Serendipitous laugher: Two experiences

By Allan Roy Andrews

             Experience No. 1:

Radio-television personality and humorist Art Linkletter died last week at 97.  Until about two years ago, when he suffered a mild stroke, Linkletter was still active on the philanthropic circuit.

             A few years before that, I heard Linkletter entertain at a small school fundraiser.  Linkletter, whose adoptive father was a Canadian preacher, told someone at that gathering that he “liked to help out small Christian schools.”

             In his comments that night, Linkletter told a joke that I have commandeered as a staple of fun found in growing older.  Here’s the joke:

“You know you’re getting old when you bend over to pick something off the floor and you say to yourself, ‘What else can I do while I’m down here?’”

I have learned experientially what Linkletter spoke of.  So I’ve used the joke a number of times, and it never fails to elicit hearty laughs.

Two of Linkletter’s books also keep me smiling:  Kids Say the Darndest Things, and Old Age is Not For Sissies.

Experience No. 2:

For the group’s edification, I recently read to my Bible discussion gathering a favorite poem by Billy Collins called “Flock.”

Here’s the brief poem:

It has been calculated that each copy of the
Gutenberg Bible . . .  required the skins of 300 sheep.
–from an article on printing.

I can see them squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed,

all of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike

it would be nearly impossible
to count them,
and there is no telling

which one will carry the news
that the Lord is a shepherd,
one of the few things they already know.

--from The Trouble with Poetry, by Billy Collins.  (Random House, 2005.)

After a moment of silent reflection, one member of our group put me—and several others—in stitches when he said,  “I’m having a Gary Larson moment,” referring to the prize-winning cartoonist of The Other Side who was noted for his surprising and often warped sense of humor.

“I can see a room full of monks, having just sheared a flock of sheep, taking up their calligraphy pens and writing verses of sacred scripture on the flanks of the shorn animals,” my friend continued.  “They probably had a difficult time keeping the pages in order!”

It was a wonderful moment, and if Billy Collins ever reads about our experience, I have a feeling he’ll be smiling broadly too.  And if Larson ever reads this report of my friend’s experience, he’ll probably be saying, “I wish I’d thought of that!”

             

'Faith at Ease Lite': Reforming this blog

By Allan Roy Andrews

             I attended a writer’s conference several months ago at which the emphasis leaned decidedly toward writing for electronic media, and the predominant and repeated axiom asserted:  online essays should avoid the curse of excessive scrolling; that is, keep those blogs to a maximum of 400 words.

             Readers, especially young readers, increasingly read on a computer (or on a pad device).  Newspapers have taken this pronouncement to heart.  At least one well-known newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, during the past year abandoned print and offers its news online (there is a vestige of print in a weekly news summary).  Other major publications—newspapers and magazines--are leaning in the same direction.  Writers take note:  shorter is better.

             I once claimed I’d discovered the secret of writing a successful newspaper column.  Keep it under 600 words, I argued.  In the era of electronic blogging, 600 words means long-windedness.

             The standard is 400 words.  In taking stock of my archive of postings for this blog, I estimate my average entry is between 900 and 1100 words (and I claim to be an editor).  I’ve fallen prey to the notion that longer essays encourage deeper reflection.

             I repent.  I am taking a new tack and aiming for postings of 400 words or less; I call it “Faith at Ease Lite,” and in a way that title captures the conviction.  Eugene Peterson, using Job’s comforters as illustrations in his book, Subversive Spirituality (Eerdmans, 1997), reminds us that much of our talk about Christian spirituality is “chatter.”  I confess a proneness to such chatter, and my archives are convicting evidence.

             Of course, the other lesson urged upon bloggers at the same writer’s conference: Write consistently and often. 

             So I stop here, in the neighborhood of 300 words, and hope to be back more often.

             Be at ease.