Once in a car on the way home from a college party one of the men in the car, not the driver, began to sing a very, uh well, shall I say unsober version of a song called Feelings.
I don't remember the song. I just remember that we all were laughing so hard the driver had to pull over in laughter. It was wonderful. And then as we thought about the fact that we were laughing heartly at his 'feelings' we paused and then he started singing again and we started laughing again.
Laughing that deep kind of belly laugh that comes all to rarely now it seems. There are so many things in the world that we acknowledge as being part of our life that it is difficult for us to laugh without feeling guilty. But laughter is a gift and it is something that we that we are required to do for health. Perhaps no more importantly required to do whne we are unwell and seeking health. Amazing really... that the human can both laugh and cry sometimes simultaneously.
We laugh until we cry -- and sometimes cry until we laugh. But most of all we want to know the release of joy into the world. Into the world that brings us most to tears. We sing and we pray and we laugh.
Sometimes we laugh when we pray. Those moments in church where we are to be the most composed and something tickles us and we just almost pop trying not to laugh. There is nothing sweeter than that feeling really. That feeling of onrushing joy that comes and overtakes us no matter our desire to hold on.. phhhphhh sometimes it bursts out and we can then do nothing at all.
There are times too when we feel like laughing when we feel like crying. Or crying into a laugher. Because the honest holding of the truth in laughter over pain is real and measurable.
My father said something at his father's wake that was just funny and I felt so badly about laughing I began to cry. My aunt thought I was just so very moved. The good thing was that I didn't have to explain. My Daddy had just said something funny. I think it tickled him. He would often in his later years laugh and cry at the same time. So seemingly overcome with laughter that he could do nothing else but cry as well as laugh. What a delight to know that this would come to us... as friends often did on Sunday afternoons to play and skate and eat and then enjoy a play their son and i had put together...on skates...
Friends in Christ, we are indeed held in loving hands. Let us get good rest, let us pray for all those whom we have named knowing you know our hearts and the words we dare not utter but which you hear as you are always listening to our hearts.
God aibdes. And in this we will place all our prayer and all our joy and all the reality of what is and the deeepest longing in our hearts.
May God abide with you. Let's count to the dday when we can be the most successful.
God abide with you.
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2006
