There’s a beautiful, illustrated children’s book called The Clown of God by Tomie dePaola.  The final image is of a young Jesus sitting in Mary’s lap holding a ball with a smile on his face.  It’s a wonderful take on a common image in medieval art:  Jesus is often depicted holding an orb that represents the whole world and how he has heavenly rulership and authority over all (“thy kingdom come”).  But to depict that in a playful way is brilliant; to imagine something differently from how it is often construed, and yet still keep the central meaning.  Like that children’s song, “He’s got the whole world in his hands!”  After all, Jesus did say we need to learn from children (Mark 10:13-16).  

A stereotype of “church” is that it is really serious, boring, depressing, full of dirge-y organ music.  And that Christians are always serious and judge-y, a bunch of goody-two-shoes, unable to laugh at ourselves.  Which is why I had A LOT of FUN being Taylor Swift last Sunday.  Yes, it was embarrassing, and I couldn’t keep a straight face, but still…  You should be able to have fun with your faith!  Yes, there are a lot of serious things in the world, and church has to address them, provide words and ideas to help make sense of them, and call us to thoughtful action.  But it is VERY easy to take ourselves and our agendas too seriously.  There’s not a lot of laughter in the news and from our leaders… and then no one has “fun.”  

 

I learned a truism in my first call that you can gauge the anxiety in a system by how serious the people are.  The “antidote” is to introduce “playfulness,” to break our minds out of narrow reactive responses and be able to be “non-anxious.”  FAITH does that!!  The ability to laugh fosters creativity, and creativity helps broaden the range of how we respond to (the anxiety) of our circumstances which we can’t often change anyway.  

So here’s to having FUN!  And to our FAITH that reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously.  To be able to play, like a child.  

Peace, Pr. Christian