Weird monk jokes

I have lately been reading stories of the desert monastics, collected by the monk John Moschos in the seventh century. I don’t think I get it.

My pattern has been to feel slightly offended—sometimes even disgusted—by a story, and then walk away from it, wander around for awhile and finally realize that the story was probably a joke. In its own context, the main thing it elicited was probably laughter. But for me the humor is so strange, so wry, so unexpected that I don’t perceive it for hours. 

Take this one. A monk was visiting another community when he died and was buried in the strangers’ cemetery. The day after his burial, a woman was buried on top of him. A few hours later, the earth “threw her up.” They buried her again on the same spot. But the next day they found her again on top of the grave. So they buried her somewhere else.