“Laughter is carbonated holiness,” wrote Annie Lamott, who has a unique way with words. “Children can laugh up to four hundred times in a day, but for adults this frequency drops to barely fifteen times a day. Where is our laughter?” asks Dr. Madan Kataria, who advocates “laughter yoga” for our health and wholeness.

Do you think Jesus laughed? When he called the little children to him? When he turned water into wine at a wedding feast? When he rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion? I think he laughed.

Someone sent me a cartoon of the Resurrection years ago. In the first panel: a huge stone rolled against the entrance to the tomb. Second panel: stone rolled away, two eyes peering out of the darkness. Third panel: a pair of feet dancing away and in big capital letters, “HO, HO, HO!” At first, I found the cartoon irreverent, and then I came to appreciate it.

The Resurrection was a mysterious and spectacular event. But my favorite story of Jesus after his resurrection is utterly simple: he cooks fish for breakfast on the beach for his friends. Chicago poet John Shea describes this Jesus as a “cook with holes in his hands.” “Flesh vs. flash,” Dave Denny wrote me decades ago. For a visionary meditation on death-into-life, see Dave’s A Healer’s Tree.

Easter comes early and closely follows the spring equinox this year. And spring is far more than a changing of the seasons after a long cold winter. Spring and its celebration of Easter signal a rebirth of the spirit. May you be rejuvenated and rejoice this season, no matter how dark and troubled you find the world around us.

“Be joyful,” urges farmer-poet Wendell Berry, “though you have considered all the facts.” The “facts” may seem dire, yes. Berry says we should “expect the end of the world,” as the world seemed to end when Jesus died, or your beloved died, or yet one more country tries to destroy another.

Berry insists we should laugh. “Laughter is immeasurable.” Does this sound flippant or heroic to you? Next month I’ll tell you more about how black activist Toi Derricotte and others describe “joy as resistance.” For now, let me quote Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” at length here to inspire your Easter season:

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor….
Give your approval to all you cannot understand….
Ask the questions that have no answers….
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years….
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts….
Practice resurrection.