The Greenfield Group Convocation, Spring, 2004 (April 26 –28)

No somber God could have created the giraffe.

                                                          -- George Buttrick

Program: “Humor, Humility and Humanity”

Required Reading

Sanders, Barry, Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive Activity,

          (chapters 1, 2, 7, 8) (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) paperback

Cohen, Ted, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters,

          (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003) paperback

Weavings, “Hilarity,” Volume IX, Number 6 (November/December,

1994).  (Available for $5.00 from The Upper Room, P.O. Box 852, Nashville, TN. 37202-0852; phone 1-800-972-0433)

          God’s Friends, Vol. 14, No. 3 (November, 2003), “Holy Humor”

God’s Friends is a publication of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, 500 DeHaro Street, San Francisco, CA  94107.  (provided by Saunders)

          Niebuhr, Reinhold, “Humour and Faith” (provided by Saunders)

          The Sun, “Readers Write about Laughter” (provided by Saunders)

Required Viewing, two of the following three films:

          Bruce Almighty

          Monty Python, The Meaning of Life

          Lily Tomlin in The Search for the Signs of Intelligible Life

in the Universe

Suggested Reading

          Parabola, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1987), on humor.  See www.parabola.org.

Nisker, Wes Scoop, The Essential Crazy Wisdom, (Ten Speed Press,

          2001), available through Amazon.com

Biro, Adam, Two Jews on a Train: Stories of the Old Country and the

New (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)

          Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

          Cousins, Norman, Anatomy of an Illness

          Cox, Harvey, Feast of Fools

          Braudel, Ferdinand, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400-1800

          (all three volumes)

Papers and other assignments

• The Rev. Kendra Lee Ford will prepare a major paper on this theme: “theological meanderings and musings on mirth and hilarity in religious life (post-modernist?) with a concerted effort to understand our western history of seriousness and somberness in matters of faith (modernist?)” 

Frederick E. Gillis will be respondent to Kendra’s paper.

• Charles J. Stephens will prepare a short paper on “humor and preaching”
• Susan Suchocki Brown will prepare a short paper on “humor and pastoral care”
• Joshua Mason Pawelek will prepare a short paper on “humor and social action”
• All members will prepare a 500 word paper on one of the short topics noted above, viz. humor and preaching, humor and pastoral care or humor and social action.
• Richard M. Fewkes will offer change of pace, which must be eminently serious.
• Anchor, to be determined
• Chapels, likewise -- Marta Morris Flanagan, Rosemary Bray McNatt, Thomas D. Wintle, and other luminaries will be asked in due time