Jokes and laughter are weapons we use against those who upset and even frighten us. Maybe it’s one way of survival. This kind of humor can be pitch black at times.

Gentle humor, however, can teach by poking fun at our own foibles, a sign of maturity.

I think it was the Cold War commentator Harry Reasoner who said he didn’t trust politicians who couldn’t laugh at themselves.

A couple of years ago (3 September, 2016), The Economist featured an obituary honoring Roly Bain, a clown-priest. Bain’s opening invocation for one of his clown sermons was “Let us play!”

Dressed ridiculously in clown attire, he would laboriously climb up a rope ladder only to find himself facing the wrong way. “I wish I could turn around,” he moaned, then added, “They call it repentance in the trade.”

He followed the tradition of the holy fool, a truth-teller in a different guise.

Sometimes we don’t delve as deeply into understanding the world’s problems as we ought, but we also miss more gentle teaching—a melding of the sublime with the ridiculous.

It lightens dull lives, but also brings us truth in a different costume.