February 10, 2006
Lily
Lily Tomlin was on stage in our town last night. For two intermissionless hours, she regaled and guffawed us all by herself. Her only props were a table, a stool, a bottle of water, a can of hairspray, and a few sound effects. Nobody tapped her wire, so far as we could see, but it would have been to their benefit had they done so.
She gave us what we so sorely need, a look at ourselves and our habits, but what is more, a palpable sense of our humor. The early medics in the past knew what they no longer seem to know in the now, that our humor is a profound and singular measure of our health.
One of the standards for that measure is our religion, what we are bound to, what is most valuable to us. If it is not a source of enough security to allow us to let go and let God — who knows our humor far better than we — then it is of little worth, a cross to bear rather than a cross that sets us free.
Sometimes, one of the best ways we can come to know ourselves is through a caricature of ourselves and all that we hold dear, perhaps not in a mirror, but through a mirror, if only darkly. Jesus and his colleagues, the prophets, do that so well, if often painfully. Lily Tomlin stood right up there in that band of worthies last night.