What's humorous?

Do you know what you get when you cross a termite and a mantis? A bug that prays before it eats your house.

One of the retired ministers in residence here told that joke before saying grace over our meal yesterday.

As jokes go, it’s not bad. It’s not good either, but it’s not bad.

His contention is that we need humor, that laughter is good for us. And I certainly agree with that.

And I laugh – or groan with faint humor – at most of his jokes. But I’m also just a little uncomfortable.

I never know what he is going to say. Sometimes when he can’t find a G rated joke, he strays over into whatever the rating would be for sexually suggestive language.

I know God laughs. He must or we wouldn’t know how to. I don’t know what He laughs at or about. I wonder if He doesn’t often find us laughable in gentle, loving ways, as a father or mother might with a loved child.

And He surely knows all about sex. He may understand our infatuation with it and our use of sexually suggestive language to produce laughter. But not when it demeans anyone.

Besides, I can’t help feeling the timing is a bit off. To me “saying grace” is praying; it’s offering thanks to the Giver of all we have and that’s serious business.

Prayer does not have to prim and proper. Honest and real are much better than that. But sexually suggestive?

And when grace is being said over a public meal, the “audience” is kind of trapped into listening.

I did ask him to draw a line he wouldn’t cross in telling jokes before saying the blessing. He didn’t answer. Just walked away.

Most people don’t seem to mind.

I think I will suggest we set aside time for a “humor hour,” a time for jokes and laughter. And everyone who wants to tell jokes can come and do so. And if anyone cracks a joke someone else doesn’t like, well, that person can just get up and go home.

I haven’t done that yet in the dining room. I stay and finish eating.

And come here to complain.

Dear Lord, help me not to take offense – even if it is intended, and I don’t think it is. My sense of humor may be rusty. Help me, instead, to say a blessing over him.