Remembering

A few good things today: The Supreme Court of South Africa legalized marriage between same-sex people. And this from the October 18, 2004 New Yorker, in a theater review by John Lahr:

Jokes are the soul's analgesic: they defy gravity -- which is to say, anything that weighs us down -- and they detatch us from grief. When we say that laughter "lifts our spirits," we mean that it works as a sort of stage-managed resurrection -- we are somehow taken out of ourselves, and carried back into the moment. In that instant, life becomes luminous again.

Good words for World AIDS Day. This morning a woman came to morning prayer for the first time. She said she was taking classes at the acupuncture school up the street, and wanted to do something to mark the day besides "just crying in my car on the freeway."

Today, I remember three: Charlie Halloran (not the actor) and James Bergeron, friends and lovers, and Michael Botkin, journalist and troublemaker.