The Tale of Grace and the Sandwich

There I was, innocently sitting in front of the biggest, fattest, bad-assest sandwich I'd seen in a long time: a triple-decker of lettuce, bacon and tomato. Madness. It was all Terribly Exciting considering that I'd spent about 20 minutes indecisively scanning through the menu for a sign that would help me decide which item to pick [such as an arrow, or a little speech bubble with the words: "Grace, pick me!"] [if you're wondering, that Sign from Heaven never appeared]. It was also all Terribly Daunting considering that I suddenly had a feeling that the width of the sandwich wouldn't fit into my mouth.

However, I've never been one to shirk away from challenges, so I courageously picked up my knife and fork and started hacking, I mean, slicing away at the stacker. It took me only a few seconds to realize that I was getting nowhere. The various layers of my sandwich were all in disarray, the lettuce escaping from the sides, and on my fork, only a thin little piece of bread and bacon had been unable to avoid capture. I looked sadly at my fork, glared at the lettuce, and sighed at the huge sandwich still to be finished. This Would Not Do.

But was I Defeated? No. God had in His wisdom had created us with our own sets of hands and knives. Picking up the sandwich with my hands (which wasn't as easy as typing out this sentence was), I took a huge bite - almost to gag it out. In my hunger, I'd overeagerly miscalculated the angle at which I'd shoved the sandwich into my mouth, and its triangular point had brutely shoved its way to the back of my throat, tickling what should never be tickled. Hurridly, I grabbed my serviette, so that my companion wouldn't be faced with the sight of the previous two seconds going through a rapid rewind. It would be this moment, that the waiter would come past to ask: "Is everything okay?"

"No, I'm busy choking to death behind this serviette while my friend's dying of laughter next to me" I would've said if I hadn't had a mouthful of BLT in my mouth. Instead, I waved my serviette weakly at him, and gave him a thumbs up. Luckily, he moved on to trap his next victim mid-chew, allowing me to desperately do some Room Control in my mouth.

Fortunately, by the age of 22, I'd had much practice in the practice of gross motor movements, even ones as complicated as the ones I was going to have to engage in to ensure that the contents of my mouth weren't about to become familiar to the rest of the restaurant. After some intense chewing and eye rolling and vigorous movements, I'd managed to find enough space for everything comfortably. Bit by bit, bite by bite, and then: gone. Encouraged by my success, I looked again at my sandwich, by this time looking less and less like a indefatigable mountain, and more like a overarrogant molehill. "I can do this!", I thought. And by the end of the evening, only the plate lived to tell the tale: a sad little site of crumbs, lettuce sheds, and the occasional smear of sauce.

Moral of the story:
1) Man does not live on bread alone, but I bet you it'd be easier to eat politely if he did.
2) Persevere, for the goal is worthy.
3) Only eat out with those who are good friends, or those who are on their way to becoming so.
4) There's no reason to act like a Philistine when eating out, but neither is there no need to be a Pharisee.

Laugh out loud... or not? Thought 6

Oh wow, I thought I'd just written the last thought about this, but I just found the most amazing words from C.S. Lewis.

In his book The Weight of Glory, he writes:

There are no ordinary people... It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind... which exists between people who have from the onset taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

Now THAT's food for thought.

Laugh out loud... or not? Thought 5

The last thought is left to a secular speaker I recently had the privilege of listening to, who spoke on how to give presentations. This speaker was amazing, someone who was able to keep a group of over-tired, partied-out group of students gripped to her every word through her amazing sense of humour.

"When giving presentations", she said, "use humour and not jokes". And what's the difference?

Jokes have someone or a group of people as the target point, humour is contextual and witty. Jokes alienate, humour need not.

Much to think about, eh.

Laugh out loud... or not? Thought 3

And then someone emailed me and said the following about joking: "I also think wisdom is needed, for example if you are wise enough to see that a person will not be badly affected by a "loser" joke and if it is said in a loving spirit, I think it's okay."

But I also had some thoughts on that, as I promptly emailed back. (Of course I had thoughts! This is my blog!)

1) How can a "loser" joke be said in a "loving spirit"? That seems like a paradox?

2) Why do we use loser jokes anyway?

3) And I also wonder about how we can know for sure if the person won't be badly affected. I would say I'm a pretty strong person, and it's pretty okay to joke around with me about anything. But God's recently been using people to make jokes at my expense at times when I've been at a emotional weak point to show me what it's probably like for people who aren't as emotionally strong. And it kinda sucks. And i know that the various people joking with me haven't meant to hurt me. but I'm not going to wear a huge sign around my neck that says: "I'm having a crappy day, don't make jokes at my expense!" How can we ever know for sure that we aren't hitting a sore point with other people's insecurities?

Laugh out loud... or not? Thought 2

Now why I'm titling these posts 'Thought's and not 'Parts', is because I've just been having random thoughts about this, not really parts that build up to a point.

How boring that sentence was.

Anyway.

To move on.

And swiftly.

Here's another thought from my friend DJ B:

It's not that every word that we speak must build each other up, I think it's the attitude that we speak to people in. Like when I ask a friend to pass the tomato sauce when I'm chowing down on a good steak. That doesn't necessarily build him up. But if I'm all rude about it and say like, " yo, you over there, yeah, give me that All Gold now.." then its a problem. I think its the same with our joking.

So basically, he's saying we need to really think through what our attitudes are behind joking in a specific way. Are we really joking because it's meant to be funny, or is it just to make ourselves look better?

Laugh out loud... or not? Thought 1

Q: Why does the bride wear white on her wedding day?
A: So that she can match all the other kitchen appliances.

Laughing is fun, tension-relieving, endorphin-releasing, friendship-building, enjoyable, a gracious gift from God. But at the same time, like all good things in this fallen world, it can also be used so harmfully.

Luckily, God's been teaching me a lot about the way I use my humour over the past year. I'm one of those who appear not to take that much seriously as I'm forever giggling at something or seeing the ridiculous side of something. However, I've been more and more rebuked about how often i use mean humour to get laughs. You all know what I mean: we call it 'ripping off' and under the disguise of it all being 'in good fun', we use words to break others down.

However, why do we distinguish between the way we speak when we joke from the way we usually talk about stuff. What makes it acceptable that we joke about coarse things or that we joke ungraciously when God commands us to be pure and gracious in all things? When we wouldn't even think about being ungracious or impure when we're being serious? I don't think this means the end to all joking. I think this means we must learn to use joking in a way that DOES build up and that perhaps will be much harder work cause it'll need to be more creative and different from the way the world usually works..

Lalalalalalala, it's only one more hour before I have to be awake :(

On that note, I was quite amused when I walked past some Yoga society posters the other day, and realized that I'd be less sceptical of their promise to lead me to Enlightenment, if they hadn't spelt it 'Enligtenment'. I haven't heard of that place before, but I'm not quite sure if I want to go there!

Hahahahahahahahaha. Hohohohohohohoho. Hehehehehehhe. Umph.

I've been thinking a lot about grace (seethis post on a recent thought on grace) and inevitably that has led me to consider areas in which I could use a little bit more grace.

In particular, God's been teaching me a lot about the way I use my humour. More specifically, the way I use mean humour to get laughs. You know what I mean: we call it 'ripping off' and under the guise of 'good fun', we use words to break others down.

But on Friday, it suddenly struck me: Why do we distinguish between the way we joke and the way we usually talk about stuff? What makes it acceptable that we joke about coarse things or that we joke ungraciously when God commands us to be pure and gracious in all things? What makes it acceptable when we wouldn't even think about being ungracious or impure when we're 'serious'? I don't think this means the end to all joking. I think this means we must learn to use joking in a way that DOES build up or that does not rely on breaking others down.

I've heard from some people that it could be okay to only use 'ripping off' jokes on those people that we know are strong enough to deal with them. However, God's also been using people to make those jokes at my expense recently when I haven't been all that emotionally strong. And even though I was aware these jokes were made in jest, they really sucked. So again, why do we justify these jokes?

The one explanation I can think of is that this is the vocabulary of humour for the majority of the people we're surrounded with, and we've unthinkingly let the world's standards determine our own standards. Another thing is that we are deeply self-centered (or insecure) and we let our egos control our jokes - so we make jokes in a way that imply that we're better than others. One last factor I've been thinking about is that it's so much harder having to be creative with your humour and practising humour that won't offend or hurt. But let's do it! Let's be different and love Jesus and fellow brothers and sisters with our humour!

Here are Awesome Joe-some's thoughts on this: "But here's another thought, which we can ask ourselves once we've sorted out the bad joking - the question still stands, of what the main thing about us is:
[W]e should seriously consider whether there is more to us than just our joking - Are you most known for that, or for being a solid, sound Christian brother/sister who is fun?"