IC XC
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NI KA
When we were kids, it seemed to my brother and I, swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, that the waves came in sets of three: two normal ones and then a huge one. Three sets of three would end in a gigantic one. This childhood sense was not unique to us: various mythologies speak of waves coming in such series. The seventh wave is one, the ninth is common, too. The is something chaotic in the Oceans and we want to see it have a pattern. Science can now show us rippling waves spanning the globe and currents swirling everywhere. There is much more order than we used to imagine.
Of course, over it all, God is in Control. But gracious me, from the inside it can feel like a hot mess on nine inch heels trying to disco on a floor covered in confetti and poppers. Then one heel breaks.
Work has been very good – I feel more like I’m “being me” than pretending to be someone else. Thanks to a good therapist and a good spiritual director, learning to be Daddy – the in the Ward Cleaver sense – has been a huge terrifying and wonderful growing experience. But I’ve also been trying to learn to be Father, in the Religious Superior sense. It seems this is what manhood actually means for me just now: a combination of Ward Cleaver, Mike Brady, Uncle Bill Davis, and Canon Edward West. (You pick your own spiritual antecedents, let me pick mine. Thanks.) All of these men had a stern, yet loving presence, without guile. How can one do that today when it’s necessary to be ironic just to write homework?
Twitter was awash, recently, asking a very old question. Did Jesus Laugh? It is a very old question, indeed.
Is humor (and irony) an intended part of the Human Nature or the result of sin? In that it is most often a defense mechanism, it seems that there is a good reason to imagine it’s part of our fallen nature rather than our created purpose. There should be no need for the mental sparing implied by humor in the prelapsarian world. Or was there?
If no, then the idea that Jesus didn’t laugh is perfectly acceptable. As is the idea that he hadn’t an imagination. (This last is also a common theme in Patristic teaching. The imagination is part of our fallen humanity. We see this theme in CS Lewis as well.)
This is a bit of a sticking point between East and West, but also between the older orders and the newer religious communities: Orthodox monastics and Benedictines are in the “no laughter, no imagination” camp. Franciscans and Dominicans are huge on laughter. Jesuits – and many communities schooled by them – are ok with both laughter and imagination, making extensive use of the latter in their spiritual exercises which are basically complex visualizations.
Anyway, although Canon West, Msrs Brady & Cleaver, and Uncle Bill all could be humorous – they were fallen, after all – they were also very earnest. I don’t think there was an insincere bone in their bodies. They were, near as I can tell, never merely ironic – and I don’t mean in the Alanis Morissette way of all post-boomer Xers and Millennials, he said ironically.
I mean in the actually ironic way, “a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what was or might be expected; an outcome cruelly, humorously, or strangely at odds with assumptions or expectations”. See, there’s something merely campy or even, specifically, bitchy in the Xerlennial vocabulary that makes such put-downs funny and expected. Even required as social lubrications. You can hear the self-deprecating laughs when someone tries to enforce a rule. Or the snarky tone when a stranger turns to you on the bus and says something about a third party on the bus or exiting. It’s catty and unmanful. Entirely.
Of course it’s also present in the church and among the clergy – and not just the unmarried ones. It’s rampant at all levels of the lay and clerical structures. It’s something I’ve been paying attention to since my pastor said, “Wait a minute. You said ‘no’ to him and just stuck to it?” My reply was, “Yes, that’s my job.” “You,” he said. “Are a pastor’s dream.” Would that it was true because most folks I’ve met do not simply, “Let your yes be yes, and your no, no.” Which is to say that dealing with my vocational discernment just now is making me a little bonkers. Torn between loyalty and obedience, humility and justice, I struggle to make sense of what I’m learning in my therapy sessions – which were required by the vocational process – in the light of how many people in the church clearly should have therapy sessions. Why is one required to spend several thousands of dollars a year to learn to use tools that clearly no one in the Church wants to use? Simply saying yes or no and meaning it exactly – and sticking to it – seems to make one a nightmare and a stumbling block to many. God is in control.
But then the ninth wave passes and while it is chaotic and especially destructive, it washes over and there is a very long green field of green water with little bubbles. I remember the waters after the 9th wave being nearly glassy smooth before they were interrupted by the advance of the 1st wave of the next set.
One time, fishing, my grandfather and I rowed into the shore and needed to catch the waves to drive our tiny boat up on the beach. I had caught a very large kingfish, nearly as long as I was tall, and it was in the bottom fo our canoe. Grandpa pulled us in closer and wave after wave caught us… and then let us go. He sent me to the front of the canoe to lean forward – thus lifting the aft up a little to more-easily catch the wave. However it was Number 9! And suddenly we were tumbling in the surf: grandpa, myself, the canoe, all our tackle, and the fish. And the sand on the Gulf floor scraped my back as I fended off the canoe. Then we were on the shore, laughing. Somehow I had also caught and held on to the fish.
And then we had supper at home – the best fried fish ever.
Life happens. Then we eat in thanksgiving.
Orthoparadoxy 
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