Light Heart-Minded

According to L. K. Hanson, Ernest Hemingway wrote: They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.  We do not have an explanation of Hemingway’s meaning so we are left to interpret his statement as we choose, but we are also hindered in that Hemingway seems to have been unable to ferret out and live by his own logic.  We are left (as we often are) in adding to, or taking from, the teachings and observations of those who gain our attention.  Apparently Hemingway believed that the lives of the humorists, the entertainers, the persons finding a kind of human joy in themselves and what they do have an advantage over those who live in a spirit of neutrality about life and its circumstances.  The eminent actor, Jimmy Stewart, was also a churchman, and sometimes made the point by referring to his pastor.  He informed Johnny Carson in an interview that one of the funniest jokes he ever heard was from his pastor, not a comedian.  He then told the joke.  It was funny, broke up the audience and Carson, but it had much of its force in the way it was told by the reticent style that Stewart had perfected.  It was reflected in the lightness of being that he had developed.  He told the story that when filming in Europe he heard that a major film was being made by Cecil B. DeMille about the circus.  He telegraphed DeMille that he wanted to be in the picture because he always wanted to play a clown.  He didn’t care about the size of the part, nor payment for services, or credits in the cast.  He wanted to play the clown.  He did so, and that from the heart with the memory of something he most wanted to do to express himself to audiences about the joy of life.  When he asked about direction for his part he was told to simply do what he wanted to do.  The professional clowns, including the famed Emmett Kelly, told him to be himself in the colorful make-up, and go along with the other clowns.  He did so, and believed the bit part one of his greatest performances.

There is some secret here that deserves faithful research from a scholar.  Why do comics, humorists, and those who join their world seem to be healthier and live longer than those who do not follow affirmative psychological orientation that also relates well in a spiritual orientation?  Humorists in the various genres, high and sometimes even low, rival ministers for long life.  Is there a connection?  Long life is one of the many gifts of God, and attached to affirmation that God approves.  (Psalm 91:16)  The Hebrew word for life by the Psalmist in this verse was seldom used, and implies something special in that life.  Shakespeare seems to have caught the context of mankind, writing both Comedy and Tragedy.  He gave us the prevailing terms that have been followed for centuries since his time period.  They are revealing.  He found it difficult to write comedy without some tragedy, and vice-versa.  Hamlet holds the skull of the fool of the court during his father’s reign, and speaks gently of him.  Later he gives us Polonius who spouts truths in humorous prose so to guide his son, Laertes.  Here is life using light and dark to communicate truth for life.  Even in serious life we need lightness of being.  Only joy in faith delivers it fully.

Humor acceptable to the Christian context is found in the lightness of being.  Humor is a subdivision of the larger context.  That lightness is not found in the humor and joking that characterizes much of the current style – with its innuendo, the use of words we prefer not to subject our children to, the references to sex and private concerns (called potty humor), and the listing expands from there.  Even the comedians of the earlier decades of my life deplored openly the collapse of the life standards of humor.  Our humor emerges from life, from our contradictions and paradoxes, from a creative understanding of what life is, and the joyful attempts to help us bear both the negatives of life, and the joy of what may be – perhaps can be what we are and what we can become.  In this simplicity we find something of what God gave us in the innocence of a baby who, we discover, can discern something, even before gaining conscious reflective thought, that makes him or her laugh, and we find ourselves joying with the infant.  Contrary experience comes in a sense of tragedy to the infant leading to tears.  We aspire to recover joy. Too many of us make our lives like those persons who trudged down the hill to a prison camp.