Was Jesus a Funny Guy?

Was Jesus a funny guy?

Would he have laughed at my pelican story?

Had he a sense of humor?

And if so, was it the self-deprecating kind

or the sort that skewered the pomposity of others?

You can’t tell me with those twelve disciples alone

with all those foibles

he didn’t have sufficient material to work with.

My guess is he compiled a joke book which the early Church

suppressed.

Did he do stand-up on the mount where he gave,

in his more serious side, the Sermon on the Beatitudes?

Humour should have been amongst them.

A person with a sense of humour is in contact with his humanity.

Even the donkey and hyenas know how to laugh.

The images of Buddha show him with a rollicking belly.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful but where are the images

of the jolly Jesus?

I bet if they met he would have shared a laugh with Buddha,

even exchanged jokes over a coffee or two.

I wait for the record to be rectified.

An ampler, more approachable sort of god.

A New Path to Enlightenment

Matt has been hired by a plumbing company to sell toilets.  His old man who works for the same company got him the job. What could Matt do but accept? He was good at nothing else.

Larry, a hotshot salesman goes out with him one day and lays it on the line: “I don’t tolerate laziness. It’s a form of treason,” he says.

Matt says it’s not his fault he’s not pulling in big figures. He has no sales experience and no one is willing to train him.

Larry shoots back, “Baptism by fire.”

But Matt whines and says it’s been over a year and he still has no idea what he’s doing.

Then Larry comes back with this: “Your job is to go out there every day and get your face kicked in. It’s the only path to Enlightenment.”

 

I don’t know if Larry and the Buddha were talking about the same kind of Enlightenment and if they were would the Buddha have agreed with Larry’s method?

Is Larry right? Or can’t you find Enlightenment through the toilet trade?

Are some trades/professions more inimical to Enlightenment than others? Can a politician find Enlightenment? would it help him in his job?

 

 

Before I Met Her

 

Before I met her

I always laughed at cartoons

alone,

was astonished before paintings & poems

privately;

 

but now I pass the magazine to her,

the one with the crazy cartoons.

Look at this, I say, & she does    and smiles

Span our faces & rumble our bellies

like little laughing Buddhas;

 

Trouble shared is trouble halved,

my mother used to say — but Joy

Works inversely:

It is doubled when spent with another.