Dear Reader,
In this serious and urgent time of prayers for the world, offering sacrifices, stringing novenas together in multiples of 9, and consecrating everyone and everything to Our Lady, do you need a little levity? Could you use a laugh, to let off some steam?
When I saw this meme, I laughed out loud.
Sometimes we need a laugh before getting back to serious business.
In working with children, I find their honesty and frankness humorous. Books they find funny, I too find a feather for my funny bone. An entertaining part of my job as a writer for children is reading picture books to them and guffawing with them.
In Doreen Cronin’s book, Click, Clack, Moo Cows that Type, cows have a typewriter.
Cows type a demand letter to Farmer Brown for electronic blankets because the barn is cold.
When Farmer Brown doesn’t comply, cows go on strike – no blankets, no milk. When Farmer Brown acquiesces, the cows engage the hens, and demand…
To resolve the Farmer’s and animals’ differences, all agree to engage a neutral party, duck, but duck has plans of his own. Enjoy the read aloud … Cows That Type
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There's theology to laughter.
A joyful heart is the health of the body, but a depressed spirit dries up the bones
Proverbs 17:22
Frederick Buechner in Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, on the genesis of Israel:
The place to start is with a woman laughing. She is an old woman, and after a lifetime in the desert, her face is cracked and rutted like a six-month drought. She hunches her shoulders around her eyes and starts to shake. She squinnies her eyes shut, and her laughter is all wheeze and tears running down as she rocks back and forth in her kitchen chair. She is laughing because she is pushing 91 hard and has just been told she is going to have a baby . . .
The old woman’s name is Sarah, of course, and her old man’s name is Abraham and they are laughing at the idea of a baby being born in the geriatric ward and Medicare’s picking up the tab . . .
Maybe the most interesting part of it all is that far from getting angry at them for laughing, God told them that when the baby was born he wanted them to name him Isaac, which in Hebrew means laughter. So you can say that God not only tolerated their laughter, but blessed it and in a sense joined in it himself.