283 It’s Okay To Laugh

Transcript Speaker 1: When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind, he and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, please stay here. The Lord has sent me on to the Jordan. As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. Elisha replied. Welcome back to Scripture for your inner outcasts. Today is June 17th, 2026, Wednesday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time. I'll be providing the reflection for today's episode. My name is Elizabeth and I'm the producer and host of Scripture for your inner Outcasts. Hello again. If you in the audience have been Catholic for, say, more than two years, you will recognize that today's first reading is an iconic one. I'm going to read you a verse, and I'm curious if your mind goes in the same direction as mine. When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind. He and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, please stay here. The Lord has sent me on to the Jordan. As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you. Elisha replied, alrighty. This reading from Second Kings is to me always memorable because it brings about the annual how do we pronounce that name debate? So in this reading, we've got the prophet Elijah, and then we've got the other prophet, Elisha. Speaker 1: Or is it Elisha or E or Alicia? And I just gotta say, I laugh every year when this reading comes up in the lectionary, because I always observe a poor lector doing his or her best to differentiate between these two names. And it always ends up just sounding really silly to me. And so for today's reflection, I'm going to speak not so much on the meaning of these scripture verses, but rather just on how they sound. All of us have parts of us that are cast out of our conscious awareness and in internal family systems language, we would call those our exiled parts. And our exiled parts are most often young in age, such that we all have inner children tucked away inside of us. And so to speak, directly to those inner children who are exiled in you. I'd like to share this. When you go to mass, you might not fully understand the meaning of the Bible readings you hear, but you still hear them. And if you're like me, sometimes the sounds of things just strike you in a certain way. In your childlikeness you bring so much joy and wonder to the world, and you also bring laughter. And so I want to give you permission to laugh at things that are funny, even if it's something from the Bible, and even if it's the sound of electorate mass saying two names that sound identical for me, today's reading about Elijah and Elisha or Elisha or Elisha strikes me as funny and a childlike part of me just wants to laugh. Speaker 1: You may feel like your joy or your wonder, or your laughter is not welcome, and it's very possible that your joy and wonder and laughter have not been welcome at times in the past. But I want to tell you that you are good just the way you are, and that your entire internal family system, as well as the whole world, needs your childlike qualities. So if it's helpful and if you feel like you need it, I want to give you permission to laugh. If you're enjoying the content of this podcast, if you're a Catholic who wants to deepen their human formation, then the resilient Catholics community might be a good fit for you. We're accepting applications for the most recent cohort, named after Saint Mary Magdalene, from June 1st to June 30th, 2026. Learn more in the description of today's episode. With that, we'll end with our invocations. Our Lady, our mother, Untier of knots. Pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist pray for us.