I forget the details of the study, but researchers were interested in discovering what they called the funniest joke in the world. Toward this end they collected humor from around the globe, translated it into the languages and perceptual standards of something like sixty countries, and then took the jokes on the road, and delivered them to people of all nationalities, races, and cultures. The one joke that everyone from those several score of countries understood and at which they laughed, was:

A woman was sitting in an emergency call center, when a 911 call came in. On the line was a distraught young man, crying into his cell phone, “Oh, my God…Oh, my God…please help me.”

“That’s what I’m here for…where are you and what has happened.”

“I’m up on the east side of Bear Mountain…I was hunting with my buddy, and we decided that he would go see if he could push the deer up to me…I heard something coming toward me, and I thought it was a big buck, so I fired…but it wasn’t a buck, and I think I killed my friend.”

“Listen to me…it’s going to be okay. Do you understand?

“Yes,” the young man sobbed.

“Okay…good. You have to trust me here. Now the first thing we need to do is to make sure that your friend is in fact dead. Can you do that?”

“Yes…I think so.”

The operator listened to the sound of rustling leaves, as the young man walked toward his friend. There was silence, and then the loud “Kerblam” of a rifle shot. The young man came back on the phone and asked, “now what?”

I don’t remember what proportion of men and women were told this joke, but by the results, my guess would be, more men than women found this to be hilarious. I like how well it describes human nature, both in terms of the behavior of the operator and the young man. But the context and scenario is also a bit harsh, in that the joke requires that one suspend one’s empathy and sympathy for the people involved. How many men, I wonder, instead of looking inward with a vulnerability that honors just how confusing and fragile life is, which causes them to laugh at themselves and their foibles, chose to see the kid as a “dumb fuck” - someone to whom they couldn’t relate - a “them.” This is the thing about humor and irony in particular - it allows a person to get closer to the antecedents of their response, opening a way for conversation.

With this website, I want to invite people to engage those moments of our shared humanity, where absurdity and the desperate need to get something right become so entwined that the humility of prayer is the only recourse. I spent my life embracing the wounded and distraught, each of us bleeding into each other’s wounds; I don’t want to do that anymore. Nor do I wish to bear silent witness as a dispassionate observer, bear raucous witness as a confrontative helpmate, or bear contemplative witness as a long-view-taking chronicler. I want to live my life, and invite others to share in it, and together create a common history. And in the process learn to allow our brains to make the distinctions and divisions they need in order to make sense of the world, while at the same time committing to the choosing of, and acting with, justice, fairness, and kindness. The reality we create with those distinctions and divisions does not have to separate and denigrate, but instead can emphasize support for each other - instead of acting out of fear, we can recognize, through awareness and experience, so many of our raging prejudices and destructive biases, and the “us” versus “them” paradigm they promote, hold no benefit for anyone. I wholly believe, even the seemingly most intransigent conflicts can in time be reduced to, “we” are standing in our grocery check out line, and “they” are standing in theirs, and all of us wish each other well. Because the truth is, speaking metaphorically, and also speaking from actual experience, next week, or the week after, or the week after, all of us may well be standing in the other line.