Watching circus acts wit
h your family one great opportunity to bond and enjoy life together. I still remember attending an international circus (Russian Circus) at the nearby city with my wife and first child. It was really one of a kind and an experience of a lifetime. I would occasionally carry my son on my shoulder so he could see the wonderful spectacular acts and I bet he was awed. My wife would frequently hold tightly on my arms with such a suspenseful thrill. It was really a nice experience.
As I remember, the final act of the evening was a guillotine-toting performer. He picked out a hesitant volunteer from the audience and majestically demonstrated the sharpness of the blade by swiftly chopping a cucumber. Then he locked the volunteer in the guillotine and exploited the tension with a lengthy torrent of jokes, asked the guy if he had any farewell message. While nearly everyone laughed, in front of me sat the volunteer’s wife and five-year-old son.
Not realizing that the guillotine act was a magic hoax, the boy was panic-stricken. He thought his father was going to be beheaded. His Filipina mom sat at his side and held him, constantly telling him, “It’s alright, Joey. Papa will be okay. Don’t worry.” While her words were well-intended and may have helped a bit, the child remained generally petrified. Finally the blade fell, phenomenally passing his Papa’s head without a nick, and the man was saved. Soon Joey stopped whining and the torment ended.
I doubt if Joey’s terror is different from our own fears as grown-ups. I believe that every experience springs from either love or fear, and we just need to comprehend that the source of love is real, and the source of fear is an illusion. If we can only realize truth in the face of illusion, our fears shall fritter away and we shall go back to the reassuring arms of reality.
During those grace moments, God’s voice seeks to remind us of the truth; our role is to listen to that voice and have faith in it. In this circus of life, when something scary shows up, it spits right in our face. Someone we care for might run off, or a bill beyond our capacity to pay ma
y be handed to us, or we may pick up a tabloid and read of tragedies, calamities and diseases we never heard of. We get terrified and go frantic (at least inside). Is this really any different than the child helplessly watching his father in a stage guillotine? Meanwhile a woman’s comforting voice whispers in our ear, “It’s okay. Don’t worry. It will be alright.”
The mother’s voice is soft, yet expressive. We want to trust it, but the raging illusion before us is so blatant that it snatches our full awareness. The band’s drums have momentarily drowned out the guitar. So we ride out the experience and somehow emerge safe and sound. Only then do we realize that the manifestation of evil was a trick of the mind, and ultimately the voice of love was the one worth heeding. Welcome to the Magic Circus of Experience.
When you watch science fiction movies and you get carried away by the amazing visual effects, just wait you’re your till your buddy would elbow you and laugh out, “That’s so fake, it’s not real!” I wonder if those nasty movies were a training ground to face and deal with shoddy experiences in life. Finally we can look at just about any frightening experience and recognize that if we had remained calm and clear in the face of the ogres at our heels, we could have dealt them swiftly and gotten on with the joy of living. But when we’re in the midst of frightening illusions, that’s not so easy, for they seem real and larger than us. But they are not. If you mull over all the things that once frightened you, and what you learned after you overcome them, you will discover that you are undeniably bigger than anything you fear.
In the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the grand wizard gathers the young wizards in training and pulls out the huge “buggert box” where all of the children’s secret fears reside. One by one he released the buggerts and coaches each child to point his or her wand at it, cry out, “Ridiculous!” and cackle. As each child does, the buggerts evaporate. They could not long stand in the face of the insurmountable combination of truth and happiness. Here, each of us clutches a frightened child within us, and right next to it sits a comforting mother reminding us that it’s just a trick of the mind. Then the game becomes less about running out of the theatre and more about laughing our buggerts to oblivion.
h your family one great opportunity to bond and enjoy life together. I still remember attending an international circus (Russian Circus) at the nearby city with my wife and first child. It was really one of a kind and an experience of a lifetime. I would occasionally carry my son on my shoulder so he could see the wonderful spectacular acts and I bet he was awed. My wife would frequently hold tightly on my arms with such a suspenseful thrill. It was really a nice experience.As I remember, the final act of the evening was a guillotine-toting performer. He picked out a hesitant volunteer from the audience and majestically demonstrated the sharpness of the blade by swiftly chopping a cucumber. Then he locked the volunteer in the guillotine and exploited the tension with a lengthy torrent of jokes, asked the guy if he had any farewell message. While nearly everyone laughed, in front of me sat the volunteer’s wife and five-year-old son.
Not realizing that the guillotine act was a magic hoax, the boy was panic-stricken. He thought his father was going to be beheaded. His Filipina mom sat at his side and held him, constantly telling him, “It’s alright, Joey. Papa will be okay. Don’t worry.” While her words were well-intended and may have helped a bit, the child remained generally petrified. Finally the blade fell, phenomenally passing his Papa’s head without a nick, and the man was saved. Soon Joey stopped whining and the torment ended.
I doubt if Joey’s terror is different from our own fears as grown-ups. I believe that every experience springs from either love or fear, and we just need to comprehend that the source of love is real, and the source of fear is an illusion. If we can only realize truth in the face of illusion, our fears shall fritter away and we shall go back to the reassuring arms of reality.
During those grace moments, God’s voice seeks to remind us of the truth; our role is to listen to that voice and have faith in it. In this circus of life, when something scary shows up, it spits right in our face. Someone we care for might run off, or a bill beyond our capacity to pay ma
y be handed to us, or we may pick up a tabloid and read of tragedies, calamities and diseases we never heard of. We get terrified and go frantic (at least inside). Is this really any different than the child helplessly watching his father in a stage guillotine? Meanwhile a woman’s comforting voice whispers in our ear, “It’s okay. Don’t worry. It will be alright.”The mother’s voice is soft, yet expressive. We want to trust it, but the raging illusion before us is so blatant that it snatches our full awareness. The band’s drums have momentarily drowned out the guitar. So we ride out the experience and somehow emerge safe and sound. Only then do we realize that the manifestation of evil was a trick of the mind, and ultimately the voice of love was the one worth heeding. Welcome to the Magic Circus of Experience.
When you watch science fiction movies and you get carried away by the amazing visual effects, just wait you’re your till your buddy would elbow you and laugh out, “That’s so fake, it’s not real!” I wonder if those nasty movies were a training ground to face and deal with shoddy experiences in life. Finally we can look at just about any frightening experience and recognize that if we had remained calm and clear in the face of the ogres at our heels, we could have dealt them swiftly and gotten on with the joy of living. But when we’re in the midst of frightening illusions, that’s not so easy, for they seem real and larger than us. But they are not. If you mull over all the things that once frightened you, and what you learned after you overcome them, you will discover that you are undeniably bigger than anything you fear.
In the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the grand wizard gathers the young wizards in training and pulls out the huge “buggert box” where all of the children’s secret fears reside. One by one he released the buggerts and coaches each child to point his or her wand at it, cry out, “Ridiculous!” and cackle. As each child does, the buggerts evaporate. They could not long stand in the face of the insurmountable combination of truth and happiness. Here, each of us clutches a frightened child within us, and right next to it sits a comforting mother reminding us that it’s just a trick of the mind. Then the game becomes less about running out of the theatre and more about laughing our buggerts to oblivion.
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