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:

What feeds your spirit?

For the past few weeks I've been posting videos that I find deeply spiritually filling.  (I hope you have as well.)  While in many ways quite different from one another, there are four things which all the videos have in common that I think make them "spiritual."

First -- and these really aren't in any specific hierarchical order of importance -- they are all highly visual.  Whether the lush imagery on John Boswell's Symphony of Science videos, the often breathtaking scenery in Matt Harding's Where The Hell Is Matt?, or the sight of musicians from a wide variety of human cultures all working together to create something beautiful, all of these videos offer us images.  Imagery can touch us in very deep ways.  It's no wonder that all of the great religions we humans have ever developed make use of imagery -- whether Greek Orthodox Christian's icons or Tibetan Buddhism's ephemeral sand paintings. 

Next, these videos also are not just visual, they are also musical.  Music, too, can take us to really deep places.  It has been said that, "Music is what feelings sound like out loud."  (The quote is attributed to a number of people.)  Saint Francis of Assisi is remembered as telling his companions, "Preach always.  When necessary, use words."  Music is a way of "preaching" spiritual truths in a way which bypasses our more literal, linear thinking.
Of course, words aren't all bad, and all but Matt Harding's video include words.  John Boswell's Symphony of Science videos use words to convey meaning more heavily than does Playing For Change's "Stand By Me," yet the song's lyrics certainly support the message (implicit in the images) that we are one human family and need to stand by one another.  I think I could make a case that even in Matt Harding's dace video, the decision to include the place name of each scene constitutes a use of words to convey meaning. 

Finally -- again, not because it's least or most important -- there is the fact that when watching and listening to the videos we are having an experience, yet an experience we from which we have a little distance.  We do not have to be invested in the work of creation/production.  We do not have to be hampered by any kind of "performance anxiety."  Nothing is demanded of us but that we engage with these works and allow them to "enter" our hearts and our minds.

These four things are not the only things that define a source of spiritual inspiration and nurture, yet one of more is very often involved.

To round out this series of posts I offer these questions for your consideration:

• Where do you find inspiration and nurture for your spirit?
• What qualities do the sources share with one another?  What do the share with the four qualities I've writes about here?
• In what ways do the things that speak to your spirit differ from these videos and/or from each other?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Experience Precedes Theology

Back in 2002, while I was serving the First Universalist Church of Yarmouth, Maine, I preached a sermon I'd titled, "Experience Precedes Theology."  Seven years later, when I was preaching in a worship service at that year's conference of the Unitarian Universalist Musician's Network, I offered an updated version that I called, "We Hear Music in the Air."  This is yet a further refinement of the thinking I've been doing for the past 16 years, nearly my entire career as a preacher/teacher/pastor.

Very often, as I sit with people who are working to make sense of their efforts to "try God" (as I put it in my last post) we come upon the same stumbling bock.  Lots of us -- especially the people who tend to seek me out are pretty "heady" people —we like ideas and concepts.  And in the western religious traditions, at least, intellectual theology plays an important role—most of the churches in which most of us grew up (or that we've heard about) have creeds and doctrines, theories and theologies, that we were expected to learn.  Once learned, they were expected to inform our spiritual lives.  “Here’s what God is like,” we were essentially told.  “Now go look for God.”  For many of us -- particularly those who have rejected the more traditional teachings about, and understandings of, "God," -- we get stuck in those concepts, we can’t see beyond them, and so we end up finding nothing.  Since we've been told quite clearly what "God" is, if "God" is not that, then what could "God" be?  If  "God" isn't what the priests and pastors have told us that "God" is, then "God" must not be.

Not all religions are like this, of course.  There is wonderful series of interviews between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell that took place in 1988, "The Power of Myth."   In one episode, Campell told the story of a Shinto priest at an interfaith religious conference.  Someone asked him if he could explain the Shinto theology, their ideology.  The priest thought for a moment and then replied, “We don’t have a theology; we don’t have an ideology.  We dance.”

There are other traditions like this, of course, other traditions that do not put such weight on the working of the mind, traditions that do not imply that we can think our way to a spiritual life, yet the dominant religious traditions in the United States -- the ones many of us have come from (or are still in) -- approach "God" in this way.

There's a powerful spiritual which offers a key that can help us take advantage to past the road block of orthodox teaching.  

“Over my head, I hear music in the air.  Over my head, I hear music in the air.  Over my head, I hear music in the air.  There must be a God somewhere.”

If we start our search with the idea, the ideology, the theory, the theology, we may find ourselves unable to find anything. To paraphrase the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, the biggest obstacle to finding God is our assumptions about what we are looking for.  Augustine of Hippo wrote, "Si comprehendis, non est Deus" -- if you comprehend it, it's not God.

But that’s not the way the song goes.  It is only after hearing this "music in the air" does the singing recognize that there is "a God somewhere."  Because of their actual, first-hand, unqualified, unfiltered, experience of the sacred and the holy they are able to say with conviction that “there must be a God somewhere.”  Their experience precedes the theology.

So if you’re someone who feels a longing to connect with the Sacred, who wants to live a life that is more in touch with the Holy, but who long ago (or maybe only just recently) gave up on the anthropomorphic deity—the old white guy with the long white beard, or any of his stand-ins—yet who can’t figure out what to put in its place, let me encourage you to stop looking for something specific.  Stop looking for something that you've been told the "Sacred Something" ought to look like, and start simply looking around you.  Stop listening for some particular Something, and listen.  Look for those places in your life where you have felt yourself to be in the presence of the Holy.  Listen for those experiences in which you have heard your connectedness.  Seek in your own life—your own feelings, your own moments—those places where you have encountered—or are encountering—the something you might call Sacred. 

When you find such places, then begin to think.  Think about what those moments, those experiences, tell you about “God” (if you even decide to use that word).  Think about what they tell you about the way the world works and the spirit moves.  Build your theology on your experience, rather than the other way around.

At the beginning of that service when I first shared these thoughts with the congregation in Yarmouth I told a story by Kathleen Connelly, a member of that congregation: 

In 1979 I was living in Jackson, Wyoming, and working the breakfast and lunch shift at the Silver Spur Coffee Shop, where the waitresses had the dubious distinction of wearing the ugliest uniform in the world.  I wasn't crazy about the job, but getting out of work at 2 every afternoon made getting up before dawn worthwhile.  Nearly every day as soon as my shift was over I got into my ten-year-old, falling-apart, hole-in-the-trunk, white Mustang and drove north toward Jenny Lake and Yellowstone National Park to go exploring.  The last thing -- or perhaps I should say the last person -- I expected to find on one exceptionally beautiful September day was God.

My belief in the Deity was pretty much dormant at that point.  Twelve years of force-fed Catholic education and theology hadn't strengthened my faith, it had smothered it.  I believed there was Someone out there, but the facet of this Being that Catholicism insisted was the only one meant nothing to me, despite my spending many years and tears trying to understand.  This had left me so religiously exhausted that I hadn't even tried to explore other faiths.  I certainly didn't expect the simple act of driving along a deserted country road to be the catalyst that would re-ignite my spiritual curiosity and send me on the long quest that brought me here.

On that watershed day I drove slowly along, enjoying the pine-scented air and the sound of golden aspen leaves rustling in the breeze.  Then I rounded a curve, and actually gasped and stopped the car to stare at the most glorious mountains I had yet seen.  When I was writing this last night I closed my eyes and tried to summon up a mental photograph so I could tell you in detail how magnificent they were.  But all I can remember is the impression they gave me: that they rose into the sky like a wall of Gothic spires, that the sunlight gleamed on their snowy peaks and gray flanks, and that I sat there with tears in my eyes thinking, "THAT'S God!"

The road I was on went toward them so I drove on, wanting to get as close as I could.  And as I got nearer I discovered I wasn't the only one to have had that reaction.  A sign at the foot of the mountains told me their name: The Cathedral Range.

Pax tecum,

RevWik