A Laughing Room
“Some things are far too important to be taken seriously.”
-Oscar Wilde
Every week you open these emails and read whatever nonsense has been put upon the digital page. Perhaps you started reading A Bright DrewTopian future in 2020, when those early posts were monstrous 3000-word essays attempting to give a definitive word to the complex issues of the day (they even had references at the end!)
Back then I was like a person preaching for the first time: I tried to say everything at once not knowing I’d have say something every week for years. But as time went on, the blog gradually settled on two broad topics – comedy and religion. And perhaps these seemingly different topics are actually just the same thing.
Photo by Magda Ehlers
My daughter, who is now one and a half, walks around the house pointing at objects and asking, “Wats dis?”
So, I try to explain it to her, “These are boots, they go on your feet. This is a hat, it goes on your head. This is a bed, it’s where you sleep.” She shows her understanding by muttering “Oh.”
One day she pointed at the carbon monoxide detector, so I told her what that was too. “That’s a carbon monoxide detector, carbon monoxide alarms are the most effective way to detect carbon monoxide in the air and alert you to the presence of dangerous gas. Carbon monoxide consists of one part oxygen and one part carbon and is produced by partially burned carbon fuel sources like natural gas, coal, petrol, wood and propane.[1]”
To which she replied, “Oh…”
You might think religion isn’t comedy, but really it is. Our rituals, our worship, our systematic theologies are like a toddler pointing at the carbon monoxide detector asking “Wats dis?” The universe is mystery and God is beyond our ability to define and comprehend. Surely, we speak about things of which we don’t understand, things too wonderful for us to know [2]. Rather than trying to figure it out, we’d be better off simply trusting that our heavenly parent loves us and is good. Hence, “to enter the kingdom of God you must become like a child [3].” Any serious attempt to define ‘wat dis is’, is laughable and cute. It’s comedically ripe.
And you might think that comedy isn’t religion. That to worship God with all thy heart and soul requires a certain familiar medium like singing or chanting. You’ve got to have wooden benches, burning candles, and dusty old buildings. Or maybe you’re more modern than that, to you worship only requires a guitar and some dim lighting, with accompanying vocals from goateed pastors named ‘Mark’ or ‘Brad’.
But the comedically inclined among us are worshippers as well. The verses are outrageous ideas, the chorus is chuckles and tears. Laughter is the ultimate sign of awe and wonder, a form of worship straight from the bosom of God.
King David wrote an entire book of Psalms about people who betrayed him, problems that gnawed at him, and issues that confused him. In the same way, we laugh at that which scares and pains us. We mock death, loneliness, and being misunderstood. We joke about our insecurities and make light of our rage and sadness, lest they crush us under their weight.
Any sense of our own self-importance is crying out for laughter. It reminds me of a story from Maya Angelou and Frederick Beuchner in his book The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life[4]
“…[Maya] recalled for everyone the really marvelous high church Episcopal service that took place before our lectures began – there was incense and there was chanting and there were vestments – and Maya said, “I just looked at that service, and you Episcopalians do it so well. Those gorgeous vestments you wear and those candles and the singing. And there was that man who came in holding that great silver cross with this look of great serenity on his face. And I thought to myself, what you should have right off the vestry is a laughter room. You parade around with all these wonderful things, and every once in a while you go in there and HA HA HA! and then you come out of the laughter room and you pick up the cross and keep going.”
The wonderful truth of that, of course, is we act in these religious traditions and rituals as if we know what we’re doing. None of us knows. We all think a church service is when you sign this here, then you pray that there, and you read this here, and you stand here and you stand there, as if this is the appropriate, natural way to worship him who is beyond our wildest dreams, whose glory we can in no sense capture in any kind of ecclesiastical box. What marvelous advice Maya gave us, that we might well do in our own rituals, our own pieties, our own way of doing things – to stop for a moment and just HA HA HA! And God very likely is doing the same thing.
Perhaps Ms. Angelou was being prophetic, having no clue that her words would be carried out by a white pastor in Michigan with absurdist tendencies. Or maybe she was joking and is trolling me from beyond the grave, cracking up that someone actually took the bait.
But I put these DrewTopian Patreon monies that a handful of you have given me over the years and built what she was talking about in the basement of our church. I did it with fear and trepidation, not knowing if religion and comedy are going to mix like oil and water. Surely you can see that the two are actually one, or am explaining a carbon monoxide detector to the baby?
If you’re around on the 29th come and see for yourself.
Live Comedy @ the Renaissance Room
Wednesday March 29th, 730pm
basement of Renaissance Vineyard Church
1841 Pinecrest Drive, Ferndale, MI
730pm-9pm
rsvp: drewfralick@gmail.com or message me
REFERENCES
[1] cadentgas.com “Positioning and maintaining your carbon monoxide alarm”
[2] Job 42:3
[3] Matthew 18:3
[4] Beuchner, Fredeick The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Life