The Gift of Laughter — Sacred Humor as Medicine
Native American traditions across the continent incorporate humor, laughter, and joyfulness as essential spiritual qualities — not a distraction from the sacred but its clearest expression, for the Great Mystery clearly has a sense of humor.
The Trickster figure (Coyote, Raven, Iktomi) is sacred not despite his humor but through it. The Pueblo sacred clown makes the entire community roar with laughter in the middle of solemn ceremony. The Heyoka of the Lakota wears his clothes inside out and weeps at good news because the sacred is not confined to solemnity. Many elders speak with warm humor rather than grave authority. The Plains tribes developed an elaborate tradition of ritual teasing between brothers-in-law (joking relationships) that release social tension through approved humor. Lakota medicine man Lame Deer said, 'The man who has lost his sense of humor is in great danger of losing his mind.' Placed at the very heart of solemn ceremony, this humor keeps the sacred from hardening into self-importance and binds the community through shared laughter as much as through shared prayer.
A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures in the doctor's book.
Psychologist Rod Martin's comprehensive research demonstrates that the capacity for genuine humor — laughing at one's own situation and finding absurdity in human experience — is the most reliable single indicator of psychological resilience, which is exactly what traditional humor traditions cultivated.
Native American oral tradition
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- What Native American traditions say about grief
Lame Deer held that a man who has lost his sense of humour is in danger of losing his mind, and the Heyoka weeps at good news in the middle of solemn ceremony. Placing sanctioned laughter inside mourning is not denial here. It is load-bearing — the same structure that keeps the sacred from hardening into self-importance keeps grief from hardening into identity.