The Spirituality of Humor and Laughter: Why Good Things Happen To Bad People

By Fr Eugen Nkardzedze

A famous quote from Elizabeth Barrett Browning goes:

"Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries."

We may also say with her:

Earth's full of humor and laughter,

And every situation afire with meaning,

But only he who sees has reason to laugh;

The rest sit round and weep.

This book is meant to help its readers appreciate God's creation

by seeing the humor and the laughter in it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639612048

Book preview

cover.jpg

The Spirituality of Humor and Laughter

Why Good Things Happen To Bad People

Fr Eugen Nkardzedze

ISBN 978-1-63961-203-1 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63961-204-8 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Fr Eugen Nkardzedze

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Once Upon a Time

Story 1

Sidoné: The Saint with a Bad Name

Story 2

God the Matchmaker

Story 3

Don't Be Too Quick to Judge and Condemn

Story 4

Hakuna Matata—God is Waiting for You Somewhere

Story 5

The Plane Waited Thirty Minutes for Me!

Story 6

Go to Church and You'll Find Your Missing Items

Story 7

Indeed, Go Often to Church, You'll Find Solutions There

Story 8

Missing Bag Retrieved by Sheer Providence

Story 9

Friendship Brought a Dead Man Back to Life

Story 10

Buried Alive with Money—It Saved Her Life

Story 11

Fatima of Surprises—I Couldn't Believe It!

Story 12

Eugene-Noël: The Boy Who Had to Live

Story 13

Seventeen People Saved by a Four-Month-Old!

Story 14

Cor ad Cor Loquitur—Heart Speaks unto Heart

Story 15

Give Him High Five—No, I'm Four

Story 16

United by Suffering—Plane Accident in Port Harcourt

Story 17

Be Humble or Stumble—I Stumbled!

Story 18

Priest and Victim—the Sleep Bargain

Story 19

Eleven O'clock—Tick! Says the Clock!

Story 20

Obedience Is Better Than Sacrifice

Story 21

Obey or Perish

Story 22

The Hard Way, the Wise Way—the Trip to Yola

Story 23

Did Pa Jesse Discover Diamond or Gold?

Story 24

The Look from the Cow—the Look from Christ

Story 25

There Is Always Someone Hard to Please!

Story 26

Must It Hurt for It to Heal?

Story 27

God Also Loves a Grateful Receiver

Story 28

The Greatest Mission Can Be the Shortest in Distance

Story 29

Be Kind to People—You Never Know Who Holds the Keys!

Story 30

New Shirt, New Fashion—Watch Out!

Story 31

Grand Mboko: The Man in the Blouse

Story 32

Does Punishment in Hell Also Include Sex?

Story 33

Pa Nyanga Had a Solution for Hellfire

Story 34

Beware of Appearances—a Glass Door Can Trap You!

Story 35

Jesting Can Save People—Pa Jakov Used It

Story 36

Do Yams, Like Fruits, Grow on Trees?

Story 37

Somewhere, Do Not Ask for a Restroom If You Mean a Bathroom

Story 38

Holes on the Racetrack—Really?

Story 39

Something Long and Cold in the Bed

Story 40

Wisdom Makes Poverty Wealthier Than Riches

Story 41

Fruit of the Vine in the Land of the Palms

Story 42

Did Food Disappear Mysteriously from the Microwave?

Story 43

My Sunday Shock in Pennsylvania

Story 44

Children May Forgive, but They Never Forget

Story 45

The Pain from Our Hopes and Expectations

Five Nonpersonal Stories

Story 1

Julius Nyerere and the Fon of Gwarkang

Story 2

Faith Is Like Getting into Blondin's Wheelbarrow

Story 3

Diogenes and the King—Control Your Presence

Story 4

Cardinal Tumi's Sermon Relocated the Congregation

Story 5

Chaos in the Sanctuary—Two Altar Servers on Their Heels

The Spirituality of Humor and Laughter

Chapter 1

Humor, the Lens of Reality

Chapter 2

Jesus, the Storyteller

Chapter 3

The Catharsis of Humor and Laughter

Chapter 4

The Theology of Humor and Laughter

Conclusion

Day of Laughter

Conclusion: Day of Laughter

About the Author

Notes

In honor of our Blessed Mother, who taught us to treasure up all these things and ponder them in our hearts.

To John and Missy Krebs of Purcellville, Virginia, whose friendship has made many laugh.

Acknowledgments

God loves a cheerful giver as much as he loves a grateful receiver. Accordingly, I want to sincerely thank Bishop George Nkuo, bishop of Kumbo, for humbly ordering me to compile and publish stories. I am grateful to John and Missy Krebs of Purcellville and their great friends for the thorough execution of this assignment.

I am so beholden to my storytelling family and to the master storyteller and mentor, my beloved mother Felicia Wichin, from whose treasury I have drawn most of my stories and patterns, which Martin Jumbam was so kind to proofread and to confirm. I am specially indebted to Fr. Daniel A. O'Sullivan, Harry and Sheila Lackerdas, Andy and Flora Stay, Dr. David and Heather Cooper, Donald and Leeann Mulville, Lt. Col. John and Rosanne Wheatley, David and Lisa Doseff, George and Debra Bright, Mike and Mary Drapeau, Jeff and Sharon Darrey, Lee and Karen Nelson, Jim and Sandy Mueller, Maria Acosta, Sally Magpantay, Joel Santolla, and my brother priests of the Diocese of Kumbo for encouraging me in the art and culture of storytelling, sometimes by being my story. By serving among them, the Cameroon Catholic Communities in Maryland and in Virginia provided me with such a wonderful platform and occasion to develop and expand a treasury of stories into a spirituality of humor and laughter.

Fr. Eugen Nkardzedze

Introduction

The Spirituality of Humor and Laughter is a collection of stories with reflections that demonstrate how we can acquire hope and salvation by relating with God through humor and laughter. At a time when the world seems so shrouded by the darkness of evil and the sadness of sin, this book seeks to recognize and ignite the awareness that God became man and laughed with us.

Umberto Eco tells of the dispute in a medieval monastery over whether Jesus ever laughed at all. According to Eco's story in The Name of the Rose, a blind old monk, Jorge, who condemns laughter as evil and the devil's tool, causes the death of several monks so that a book of Aristotle on comedy does not come to light. Venantius, one of the eventual victims of the old, blind monk, points out that Aristotle had dedicated the second book of the poetics specifically to laughter. His argument goes that, if a philosopher of such greatness had devoted a whole book to laughter, then laughter must be important. But Jorge, the old, blind monk insists adamantly that, Many fathers had devoted entire books to sin, which is an important thing…But you know that Christ did not laugh. Accordingly, he has pages of the book on comedy poisoned before hiding it. And the consequences are disastrous, for monk after monk perish in the search for humor and laughter as they lick the poison from their fingers while flipping through the pages. Finally, when discovered and confronted with his hideous crime, the old blind monk consumes the poisonous pages of the book and sets the entire library on fire.

This old man shunned laughter in his life and attempted to stop others from laughing, the very hypocrisy that Jesus had decried: Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let in those who wish to enter (Mt. 23:13). Jesus preached the Good News so that we would laugh and spread the laughter of salvation to the ends of the world, for blessed indeed, are those that laugh; they have understood the riddle and meaning of life.

The stories in this collection are largely extracts from my missionary diary and around-the-hearth experiences from my family and the home in which I grew up. I have presented them with reflections that could serve as an aid to preachers of the Word, for many times when we read some texts from the scriptures, they can stand before us like walls, needing a story or a parable to break through and explain to the people. Understandably, Jesus never taught without using a parable (Mk. 4:34). As Pope Francis observes in Evangelii Gaudium: The homily is the touchstone for judging a pastor's closeness and ability to communicate to his people. We know that the faithful attach great importance to it and that both they and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them and the clergy from having to preach them! (No. 135).

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a compilation of stories and the second is a reflection on the Christian meaning of humor and laughter. Like the parables of Jesus, stories help us to grasp reality better, for, in the school of humor and laughter, we acquire wisdom like the Twenty Froggies of George Cooper that went to school and learned, not only how to say ker-chog! but also how to dodge a blow from the sticks that bad boys throw.

Fr. Eugen Nkardzedze

Catholic University of Cameroon, Bamenda

Part 1

Once Upon a Time

Story 1

Sidoné: The Saint with a Bad Name

Sidoné was the girl with a bad name in town, a typical Cinderella, a saint in a sinner's clothing, beautiful like the morning star. But her actions did not match her beauty. She was the type of woman a newly ordained young priest would not want to associate with, lest men like Simon the Pharisee started to raise eyebrows again as they did with Jesus, saying, If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner (Lk 7:39).

Born and bred a Catholic, the fortune of faith and morals did not seem to favor this young woman of good looks, and she eventually turned her back to the practice of the faith altogether and led a life that was as far away from home as it was from anything godly. But the grace of God working infinitely in us can really bring the furthest to