Jokes and Theological Training

1—The lasses at work like me to tell them jokes.

2—I get ‘Joke of the day’.

3—When I want to remember the joke, I just write down the punchline.

4—Jokes that are read, that have no story telling, no inflection—they don’t work.

A—A digression.  There’s a joke about the fellas walking past the big room in the hotel.  They hear someone yelling out a number.  Everyone laughs.  Someone else yells out a different number.  Everyone laughs.  One walker-by asks the other, ‘What’s happening here?’  The reply: ‘Oh, that’s a convention of comedians.  They’ve all heard all the jokes, and each has a number.  When someone yells out the number, they remember the joke, and laugh’.

B—Leave aside rhythm, that one joke can be more appropriately the follower of another.

C—Let’s add in the punchline situation above, and then adjust things for more beauty.

Alpha—A good thing would be if the number-shouter shouted out a punchline.  Each hearer would tell the joke in his or her own mind, then.

Beta—Even better would be if the shouter shouted out a NEW punchline.  Each hearer would then create a new joke in mind, experienced comedian that she or he is,

Z—Oddly, this is history.

Y—God has made the end from the beginning.

X—We know the Big Punchline.

W—And, knowing that has been known (determined), can we analogously know Little Punchlines, in smaller history/ies?

V—And, do it!

V’—Give a punchline, and let us make what leads up to it.

V’’—Thus Clark’s observation that the chronological is the reverse of the logical. (Believer’s Chapel tape).  To get to Chicago in time for the game, you have to have been at the hotel the night before. (This is a Cubs game, in the daytime). So you have to arrive in the PM the day before.  To do that, you have to leave Dexter, driving, by a certain time in the AM.  Etc.  (I leave out some details).  The prior is the logical, I think.  The chronological is then to leave Dexter, arrive at the hotel, stay the night, go to the game the next day.

V’’’—Thoughts on ‘Sign of the Cross’ follow.

Love in King Jesus,

Charlie ‘Sam Elliot’ Hartman

PS: The one wooing, that one jokes.

PPS: And don't forget Robinson's essay on the rhetoric of Philemon, the 7th iteration of the conquest in Joshua!