| June 14, 2009 | The Power of Internal Jogging; Cosmic Chuckling - U*U Style Reverend Jane Bramadat |
Meditation
Positive Humour Affirmations
1. I am determined to use my humour for positive, loving purposes only.
2. I will take myself lightly, even though I take my work in life seriously.
3. I will not seek to be offended. When in doubt, I choose to see others as meaning well. I will practice positive paranoia.
4. I will express my laughter physically and freely.
5. I refuse to use my humour to express anger or prejudice in any hidden way; I will express negative feelings directly without contaminating my positive use of humour. I will, however, occasionally use humour to challenge or change fundamentalist assumptions.
6. I understand that the gift of humour is a loving gift. I will laugh generously at others' attempts at humour.
7.All teasing and ethnic humour will be by mutual consent and will go both ways, or I will not engage in such humour.
8. I will respect the 'forbiddens' of my companions in life and I will enjoy my own use of forbidden subjects freely and without guilt.
9. If I offend another by my use of humour, I will make amends.
10. I will be eternally vigilant for the jokes and absurdities of the universe. I will go out of my way to share my observations with my companions in life.
11. In adversity I will use humour to cope, to survive, and to grow.
12. I will always celebrate the role that the intellect plays in the use of humour.
13. On the day of my death I will look back and know that I lived, loved and laughed fully and well.
(from A Laughing Place by Christian Hageseth III [adapted-jmrb])
Sermon
The first part of my sermon title: 'internal jogging' comes from a phrase coined by doctor and writer Norman Cousins who made a complete recovery from a debilitating, terminal illness through the use of two common, but normally unused methodologies : orange juice and laughter. This morning I want to talk about laughter. I can't think of anything remotely religious to say about oranges!
But you may say in response, what's so religious about laughter?
I hope it will become clear as my comments proceed. For me, laughter is definitely a sacred ingredient in the recipe for life. Even laughter that has an edge to it is included - for it may be the escape hatch for built-up tensions that need release. Whether it is heard in delicate trills or hearty guffaws, no recipe of life is complete without the leaven of laughter. I believe humour is not a bit of fluff on the edges of our living but something that is as necessary to a healthy balance as is clean water, oxygen, friends, love, thinking, reading, volunteering and good food [which in my case means curry and hot sauce!].
In other words, to live balanced, meaningful lives we need to have in them all the ingredients for a satisfying, fulfilling, expansive, stimulating and compassionate journey. We need the basic physical things for safety and support, we need love and we also need to reach out beyond ourselves to make sure that we don't implode through selfishness, greed or apathy.
Norman Cousins said about internal jogging:
"What [is] significant about ... laughter...is not just the fact that it provides internal exercise for a person flat on his or her back - [in other words] a form of jogging for the innards-but that it creates a mood in which the other positive emotions can be put to work, too. In short, it helps make it possible for good things to happen."
And Dr. Bernie Seigel says about internal jogging, "there are sound, scientific reasons why we call robust, unrestrained laughter "hearty." It produces complete, relaxed action of the diaphragm, exercising the lungs, increasing the blood's oxygen level, and gently toning the entire cardiovascular system...others have likened it to a deep massage. ... A story or situation that we anticipate will be funny creates a rising level of tension reflected in pulse, skin temperature, and blood pressure. This tension is suddenly released in muscular contractions with the punch line....After the laughter, all the muscles are relaxed, including the heart - [and] the pulse rate and blood pressure temporarily decline. Physiologists have found that muscle relaxation and anxiety cannot exist together, and the relaxation response after a good laugh has been measured as lasting as long as forty-five minutes."
Dr. Seigel continues...
"Humor's most important psychological function is to jolt us out of our habitual frame of mind and promote new perspectives.. Psychologists have long noted that one of the best measures of mental health is the ability to laugh at oneself in a gently mocking way..."
And I must admit that it is this sort of 'jogging' that I value the most - being given a deep mind massage amidst the laughter as I am forced to reconsider some assumptions I have made, or reevaluate a theory that has just been exposed as, well, less than defensible...
What is so religious about laughter is its innocence, its defencelessness - -when one is laughing, one is open to the world changing and transforming and just for a split-second hope floods in; and both the transcendent and immanent are empowered and possible.
I do not want to be misunderstood here - laughter does not happen disconnected from real life events. And some of real life [for each of us] is heavy and painful. But particularly in heavy and painful situations we need to be reminded about the value of internal jogging - of finding some lightness of being in who we are and what we do.
This is because then we are pushed to take risks, helped to think more creatively, to suspend limitations, and to experience most situations with increased resourcefulness. We will, of course, from time to time, fail in our attempt to use laughter appropriately, to let internal jogging massage body and soul - but that is the price we need to pay if we are to reap the huge benefits of laughter.
The second half of my sermon title was “cosmic chuckling U*U style”
By a cosmic chuckle I mean that somehow the earth's funny bone is being tickled; or that the universe is taking a feather gently to a sensitive area in our world (as a whole or individually) and thereby bringing about a shake-up that refuses to allow for any "hardening of the attitudes." I like one of the comments of Lily Tomlin in this regard.
She says, "the human mind is kind of like a piñata. When it breaks open, there's a lot of surprises inside. Once you get the piñata perspective, you see that losing your mind can be a peak experience."
This comment reminded me of an unexpected incident that happened to me almost ten years ago. It happened when I went to the Halifax airport to return home, which, ten years ago, was in London, Ontario.. The ticket agent at the airport was very pleasant, took my ticket to verify it, assigned me a seat, and then said, " and now if I could just have your passport." "My passport?" I said, totally bewildered. "Yes," she said, "you can't fly without your passport."
.....I think I lost it for a minute and thought that one of my semi-conscious nightmares had come to pass while I had been away---Quebec had seceded from Canada and the Maritimes had saved itself by joining the United States- and now I was stranded. I asked in desperation, "Why should I need a passport to go to London?" the ticket agent said, "Because it's in another country -- (idiot being the almost audible word that followed) "But I'm only going to Ontario." I whined. (I should never have left the West my mind was babbling, I'd always been told that Ontario was a land unto itself) But then there was a perceptible pause while the universal mystery directed the feather at someone else's sensitive part ..."ah, you're going to London, Ontario not London, England?" "Right, right, that's in Canada, isn't it [I said like an idiot]?" She started giggling and I joined her - I was giggling because I still had the country that for a nanosecond I thought I had lost, and she, because her idiot level was just as high as mine at least temporarily.
Our laughter relieved the tension and made me realise that that outcome was much les stressful than the other option would have been -- to have become sarcastic and angry at having been made to look the fool. Actually, looking the fool can be rather a relief - the expectations aren't half as high!
Another incident that brought humorous ruminations to me also happened as a result of traveling. I was sitting in the airport in Toronto waiting for my connection to Winnipeg [there was a funeral I had to officiate at..] and I saw an older gentleman who had fallen asleep with his mouth open. This sight brought back to me some information I had read about one of the brilliant religious minds of the 20th Century - philosopher and teacher, Krishnamurti. When Krishnamurti was young he had the disturbing habit of walking around and sitting still with his mouth open. This made him look quite simple-minded. It has since been discovered that with one's mouth open in a certain way, pressure is brought to bear on a particular part of the brain [I imagine in the right hemisphere] that stimulates creative thinking. It certainly didn't do Krishnamurti any harm. The depth and perception he had of life and the many different spiritual paths to understanding and awareness was staggering. So back to the airport - I suddenly found myself snickering to imagine that many of the people old and young alike, whom we observe sitting or standing with their mouths open might truly be the deep thinkers among us! How quick we can be to judge a person's intelligence by their facial expression.
It needs to be said over and over again that recognising the paradox and silliness in so many of our attitudes and actions and laughing about them is a sign not only of active intelligence but also of the ability and humility needed to bring about growth and change.
One of my colleagues, a Canadian serving a UU church in the United States [Maureen Killoran] reports a story she read in a news magazine. It was about a journalist, an infrequent church attender, who visited a local congregation when his daughter was scheduled to sing a solo. Her song over, he dozed his way through the sermon, only to be jolted awake when he thought he heard the minister saying, "Please rise and join in singing, 'Lead On, Oh Kinky Turtle'." The scarlet of the preacher's cheeks ascertained that his hearing was not faulty--and the minister confirmed this by explaining that he had slipped and called the hymn by the name given it by his young son. [The hymn's correct title is 'Lead On, Oh King Eternal." for those of us who did not grow up in a Protestant religion...]
Hopefully this story about the minister's faux pas will encourage all of us to laugh at what can be an overly solemn approach to the Sunday Order of Service. It is good, respectful and wise not to be sloppy or rude or sarcastic about the sacred as it weaves in and out of the words and music and flow of the celebration of life each Sunday, but at the same time there is always needed a joy and sense of play when errors occur or when that cosmic chuckle can be heard responding to a wonderful spoonerism or a spontaneous play on words.
Wisdom tells us that insight is often hidden and released only through the doorway of paradox and humour, and that will only be found if a person is in a state where he or she can hear and absorb new insights and that comes most naturally and most often through laughter.
For me, what is so religious about laughter is its promise - the promise that good things will happen. Internal jogging works on the inside so that the outward smile and crinkles by your eyes will be the result of your inner work. The power of internal jogging is the resulting joy that creeps unsuspectingly into your life, twines gently around your environment and that, for the life of you, you cannot persuade to let go.
Cosmic chuckling happens on the outside so that we know we have company in this ever-so amazing and strange universe in which we live and continues to unfold.
Closing Words
May laughter be the gentle massage you need to tone-up your life;
May laughter bring you back into the balance you need to be able to appreciate the blessing of being alive, here and now.
May the power of internal jogging keep you breathless with delight and energised to share new possibilities with others.
And may you hear the cosmic chuckle when you least expect it! jmrb
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