A couple of years ago artist Dua Lipa asked The Late Show host Stephen Colbert,
“So I think something that your viewers really connect with in your comedy and in your hosting skills, especially in the past few years…how open and honest and authentic you are about the role your faith plays in your life. And I was wondering, does your faith and your comedy ever overlap, and does one ever win out?”
Colbert responded, “I think ultimately, us being mortal, the faith will win out in the end. But I certainly hope when I get to heaven, Jesus has a sense of humor. … The laughter keeps you from having fear… and fear is the thing that keeps you turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness. … If there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens you are never defeated. You must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other….in the same way that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it.”
Colbert then quoted the first African American U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hayden’s Poem: Words in the Mourning Time, “We must not be frightened or cajoled into accepting evil as our deliverance from evil, we must keep struggling to maintain our humanity though monsters of abstraction threaten and police us.”
He then concluded, “So if there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens you are never defeated, you must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other.”
I’ll never forget the time when I went to see a dear friend who was in his last earthly days and one of the first things he said to me was, “What, no selfie? Yeah, you are kind of having a bad hair day!” And the repartee and laughter continued for over half hour when my dying friend said, “I really appreciate you coming to see me…I knew you would make me laugh.”
What Stephen Colbert so elegantly reminds us of is that joy can be a key ingredient for resiliency. It can be the antidote that give us the strength to not succumb to allowing suffering to consume or define us. It reminds us that not fear, but – as author Anne Lamont reminds – love, mercy and grace always bat last.
BP