchant for seeing thr ridiculous in almost anything, even the sternest elder, or the most fashionable congregant. It's gotten me into trouble more than once but, nonetheless, it's true for me.

However, humour has to fit the moment, rather than be a total distraction from the moment. In my youth, i knew a preacher whose sermons were filled with jokes. To me, they all seemed to distract from whatever he was trying to say. But people loved him, because he made them laugh. I always feel that if umour is to be a valuable contribution to a moment or a conversation, it has to shed a new light on what is being said. I suppose tat's just aother way of organizing things. Maybe total distraction is helpful in a conversation. What do you think? I know that humour can givs the moment a twist so that fresh insights can be had, and lightness can be introduced which may well bring things to a totally different conclusion.


I cherish the 'funny line' that makes a topic suddenly transparent and pure, in a way. A friend sent me an email thgis morning with this story in it:

Bubba had shingles.
Those of us who spend much time in a doctor's office should appreciate this! Doesn't it seem more and more that physicians are running their practices like an assembly line?
Here's what happened to Bubba:
Bubba walked into a doctor's office and the receptionist asked him what he had. Bubba said: 'Shingles.' So she wrote down his name, address, medical insurance number and told him to have a seat.
Fifteen minutes later a nurse's aide came out and asked Bubba what he had.
Bubba said, 'Shingles' So she wrote down his height, weight, a complete medical history and told Bubba to wait in the examining room.
A half hour later a nurse came in and asked Bubba what he had. Bubba said, 'Shingles..' So the nurse gave Bubba a blood test, a blood pressure test, an electrocardiogram, and told Bubba to take off all his clothes and wait for the doctor.
An hour later the doctor came in and found Bubba sitting patiently in the nude and asked Bubba what he had.
Bubba said, 'Shingles.' The doctor asked, 'Where?'
Bubba said, 'Outside on the truck. Where do you want me to unload 'em??'



The context for the story was a discussion of the problem of waiting time in the health care system. The story seems like a distraction at first, but in the end it becomes transarent, and is totally on topic - but funny. Let;s see where Sparks goes with this…