peekaboo

Epiphany 2 – Year B

peekaboo
I see you

"Even before they respond to a tickle, most babies will laugh at peekaboo. It's their first "joke." They are reacting to a sequence of events that begins with the presence of a familiar, comforting face. Then, suddenly, the face disappears, and you can read in the baby's expression momentary puzzlement and alarm. When the face suddenly reappears, everything is orderly in the baby's world again. Anxiety is banished, and the baby reacts with her very first laugh.

"At its heart, laughter is a tool to triumph over fear. As we grow older, our senses of humor become more demanding and refined, but that basic, hard-wired reflex remains. We need it, because life is scary. Nature is heartless, people can be cruel, and death and suffering are inevitable and arbitrary. We learn to tame our terror by laughing at the absurdity of it all." [from The Peekaboo Paradox, about the Great Zucchini]

and so
Nathanael
anxious
laughed
and Jesus
laughed
and
greater laughter
rolls on the floor
imagining Jesus
as ladder
and
still greater
joy peeks
out of me
and you
believers
in laughter
through laughter
to laughter

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Nathanael – patron saint of guileless paradox (not to mention tanners and those with neurological diseases).

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"Can anything good come from . . . ." when responded to with hope can turn into a bonus poem, Are We Not of Interest to Each Other, by Elizabeth Alexander, chosen by President-elect Obama to read one of her poems at the inauguration.