That Reminds Me

This autobiography is of Bishop Girault Jones, Seventh Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana and Sixteenth Chancellor of the University of the South. Some excerpts from the book’s “I am blessed – or cursed – with a sense of humor which never fails to intrude upon my most solemn moments. That moment which should be the most solemn seems invariably to be tempered by some unpremeditated thoughts which snakes in the back way. At a time when I should be totally absorbed in the awesome significance of the moment, something funny happens…. Most of my life has been like that, – a mixture of irrelevant, and irreverent, and the sacred. I know there is a very fine line between the sacramental and the sacrilegious, and sometimes we cross over. Indeed, I suspect that much week pompously declare sacramental would in God’s sight be sacrilegious but for His understanding of us. I have always taken comfort in St. John’s saying that Jesus “knew what was in man.” That tells me that when something funny happens in church, the Lord does not mind if we laugh, at least inwardly.”