A Good Prayer Ends in Laughter
Ha-Ha-men!
The sacred syllable AUM is said to be made up of four elements: aaah—uuuh—mmmm: representing birth, life, death, and these three enclosed by the fourth element: the creative silence out of and back into which it unceasingly comes and goes.
It is of more than a little interest that that the first element of AUM is “ah” and that this “ah” sound is vocalized in other sacred words such as Abba, alleluia, amen, maranatha.
I will put forward a proposal that the “ah” sound in the Aha-ha-ha! of laughter is the most robust, the most elevating, the most vibratorily efficacious form of this sound. For those who have two good ears to hearken, it is a sound that pulsates and thrills in the veins and resonates roundabout and throughout the entire living system.
And, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere more than once, the great Irish writer James Joyce suggested that instead of in vino veritas (in wine there is truth) a better alternative would be in risu veritas (in laughter there is truth).
Is this the end of the matter? Hardly.
The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr says: Laughter is the beginning of prayer.
Aha-ha-ha . . . Ha-Ha-men!
HyC