Smile as Salvation

"A creative tension in the second half of life, knowing what you know and knowing what you don’t know, is a necessary one. All you know is that it is foundationally all right, despite the seeming contradictions and conflict. That’s why the holy old man can laugh and the holy old woman can smile. I heard recently that a typical small child smiles three hundred times a day and typical old men smile three times a day in our culture. What has happened between six and sixty? Whatever it is, it tells me that religion is not doing its job very well."
- Fr. Richard Rohr, Adapted from Adult Christianity and How to Get There

Rohr's email appeared in my inbox this morning with a welcome message; smiling is a form of salvation. He posits that only people comfortable with not knowing, who can laugh at themselves and accept the space between what they do know and what they don't know, can smile. I'm a bit stunned at the deterioration in the number of smiles: Rohr says we go from 300 down to 3 because religion isn't doing its job but I would also say that our communities and our overall society don't do a good job of encouraging the open space, the not knowing.  It reminds me of a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, "Knowledge is a barrier to understanding."  The more we think we know, the less we seek to understand. In the second half of life it seems that our job is to let it all go, all the constructs, definitions, goals and thought processes that we created in the first half, all set out in the driveway with a big "FREE" sign attached.

Smiling also changes the type and quantity of the neurotransmitters firing in our brain; it's been essential to my recovery from illness. That, and laughter. It's also an amazing way to approach people. When I smile at folks headed my way they light up in return, and the response is night and day from a situation that I approach serious and non-smiling. Maybe we need kind of a pedometer for smiles so that instead of counting steps we count the number of smiles toward salvation. I'm going to start now by sending my kids and husband off to their days with a smile.