Blessed Curmudgeons

Thank God for a little holy disobedience.

Jared Brock

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I’ve always had a place in my heart for disobedience.  In me, this place is situated right close to humor.  The two seem like twins.  The elder, disobedience, always beckons cometh the younger, humor.  This, I knew, meant that they “belonged’ together and, thank God, had taken up obvious and active residence in me. Hallelujah!  God, I reason, must love the sound of laughter.

I see the Grand Humorist in the Blessed Curmudgeon whose intelligence and wit spits out truths that tickle the fancy and root in the mind and soul so to take flight in the story you tell many years after making its first ticklish acquaintance.  Is not such longevity, a sign of enduring necessity?

You see the Curmudgeon’s words of truth have this mischievous dart-sharp tip that is dipped in an inoculant sure to penetrate and guaranteed to be remembered for its future timely use.

I think today, for example, of that Blessed George S. Kaufman, the talented playwright and humorist, and his precocious talent for truth readily told.  In particular, I recall how George’s mother announced to him that his aunt was to visit them and how this mother said to him, “It wouldn’t hurt to be nice to her, would it?” to which the young lad quickly and accurately replied, “That depends on your threshold of pain.”

Ah, the truth and spontaneity of it all!  The divine inspiration!  Where, one asks in envy, does one go each morning to brush his teeth and sharpen his tongue?

Seeing the world as it is, the bizarre and pretentious included, liberates us.  Not seeing the plentiful folly and farcical characters in all manner of organizations and pomposity only prolongs life in the gulag, and converts the journey to a grind, a trek not worth the effort.

To submit to excessive sobriety dulls the soul for want of laughter and the perspective that is present in you so life might blossom and joy might be daily and abundant.  Ah, the joys of disobedience and the humor that it brings!

Long live Saint Kaufman and his priceless ilk.

Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects.

Arnold H. Glasgow

Shalom.

Note – Share this at will.  Laughter and the wisdom of discernment of the ridiculous from the really ridiculous is a critical skill in the world we occupy. Laughter burns calories, you know, and irritates those who think they are leaders.