The world is so full of gloomy people who take themselves too serriously.  Happy Catholic has a link to a blog post on the Ironic Catholic that makes me both smile and think.

Too often Catholics, Christians, people with any moral standards are seen a humorless, sticks-in-the-mud that have no pleasure in anything other than pointing fingers at other people and tutting in between their bouts of hand-ringing and tsking.  No… not at all.  Catholics, Christians and people with high moral standards can be the funniest and most legitimately fun people to be around.  We laugh, we love and we do so in a way that isn’t dependant on putting others down to make the point.

When I was in college there was a bit of burhaha about humor, jokes and “laughter”.  Some ignoramus with a PhD had suppose that all humor, yes all, was at the expense of someone else.  That all laughter was in essence a put-down.  This always seemed so very wrong to me… after all babies laugh at silly things and babies make people laugh.  No put down, no laughing at other’s expense just joy.  And the other half of this quite simply… we laugh at each other.  It is natural.  It is like the quote from Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice : ?For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”.  We all have our turn.  So laugh at me when I fall, but offer me a hand up and do not take offense when I laugh at you on occasion… for I am really only laughing at your humanity in which I share. 

I have to share yet another funny thing I read via the anchoress.     Parents explain the Birds and the Bees to their son.  I haven’t laughed so hard in a long long time.