Jokes put the ridiculous side of religion(s) into perspective

“I got this cool joke,” I said as a group of us Scrabblers sat and sipped our coffees after an exhausting round of Scrabble at the coffee shop on Fish Hoek beach some years back.

“A long time ago a Jewish couple had a baby and the father, Giuseppe, especially wanted to know what career his son would take. Giuseppe went to his rabbi who was quite a mystical bloke and asked how he could find out what his son would become one day. The rabbi scratched his beard, intrigued by this challenge. ‘What you should do,’ the rabbi thoughtfully said, ‘is when your son can crawl you should put on the first step of your staircase a bottle of wine on one side and a bag of money on the other side … ‘ ”

Daniel, one of our fellow Scrabblers, interrupted me with, “I hope this is not going to be offensive or irreverent”. He was usually an amicable chap with a keen sense of humour but now his eyes were blazing as he glared at me. He was Jewish. I hasten to add that this blog is not an attack on any religious group; I have had many Jewish friends who have been kind to me, including when I was down and out in my twenties, jobless and homeless (I was taken in by Jewish people at one stage … you get my drift. “Oh not at all, not at all,” I quickly replied to Daniel.

“Anyway,” I continued, “the rabbi said to Giuseppe, ‘if your son crawls towards the wine first and grabs that, that means he is going to be a successful merchant and quite possibly a liquor store owner and therefore a wealthy man. If he crawls over to the money bag and grabs that, then he is going to be a successful banker and also a wealthy, successful man. Either way you need not worry; he will be able to take care of you in your old age’. The rabbi looked at Giuseppe keenly, guessing the real reason and worry for the man’s concerns about what career his son would take. Giuseppe nodded, impressed by his rabbi’s wisdom. ‘But what if he doesn’t grab either the wine or the money bag?’ ‘Pray he doesn’t,’ the rabbi solemnly replied, ‘but don’t let that bother you. Come back to me with whatever happens and we will take it from there.’

“When the baby could crawl Giuseppe decided to try out the experiment. On one side of the first step of the staircase he placed a bottle of wine. On the other side he placed a bag of money. The mother put their little son on the floor a few feet away from the two articles. The lad, an exuberant boy who could crawl fast, eyed the wine and money bag and scooted across the lounge floor.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Daniel listening intently to the joke, clearly curious, but concerned about the punch line.

“The baby grabbed both the money bag and the bottle of wine at the same time and tried to pick both up most enthusiastically. Giuseppe was astonished by this turn of events and went and told his rabbi. The rabbi slapped his own head and cried, ‘Oy vay, the boy is going to be a Catholic priest!’ ” “And,” I added for Daniel’s benefit who was now grinning and chuckling, “I heard this joke from a Catholic priest whilst he stood at the altar speaking to his congregation during his sermon one Sunday morning. All the parishioners laughed.”

Daniel smiled at me, nodding. In a sense the joke was a profound lesson for both of us; nobody was offended.

I am not a Catholic. But I have learned a lot from them and their literature, including the teachings of Meister Eckhart and contemporary writers like Henri Nouwen and most definitely that wonderful monk who was once an abbot, Father Thomas Keating. Such wise fruit and healing teaching has to come from that profound, ineffable source all spiritual people of all persuasions revere.

At one stage I was a big ecumenicist and loved visiting different churches. I slowly “evolved” into a universalist and attended Catholic and Buddhist retreats and sometimes the two faiths combined. I miss that in China.

The essence of many spiritual traditions is to rid or purge human beings of what is sometimes called “the false ego”, that superficial structure of graspings and longings that identifies too seriously with … oh, stuff. Stuff like identity, prestige, money, how intelligent I am, my qualifications, anxiety about the future and guilt about the past. The absolute infallible rightness of “my” religion. Through this process we learn to be present to what is instead of resisting or denying it and thus feeding a false self that does not accept things as they are. In other words a false self that cannot take jokes about what it clings to so dearly, missing out on all that life has to offer. I love that magic Dido song with the constant refrain, “Cos nothing I have is truly mine”. There is a wonderful reverence in that song.

Jokes teach us to not take our egos, our false selves, our attachments, so seriously.

As Eckhart Tolle says in that wonderful book, The Power of Now: “If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call it John, write out a birth certificate, tell him about his family history, and two minutes later he gets eaten by another fish — that’s tragic. But it’s only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none. You got hold of a fraction of a dynamic process, a molecular dance, and made a separate entity out of it.”