man by the ticket stand muttered prophecies thick with Russian and rum, casting secretive sideways glances at the wisecracking monkey on his shoulder. That is how, an hour later, my three defenseless children found themselves seated ringside, wide-eyed, beside their grandmother, gripping their seats with joy, as the jugglers hurled knives and the boys swallowed fire and the gymnast danced on the rolling globe and the sparkling trapeze artists flung themselves through space like falling stars.
The circus—that institution of joy, that spectacle of ecumenism, that tent of democracy, that circle of sobornost, that festive assemblage of man and beast, sensuality and austerity, laughter and terror, life and death—the circus: is it not one of the last enduring signs of humanity in a world grown bloodless, inhuman, and cold? In a world ruled by the Machine, the circus maintains its raucous witness to the joy of Life. In a world ruled by Work, the circus upholds the true doctrine of the primacy of Play. In a world ruled by Death, the circus proclaims the happy gospel of death’s defeat.
It is surely worthy of notice that some of the most imaginative theologians of our time have found particular spiritual solace in the circus. Henri Nouwen likened Christ’s followers to clowns—“he who is called to be a minister is called to be a clown.” He was spellbound by a German trapeze troupe and followed them from place to place until he had befriended them and they had given him lessons. The trapeze, he said, taught him all he needed to know about the way trust conquers fear. He wrote a book about “clowning” and, in his later years, hoped to write a book on the spirituality of the trapeze—though he never lived to do it.
The lay theologian William Stringfellow had an even deeper obsession with the circus. He compared the circus to the kingdom of God and insisted that the church would be more faithful if it were less like a religious institution and more like a circus. “Biblical people, like circus folk, live typically as sojourners, interrupting time, with few possessions, and in tents, in this world.” Like Nouwen, Stringfellow thought the circus exemplified a Christian vision of Christ’s triumph over the fear of death. The circus ridicules death, and so becomes a parable of the coming kingdom: “In the circus, humans are represented as freed from consignment to death. There one person walks on a wire fifty feet above the ground, . . . another hangs in the air by the heels, one upholds twelve in a human pyramid, another is shot from a cannon. The circus performer is the image of the eschatological person—emancipated from frailty and inhibition, exhilarant, transcendent over death—neither confined nor conformed by the fear of death anymore. . . . The circus is eschatological parable and social parody” (Stringfellow, A Simplicity of Faith). Stringfellow filled his home with circus memorabilia. He subscribed to circus magazines. He spent an entire summer—it was the high point of his life—travelling from town to town with the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus, until he had blended imperceptibly with the rest of that caravan of prophets, fools, and dreamers. As a popular itinerant lecturer, he used to plan his speaking schedule around circus routes. When asked how often he attended the circus, he once replied, “Not often. About twenty times a year.” Stringfellow always planned to write a full-scale theology of the circus—though, like Nouwen, he died before ever completing that noble piece of intellectual clowning. During a long illness, he built a huge scale model of the Clyde Beatty-Cole Brothers Circus. When he died they played circus music at his funeral.
Think for a moment of the desert fathers and mothers, those ascetics who took to the deserts of Egypt and Syria in the third and fourth centuries. You could make a strong case that the desert ascetics were really a motley crew of wandering circus performers. Half-deranged spiritual clowns dressed in rags, poking fun at worldly wealth and pomp. Ascetic trapeze artists performing their reckless feats atop high columns. Lonely hermits taming the wild beasts as a sign of creation made new. Contemplative acrobats ascending the rungs of their interior ladders while the world looked on, breathless with suspense. Rejoicing clownlike even in sorrow, they renounced the whole wide world as a solemn witness to life and a gigantic joke against death and the devil.
Today as my children swayed in their seats, clutching their hot dogs for dear life, gazing up into the mighty vault of the Big Top while the fearless liturgy spun its circle high above them, I wonder if they heard distant echoes of another performance, another time and place where weary souls drag themselves in from the dust and heat and huddle in a circle, scared and hopeful, hardly believing their eyes when a clownish figure lifts bread and wine like a juggler and bellows out the great joke that is the exhilarating, momentous, stupendously funny secret at the center of the universe: “Christ is risen!”
Icon of the Holy Cross. Painted by Deacon Matthew D. Garrett; used by kind permission of the artist.
Cross
On the icon of the Holy Cross
1
The icon depicts revelation: the crucifixion of the human Jesus as the appearance of the eternal God. The divine being is eternally cross-shaped, even as it is eternally radiant.
2
The crucifixion of Christ is the secret of eternity, the true and only glory that shines forever from the abyss.
3
At the center of Christian devotion is not a revealed doctrine, a religious ideal, or even a right way of life, but an embodied human person. Christianity began not with beliefs about Jesus, but with people who had known Jesus. They were affected by Jesus as one is affected by friendship, not as one is affected by reading a powerful book or encountering a new idea. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled” (1 John 1:1). The heartbeat of Christian faith is a fact as tangible as wood and nails.
4
The crucifixion is depicted here as realistically as is possible within the bounds of iconography. The human Jesus stretches out his arms across a rough-hewn wooden beam. His body is bent, his feet twisted, his hands pierced, his head turned down in sorrow.
5
Around the earthly historical cross shines an eternal heavenly cross. This budded cross is clean, unbloodied, perfect; its form is untouched by the harsh lines and distorted perspectives of the small internal cross. Its form is light itself, the glory of eternity. Everything contingent, historical, earthly is suspended amid this timeless light, absorbed into the serene balance of perfect form. The budded cross is the true essential form, the Platonic reality, that projects the earthly crucifixion like a black shadow on the wall of the cave of time.
6
The eternal cross is a theodicy. Death and hell are safely circumscribed within its shining frame.
7
At the top of the icon, the divine face of Christ peers through the curtains, high above the earthly historical cross of Jesus. Unlike the face of the crucified one, this Christ-face looks straight ahead, reminding us that its own impassive glory is the hidden truth of the crucifixion. On either side, the saints gather reassuringly, springing like flowers from the barren wood. They model for us our own proper response to the spectacle of the crucified one. We are to respond with adoring humility and reverent submission. The presence of the saints makes the cross safe, familiar, accessible. There is, the icon assures us, a proper human posture that corresponds to the fact of the cross. The cross stands not merely over and against us but alongside us, in uninterrupted continuity with our religious piety.
8
Is not history—the history of Jesus—completely fixed and immobilized in this representation? Is it not suspended in eternity like
