Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Ringmaster

In the movie The Greatest Showman, Hugh Jackman cuts a dashing figure in his ringmaster's uniform, standing center stage in the full glare of the spotlight.  The chiseled visage of a classical statue, dressed in  a bright red coat and vest (both with gold accents), black pants, shiny boots, cane in hand, topped off with ... well ... a top hat -- this is what a Ringmaster looks like in the mind's eye.  And we know that he -- although there are female Ringmasters, too -- kicks things off with the jubilant shout of, "Laaaadeeeeeeeeeees and Genntlemennnn ..."

But what, really, does a Ringmaster do?  According to the article on Wikipedia:

"A ringmaster introduces the various acts in a circus show and guides the audience through the experience, directing their attention to the various areas of the circus arena and helping to link the acts together while equipment is brought into and removed from the circus ring.  A ringmaster may interact with some acts, especially the clown acts, to make the various parts of a seamless circus performance."

In the 2014 article What, exactly, does a Ringmaster Do? , David Shipman, then Ringmaster for The Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, describes his job like this:

"I think that people have this idea of what a ringmaster is supposed to be:  loud, over-the-top, with a bombastic personality.  And it used to be that way!  It used to basically just be an announcer.  But the reason Ringling Bros. is the Greatest Show on Earth is because it keeps up with the time, and the ringmaster has now become a huge part of the show.  I sing, dance, talk with kids, and interact with the audience at all times.  There's just a lot more to the role now as a whole.  Basically my job is to keep everyone at the edge of their seat from the time they sit down to the time they get up and leave.  I want to make sure that the people who come to the show carry their memories with them for the rest of their lives, just like I do."

If part of the ringmaster's job is to help keep the chaos of the circus running smoothly, and if our lives are, at least at times, a whole lot like a three-ring circus, then we certainly need a ringmaster!  Yet if another part of what a ringmaster does is help the audience keep track of what's going on around them so that they don't miss any of the really good stuff ... then we probably need one even more!  It is so easy for us to get distracted in our day-to-day lives by minutia and trivialities (often in the guise of Something Important or Urgent) that we miss the really important things.  We fail to see the trapeze artist throwing that triple somersault because we're paying attention to the guy hawking souvenir programs.  

Scripture can serve in this role for us, redirecting our gaze to what's going on in "the center ring" of our lives.  (And by now it should be clear that within the category of "Scripture" I include not only the traditional scriptures of the great religions of the world, but also the works of poets and novelists, painters, scientists, playwrights, children, time spent in nature  ... any, and all, of the things that remind us of the "really real.")  A Spiritual Director can serve as a ringmaster, at least in this particular aspect of the role.

The greatest ringmaster, of course,  is God.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Fire Eating

Shade Flamewater

I was taught to eat fire by an ordained Methodist minister, the Rev. Margie Brown.

The 1970s and 80s were the heyday of what was called "the clown ministry movement."  People made use of a variety of performance arts as vehicles for sharing religious messages.  It seemed to me to be most common for Protestants of one sort or another to be involved, although I know that this movement also had adherents among Catholics and Jews as well.

For several years there was an annual event known as The Clown, Mime, Puppet, and Dance Ministry Workshop.  Imagine clowns, mimes, puppeteers, dancers, magicians, ventriloquists, and other folks, taking over a college campus for (as I remember it) a week of workshops, performances, worship services, and more.

It was at one of these workshops that I met Margie.  She was an extremely well-known clown/storyteller, and was a much sought after workshop leader.  She said that she had one condition for accepting an invitation.  In addition to whatever it was she was being paid to do, she requested time each day to teach a fire eating class (which she would do for free).  As a twenty-something at the time, how could I miss something like this?  I signed up for her class right away, and met with her and a handful of other students every morning for a week.

As I've said, Margie was an ordained Methodist minister.  She had learned to eat fire from a Catholic priest, Fr. Ken Feit.  Margie told us that Ken had told her that every religion we humans have ever developed has used fire as one of its sacred symbols.  Also, every religion has some kind of a shared meal as one of its rituals.  It only make sense, then, to eat fire as a religious practice!

Margie taught us how to make our own torches; how to bring the flame into our mouths; how to put it out, or keep some of the vapors in our mouths so that we could breath some fire.  She taught us to never breathe in while the torch was anywhere near our mouths.  And she taught us a bit of wisdom that has stayed with me, and guided me, to this day -- "you always have time to put out your sister's prom dress."

In the context of these Lessons From -- and for -- the Circus of Life, there are two things I'd like to lift up.  It took us a little while before Margie thought we were ready to actually bring the flames near our faces.  (She really did teach us to be safe!)  Several people asked her whether it was going to be hot.  You might think this a rather odd question.  The answer should seem so obvious.  Yet it's one of the first questions people ask me about this art/craft.  Margie's answer was simple, "It depends on what you're expecting."  People who anticipate excruciating pain are usually incredibly surprised -- and relived -- that it's nowhere near as hot as they were afraid it would be.  On the other hand, those who thought it'd be no big deal were generally the ones running for a glass of ice water.  One thing fire eating can teach us, then, is that our expectations are often closely linked to our experiences.

More importantly, though, is what Margie said to us on the last day of our class.  She noted that some of us would keep practicing and maybe go on to perform, while others would never pick up fire eating torches again.  She wanted us all to know -- whatever we did with this new skill from there on out -- that she'd only been teaching us to eat fire to show us something much more important.  I don't know if I remember her words exactly, but this is what has stayed with me.

Whether you eat fire ever again, you've done it now.  And that means you've taken something frightening and dangerous, and instead of running from it you've brought it right up close to yourself.  And by doing this, you've turned it into something beautiful.

That's a lesson worth learning, no?

Pax tecum,

Rev. Wik


One more thing:  about a year or so ago a friend of mine sent me this video.  It blew my mind.  The artist is doing things that I hadn't even known were possible.  I've since reached out to him, and he's not only an amazing performer, but seems to be a really nice guy, too.  And talk about turning fire into something beautiful:

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Trapeze

Sam Keen -- the author of such books as Fire in the Belly and Your Mythic Journey -- has had a life-long dream of being a trapeze flyer.  It began when he was a child and went to his first circus.  There were all the usual acts, but it was the trapeze artist who most captured his imagination.  He's said that when the flyer let go of his bar to fly to the catcher, in his mind's eye he remained in mid-air.  And he's remained there ever since.  "The Flying Man" became a mythic touchstone for him long before he had those words to describe it.  Yet as with most of us, as he grew up his childhood dream faded into the background of an adult life of family and work.

At the age of 62 he heard an ad on television for the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, inviting ordinary folk to come learn the skills and art of the flying trapeze.  Believing himself too old for such a thing, Keen nonetheless went one night to observe a class.  This was as close as he thought he would come to touching his childhood dream.  The teacher, however, didn't let Keen sit it out on the sidelines, instead prodding him to try.  He did.  He found himself returning the next week.  And the one after that.  Soon a new passion was born, a passion that eventually led to his putting a practice bar in his living room (which had 16' ceilings), and a full rig in his backyard.  It also led to his writing the book Learning to Fly -- trapeze: reflections on fear, trust, and the joy of letting go.

I offered a reflection in February of 2019 to the congregation I serve about some of what I'd learning in my reading of this book.  I am sure that it is only the first of many.  After all, the metaphors of the circus are deep and rich ... and I'd only read about half of the book at the time I wrote that sermon!

Keen's subtitle is a synopsis of several of the spiritual lessons to be found among those who "fly through with the greatest of ease" -- fear, trust, letting go.  Quite literally, being a trapeze artist requires you to learn to let go in spite of a quite reasonable fear of falling if you do.  There's only just a few letters difference between flying and falling.  You could add failing into that mix, too.  We want to fly, but are afraid we'll fail and fall.  Sound at all familiar?

One of the things that trapeze has taught Keen is that it's not only important, it's essential for a flyer to work through the fear of falling.  Whenever you're trying to learn a new trick, you should first practice missing the trick, so that you can learn how to fall safely.  There is, he says,

“a fundamental principle — learn the fall before the trick; prepare for failure.  From the moment when a fledgling accomplishes the first free fall, progress in flying and falling go hand in hand. […] the great flyers have always been great fallers.”

That might sound somewhat counter intuitive at first. Most of us would probably rather put of letting go until we know there'll be someone or something there to catch us or for us to catch ourselves on.  Apparently, though, if you really want to fly you get there by preparing not to be caught, which teaches you that you'l survive the fall.  (If, of course, you've learned how to fall safely, which is a skill in itself.)

Does that sound scary?  Well, maybe it is.  He talks about Isabel Caballero, one of the few women who perform the triple somersault, who has said, "Even after all these years I am afraid all the time.  Every time I climb up on the pedestal I look down and think about how high up it is.  But," she adds, "I love flying more than I fear it."

How do we get there?  How do we get to the place where we can say, honestly, about our own lives, that we love them more than we fear them?  That we love Life -- with all of its inherent challenges ad risks -- more than we fear it?  I'll give Sam Keen the last word:

"We learn to fly not by becoming fearless, but by the daily practice of courage.”

Pax tecum,

RevWik

This is an image from Birds of Prey, Vol 1, #8.  For those who don't follow
the escapades of the Batman and the rest of the "Bat Family,"
this is Dick Grayson (the original Robin and, now Nightwing who was part of
his family's circus flying troupe as a child), and Barbara Gordon (the orignal Batgirl,
who was paralyze when the Joker shot her in the spine, and who became Oracle,
the eyes, ears, and computer wizardry of heroes throughout the DC universe).
When Barbara was complaining about feeling so "earthbound" after losing
the use of her legs (and her life as Battgirl), Dick brought her to the circus to
experience the joy of flying once more.

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Magic

The magician:  Master of the Mystic Arts, or simple con artist?  Like clowns, people seem to fall into two camps -- although for different reasons.  You like magic and magicians, or you don't.

The folks who don't like magic have a point.  We know that the magician is fooling us (i.e., making us look or feel foolish).  What they seem to be doing is impossible, we know, so there's got to be a trick to it, yet the magician appears to be taking themselves and what they're doing seriously -- insisting that our seeing should be believing.

The pictures below show two different approaches to the performance of magic.  In the photo on the left it is clear that I am receiving the accolades of the crowd.  I've done something amazing, and the audience is showing me that appreciate my skill.  And that certainly is one way to approach not only magic, but any kind of performance -- it's about the performer.  Yes, certainly, an entertainer wants their audience to be entertained.  Ultimately, though, it's about the performance itself.  For the magician, that means it's all about the magic.

In the 80s, I was lucky enough to meet a man named Bill Carpenter (who, at the time, went by his clown name, Gusto).  His Midway Caravan introduced me to a new way of thinking about my performances.  He turned the dynamic of performance on its head.  As I wrote in a blog post shortly after I heard of his death, Gusto's approach, 

... didn’t create a dynamic of a passive audience staring up at the impossible feats of the performer and saying, “Wow!  Look what you can do!”  Instead, the audience looked at the performers, who just moments before had been the audience, and said, “Look what we can do together.”  The performance was actually something of a ruse; the real act was the creation of community.

While working with Gusto I began to use my own role as magician/juggler/fire-eater/clown as a tool to take the spotlight that would be thrown on me and turn it back on the assembled crowd, the "congregation" that had gathered, the community-in-the-making.  (Even before I was an ordained minister, working in a parish setting, I understood my performance as a form of ministry, and the people who gathered, who congregated, in the hall or on the street corner where I was performing as "a congregation.")

This is what the photograph on the right captures -- the girl is the focus of people's attention, not me.  My job is simply to facilitate this opportunity for her to shine and, through her, for everyone to feel good about themselves.  Here the magic is not the end in itself, simply the means to the end.  This is why I would announce before each show that I was about to do a number of tricks, the secret of which wasn't really the important thing.  I would invite anyone who wanted to to come up after the show and tell me how they thought I'd done a particular trick.  If they were right, I would always tell them so.  If they were wrong, I'd give them hints to help them think it through again.

Yet if fooling people wasn't my aim as a magician, what was?  The experience of wonder.  I would tell people that I hoped at some point during the performance everyone would have at least one experience of seeing something impossible happen in front of their eyes.  In that moment -- that split second before their rational mind kicked in to try and explain the mystery away, to find its secret -- that's where "magic" happened.  The feeling they had was magic, the trick was simply the means by which I could remind them of what awe and wonder felt like.

That, it seems to me, is a lesson worth learning ... and remembering.  That sudden in-breath of wonder; that widening of the eyes in awe; that quickening of our pulse when we come face to face with the utterly impossible happening right in front of us nonetheless for its impossibility -- all of these feelings are real.  They matter.  They're important to pay attention to.  Albert Einstein is credited with saying:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.  [The one] to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead -- [their] eyes are closed.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

photos taken of one of my performances of the Ithaca Commons, Ithaca New York, in 1986

Lessons From (and for) The Circus of Life: Clowns!

Generally speaking, you either love 'em or you hate 'em, but very few people have no feelings one way or another about clowns.  They creep you out, or they keep you laughing.  They represent childlike wonder and playfulness, or want to lure you to your death (like Stephen King's terrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown).

Having been a clown myself, I lean toward the more positive attitudes about clowns, although I can certainly understand their power to unnerve.  They are clearly human, yet their exaggerated faces suggest something else.  They are ... extreme ... and they definitely seem to be hiding something.  Whether that "something" is demonic or delightful is in the eye of the beholder.

In 1964, the Lutheran Council produced a film called, simply, Parable, for the Protest Pavilion of the World's Fair.  The figure of Christ is depicted as a clown, with the world as a circus.  It was only 22 minutes long, there's no dialogue, and it is largely unknown or forgotten today, yet the ripples it made continue to this day.  (Some say that it inspired the Clown Ministry Movement of the 1970s and 80s.)

Whatever your particular relationship with clowns, the intent is to represent irrepressible joyousness and play.  A clown is essentially child-like, someone who looks at the world through innocent eyes.  Their actions and reactions are exaggerated, to be sure, yet they are also fleeting.  A clown doesn't stay mad for very long, and they almost always return quite quickly to a giggle or a guffaw.  Nothing phases a clown; clowns are eternal optimists.  Even a sad clown -- like Emmett Kelly's "Weary Willy" -- never gives up, whether trying to crack open a peanut with a sledgehammer, or sweep the spotlight off the stage.  Drop a stick of dynamite down the pants of a clown and they might fly up into the air, but they'll invariably come down into a forward roll with a smile on their face.  This is one of a clown's lessons -- don't give up, don't lose hope, and keep in touch with joy even during hard times.

Clowns also remind us to appreciate even the smallest and most mundane of things.  A clown doesn't need much to fuel their wacky form of whimsy.  Avner the Eccentric, a modern clown, needs only a napkin, a class of water, or his hat in order to generate the review his one-man show received from Joel Seigel on ABC-TV, "I laughed for two solid hours.  The show only lasted an hour and a half."

And clowns always "think outside the box."  While appreciating simple things, clowns are never satisfied to use a thing as it is, asking, "what else can I do with this?"  Clowns rarely employ the simplest solution to a problem; efficient productivity is not their goal.  So, instead, they are always looking for the most fun way.

Pax tecum,

RevWik