Laughing Matters

Find Out What’s So Funny When Nothing’s Funny Sometimes life just stinks—people disappoint, bad things happen, and hardship comes. Laughing Matters is a collection of stories that shows the difference between those who resign and those who rejoice when reality bites. Readers will be encouraged to choose joy, to find hope, and to discover the abundant life Christ offers all who follow Him. Author and humorist Phil Callaway—once described as “Dave Barry with a message”—employs his revealing and hilarious style to remind readers that, “it’s always darkest just before the fridge door opens.” Do you resign or rejoice when reality bites? Sometimes life just stinks. People disappoint. Bad things happen. Hardship comes in double helpings. The last thing you want to do is laugh. So let hilarious humorist Phil Callaway show you—as only he can—that some of the darkest times are those just before the fridge door opens. *** ** *** ** “Everything Phil Callaway writes is full of life because he’s discovered a fabulous secret: The joy of Christ doesn’t go away, even when life is a mess.” Luis Palau, President of the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association “Phil really knows how to get in touch with his spiritual funny bone.” Janette Oke, Bestselling author “One page into this book and I’m quaking with laughter. Callaway has the uncanny ability to uncover the funny in any situation and report it with inspirational wit.” Paul L. Maier, Coauthor of The DaVinci Code: Fact or Fiction? “This book is an excellent source of encouragement for anyone in the midst of a crisis who may be asking God that hardest question of all: ‘Why?’” Martha Bolton, Author of Cooking with Hot Flashes and Didn’t My Skin Used to Fit? Story Behind the Book Phil Callaway wrote this book after a five-year journey he and his wife embarked upon when she began having seizures. He discovered that when life throws you curve balls, juices lemons in your eyes, scrunches you in a knuckle sandwich…the last thing you want to do is laugh. And at the moment we realize that life can just plain stink, “this book helps us know where to go from that point,” he says. Celebrities like Dave Dravecky, Barbara Johnson, Gloria Gaither, and Joni Eareckson Tada have endorsed Callaway’s positive approach to trials. “Everything Phil Callaway writes is full of life because he’s discovered a fabulous secret: The joy of Christ doesn’t go away, even when life is a mess,” says evangelist Luis Palau.

120 activities to inject some lighthearted fun into lessons whilst still being grounded in respected language learning theory.

The author of many great scripts tells of writing radio comedy at age sixteen, of behind-the-set stories, and of "the places he's lived and how he's lived and what he's learned while doing so."--Jacket.

Bawdy satirical plays—many starring law clerks and seminarians—savaged corrupt officials and royal policies in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century France. The Church and the royal court tolerated—and even commissioned—such performances, the audiences for which included men and women from every social class. From the mid-sixteenth century, however, local authorities began to temper and in some cases ban such performances. Sara Beam, in revealing how theater and politics were intimately intertwined, shows how the topics we joke about in public reflect and shape larger religious and political developments. For Beam, the eclipse of the vital tradition of satirical farce in late medieval and early modern France is a key aspect of the complex political and cultural factors that prepared the way for the emergence of the absolutist state. In her view, the Wars of Religion were the major reason attitudes toward the farceurs changed; local officials feared that satirical theater would stir up violence, and Counter-Reformation Catholicism proved hostile to the bawdiness that the clergy had earlier tolerated. In demonstrating that the efforts of provincial urban officials prepared the way for the taming of popular culture throughout France, Laughing Matters provides a compelling alternative to Norbert Elias's influential notion of the "civilizing process," which assigns to the royal court at Versailles the decisive role in the shift toward absolutism.

Ranging widely over Beckett's fiction, drama and critical writings, the book demonstrates that it is through Beckett's comic timing that we can understand the double gesture of his art: the ethical obligation to represent the world how it is while, at the

Part 2 of Volume 3 addresses in detail the conflicts between humor and cruelty, i.e., how cruelty can be unleashed against humor and, conversely, humor can be utilized against cruelty. Potent enmities to mirth and jollity are retrieved from a variety of socio-historical contexts, ranging from Europe’s medieval monasteries to the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre. Special attention is paid to the cruel humor and humorous cruelty arising thereof, insofar as such phenomena can reveal critical aspects of today’s neoliberal socio-economic order. In parallel, settings where humor has been used as an instrument to cope with suffered cruelty, whether natural or human in origin, are also retrieved and discussed. These also vary greatly and encompass domains such as hospital wards, 20th-century Jewish ghettoes, and contemporary funeral homes. A set of concluding reflections is then offered on the psychological, theological, ethical, and metaphysical roots of humor—and its cruel rejection.