If we did not laugh at the fools that we are, we would weep at the knaves we are. (Jung)
Last night I watched a 1997 Norman Lear retrospective celebrating 200 episodes of the iconic All in the Family, and I was moved to laughter and tears as I watched and remembered. I went to bed, thinking how in many respects, very little had changed in the last 44 years.
On December 14, 2017, I wrote a post in these pages entitled Hallelujah Anyway. Much of it is also just as relevant today as it was six years ago, even though our country and the world has been around the block a time or two. Some of that post is copied below:
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In a recent interview in Salon, Anne Lamott, author of Hallelujah Anyway, was asked about our last election:
It feels like a lot of things have come into more dramatic relief since the election, and that there’s a particular political vindictiveness now. What do you think about the need for mercy in politics and culture now? I think that things did change on the evening of November 8 . . . Trump is president, and the world is scary, and we’re an extremely vulnerable species. But you know what? Hallelujah anyway. We’re here. I love my people. I love my animals. It’s a beautiful day outside here today . . . it’s like having a miracle — a miracle is tough and messy and time-consuming . . There’s a level of hatred and insanity in our country now, and some days you wake up and feel like there’s a sniper in the trees. But we still stick together; we lurch ever onward.
Isn’t that phrase Hallelujah Anyway enormously relieving? — like a long sigh — With “hatred and insanity” and a degree of political polarization in our country that is alarming in its potential to rip us apart as a society, that reassurance and encouragement to shift our thinking even a fraction is so welcome. And it somehow draws us back to a more centered, balanced place, and gives us a sense of proportion, a bit of a different perspective.
Miracles are tough and messy and time-consuming, Lamott says. Implicit in the idea of chaos is disorder, confusion, unpredictability. Sounds like chaos and miracles, those “highly improbable or extraordinary events, developments, or accomplishments that bring very welcome consequences,” are kissing cousins.
How would our lives (and maybe even our political viewpoints!) be different if we believed that out of the messy, chaotic times in our lives would come new life, fresh creativity, new beginnings? And who wouldn’t want that??
And you know what? It’s mighty hard to say Hallelujah Anyway without smiling, and sometimes even laughing.
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So, on this day, six years later, here’s to chaos and miracles and Norman Lear, and the healing tenderness of being able to laugh at ourselves.
