Knock Knock ....

So we had this big ol' celebration yesterday with our founding monastery and the monasteries that we founded as a culmination of church restoration shindigs, one of my fellow semi-new-kids from the monastery in Indianapolis commented (falsely, of course!) that she saw in the program that I would be giving the talk during Mass. I said yes, and she asked what I would be speaking about.

Knock knock jokes.
Really.
After all, knock knock jokes require a response; you don't know quite who or what is knocking but you take it on faith that it will all make sense eventually .... just as God knocks and waits for our response before proceeding. It's also about hospitality —which we Benedictines are so famous for —opening the door to the stranger, welcoming them as they are. And Benedict also speaks about how we are to greet the stranger, just as knock-knock decorum and tradition also dictates.
And what's really scary is that it seems like you've really thought about this.
Nah .... what's even scarier is that I'm making it up right now as I go along!

But I'm thinking .... perhaps I should develop a Spirituality of Knock Knock Jokes, maybe make a retreat or even a book about it. Think it'd fly?

Although .... during my last session of the One Bread One Cup conference, when my kids had all done their witness talks, we were doing impromptu speeches on "God is like ______", with the appropriate word or item contributed by the four non-speakers among us. I must admit I did pretty well with my turns, having been given such things as underwear (actually, I rescued someone else on that one), toilet paper, shoestring potato sticks (another semi-rescue) and the like. Everyone did pretty well, though, with toenails and softball and tootsie pops and bubble gum and other such randomness. Course, that's what I did all last year at school -- take all the kids' off-topic conversations and pull them right back around to either the New Testament or Church History. Gotta love thinking on the fly!

So ..... any challenges for me out there?