In this season when so much comes back to life, I am freshly aware of all that lives within us as resources of renewal. I have learned through the years, for example, that a sense of humor can be a saving grace. Strange as this might sound, I have witnessed its power to transform, to actually resurrect the spirit. And this human capacity to recover, to come back to life, never ceases to amaze me and to renew my faith. I can't begin to tell you how many times someone tells me the story of a deeply restorative moment in their life that revolves around the bursting forth of laughter.

Clearly there is nothing funny about the terrible tragedies that occur in our lives, the losses, the deaths of loved ones, the sustained despair of depression. Life is what happens, they say, while we're making other plans. And we meet these experiences with whatever resources we may have - with the help of friends, community, faith. And sometimes, even with laughter.

There are times when it seems everything negative happens at once - one thing after another. I read an account of someone who had had a bad car wreck which left him, during recovery, with his jaw wired shut. The next thing that happened was that he learned that it wasn't healing properly and would probably have to be rebroken and wired together again. Later that day, his girlfriend left him. And then, at the end of the day, he found his beloved dog, killed by a hit-and-run. At this point, he had had it. It was all too much.

Thinking that some comfort food might ease the pain, he liquefied a can of Campbell's Chunky soup in the blender. He put the straw up to the gap between his teeth and began to suck furiously. No soup entered his mouth. That's when he discovered that the clear plastic top of the blender had fallen into the soup and been ground into tiny fragments of plastic, which plugged up his straw! At that point, he says, "I sat down and began to laugh. Suddenly I knew that everything was going to turn out all right."

Much has been written about the intertwining of sorrow and laughter - how they flow from the same deep and healing source. The poet, Kahlil Gibran wrote, "The selfsame well from which your laughter rises was often times filled with your tears." After a service in Maryland that I participated in last spring, I was approached by a woman saying she'd enjoyed the humor in the sermon. "You know, laughter is so important," she said.

She went on to say that after her mother died, she and her sister and their father were sitting in the funeral director's office, feeling totally bereft. Together, they were making a decision about the container to select for the cremains. There were only tan-colored ones available.

The woman recounted that suddenly, as they were sitting there, bogged down in sad indecision, she popped out with something about how, if her mom had her way, it would be a green box. Something about that statement, broke the tension around this paralyzing loss, and with that, she said, "My Dad bent over and utterly cracked up laughing. We all did. We laughed so hard we cried." In the midst of sorrow, this became a moment of reviving, of rejoining with one another, as a family who knew one another, loved one another, and were going forward together.

"Joy and woe are woven fine, clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine, runs a joy with silken twine," wrote William Blake.

Laughter can begin our healing. Laughter reminds us that we are more than this particular moment in time, and that life moves on and is always deeper and more mysterious than we know. Love calls us back into life, over and over again.

From the death of hope, the death of courage, the death of caring, the death of faith, life calls us back, inviting our spirit to stir and to take heart again.

Laughter is one of love's hands. In the midst of sorrow, laughter is often a tribute to the depth of our love. Laughter is pain, flowing another way. Moreover, laughter lets us know that life will go on. Our laughter is the very gift of grace offering us a hand to re-enter life; in the midst of sorrow, the promise of a better day.

In this season when so much comes alive again, may our own spirits be heartened and our hearts lifted, as all of life comes back to life.

The Rev. Sandra D. Fitz-Henry is the minister of Murray Unitarian Universalist Church in Attleboro, and is in her 13th year of ministry with that church. She previously served congregations in New York and Pennsylvania, and loves working in this parish, sharing the ministry with so many strong lay leaders. She is the mother of three grown children, and has one grandchild. A Boston native, she grew up in New York, Nashville and Los Angeles and lived in Denmark, Spain and England. She was an artist, religious educator and hospital chaplain, before entering parish ministry full time.