"The Japanese have a centuries old ritual called Waraiko they use to greet a new year and to celebrate birthdays. The ritual consists of giving three hearty belly laughs! The first robust laugh is of gratitude for the previous year just ended. The second hearty laugh is in gratitude for being given a new year of life to enjoy. The third is a really full-bodied belly laugh, since it is to blow the dust off your mind, heart, and soul. Dust? The dust of habit and routine that slowly accumulates like all dust, causing the soul to lose the luster of its youthful vitality.

"Instead of restricting the Waraiko ritual only to New Year's Eves and birthdays, consider the possibilities of using this ritual of three hearty laughs as your morning prayer. At the beginning of a new day, your first prayer laugh would be in gratitude for all the gifts of yesterday and a good night's sleep. Your second laugh could be for the wondrous gift of a new day of life overflowing with opportunities to enjoy it fully. The third and boisterous laugh would be to blow the dust off your soul so it and your heart can glisten like the rising sun. For some, just after arising may be too early an hour in the day for a good laugh, especially a high-quality belly laugh, so consider using its humorous cousin, a good chuckle with a broad smile.

"Chuckling is also a sign of gladness and creates the breeze of delight that can blow the dust off your soul, causing it to gleam again like new. There is a valid connection between dusting and gladness, since the original meaning of glad was, 'gleaming, shining, and bright!' Perhaps because cheerful people had a special luminous shimmer to their faces, glad came to mean happy, joyful, and pleasant. Since laughing for no apparent good reason is usually considered a sign of being giddy or a scatterbrain, wisely do as the Master taught. When you pray, go in your room, close the door and do so in secret. While sage advice for any prayer, it's especially true for Waraiko prayer. If you faithfully observe his prayer rule of praying in secret and someone actually does observe you at your Waraiko morning prayer, don't be concerned if they think you are giddy!

"The goal of every religious seeker should be to be giddy since in Old English it once meant, 'possessed by a god or spirit.' Being possessed by the Spirit wasn't such a desirable state, since those caught in the grip of God were considered to be insane, simpleminded, or religious fanatics. In time the word changed from connoting foolish to being incapable of serious thinking. And you can be assured that if you strive to be constantly cheerful, even in the most dismal of situations, you will be judged as a shallow thinker or at best uninformed. After all, who can be always joyful if they live in the 'real' world?

"The Church, preoccupied with the need to be taken seriously by the world, is constantly cautious of appearing as foolish or silly, and so has wisely limited celebrating rejoicing to only two Sundays out of the year. One comes in the middle of Advent, and in the Old Latin is called Gaudete, 'Rejoice' Sunday. The second one comes in the middle of Lent and was called Laetare Sunday, also Latin for rejoice. To live in joy, which Paul said was the will of God for us, seems to require a change in the Church's liturgical calendar. To remind the faithful of their duty to remain joyful while confronting all of the terrible sufferings plaguing the human family — wars, violence, famine, and global poverty — the Church should have at least one Gaudete-Laerare Sunday a month! Such monthly Joy Sundays would reinforce that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven!"