Tag Archives: laughter

The Peace of a January Fool

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Are we willing to count the world well lost for Peace? Are we willing to embrace the absurd notion that society can be based in love and tolerance? People say it’s a foolish and simplistic notion that we can live in Peace. OK. It’s not that I’m unwilling to address the complex issues, but I am unwilling to allow the complexity to overwhelm the possibilities of Peace. Because Peace is what we are called to, or so I believe.

Far more is possible than we know. Let’s risk it. Joy is more present than we allow. Let’s live it. Let us be fools for Peace, risking being thought absurd to bring about change on earth, for the earth and all its peoples. As a notion, it’s perhaps a little grandiose… but it’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, and the beginning of a President and Vice President’s next four years. Whether you voted for them or not, I would hope you would join me in wishing them well, and in wishing that they dedicate themselves to their country’s well-being and a Peaceful, prosperous world. May that be so for all the world’s leaders.

My friend Blair Monie used this in his sermon yesterday morning. Here we are: more fools for Peace: “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them, I’m going that way. Because I heard the voice saying: do something for others.” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Peace of Spectacular Failure

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Failure is how we learn things. It’s how we grow. If we’re not willing to experiment, we never stretch our minds and our resources. Failure keeps us humble and it keeps us laughing. And goodness knows we need to be laughing. Whatever else I know about Peace, it’s not all earnestness. There’s a great deal of shared laughter.

We need to stretch our abilities. We need to dream big. This means we might fail in a rather spectacular way. Ok. So, laugh, reconsider, try again. Practice failing at things that don’t matter so that you’re used to missing the mark. But don’t practice by pulling the target so close that you can’t help but hit it. Push it back. Imagine differently, more generously.

If you take your work and your life seriously, you’re going to keep experimenting. It may seem counter-intuitive that taking your life seriously also means being willing to laugh uproariously at your failures… and then to learn from them.

So, my dears, Dream. Try. Win a little(or a lot). Fail a little(or a lot). Laugh. Reconsider. Try again. That way lies Peace. (and a lot of laughter, shared and otherwise!)