Opening to Joy - Exercise

Opening to Joy - Exercise

Philip Amerson

How does joy and laughter contribute to our liberation? To our healing? To our knowing God?

You are invited to sit quietly for a moment and think of the last time you laughed. When was the

last chuckle? When was the last belly laugh, that brought tears to your eyes? When was the last

time you laughed with someone else?

Of course, laughter can be used to harm. Perhaps you have felt that someone laughed at you

recently and you still recall that pain. As with every good human gift, there can be distortion and

misuse. We can learn to ask, “where is the funny?” in any situation? We sometimes miss the

joy that passes. People of faith choose to employ laughter toward our wholeness.

Here is the exercise:

1) Read slowly through the quotes below.

2) Stop frequently and think ponder your favorites.

3) Write a prayer based on your favorite quotation.

4) Pray that prayer with a friend.

5) Speak that prayer tomorrow when you rise in the morning and when you lie down in the

evening.

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Quotations on faith and laughter:

Humans think, God Laughs. -- Jewish Proverb

Laughter is hope's last weapon. -- Harvey Cox

I've been here so long that when I got here, the Dead Sea wasn't even sick.

--Alabama basketball coach Wimp Sanderson after 32 years of coaching.

A sense of humor is the prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. --John Knowles

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. -Will Rogers

God's judgement has as much to do with humor of the word as it does with wrath.

-- William Stringfellow

Laughter is the best medicine in the world. -- Milton Berle

Rest and Laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.

--Ann LamontLaughter is the foundation of reconciliation. -- St. Francis de Sales

Humor reestablishes our awareness of the transcendence of God which we have the tendency

every hour of every day to forget. -- John Shea

Humor is a good way to activate good brain chemistry and actually protect ourselves with better

immune function – it is really good medicine. – Scott Bea (Cleveland Clinic)

God laughs out of an abundance of life, energy and love. I believe in a pleasurable, joyful,

laughing God. --Meister Eckhart, 14th Century mystic.

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

-- Victor Borge

Laugh with me!

Death is dead!

Fear is no more!

There is only life!

There is only laughter.

-- Words of a risen Lazarus in Eugene O'Neill's play “Lazarus Laughed.

”

The genuine joy of reconciliation with God, which is possible only as the fruit of genuine

repentance, is a joy which stands beyond laughter... The less we are able to laugh at ourselves

the more it becomes necessary and inevitable that others laugh at us. -- Reinhold Neibuhr

A good laugh heals a lot of hurts. – Madeleine L’Engle

As soap is to the body, so laughter is to the soul. — A Jewish Proverb

God is a comedian playing to an audience that is afraid to laugh. -- Voltaire

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger.

(I Corinthians 1:25)