Tonight the world-renowned Ringling Bros. & Barnum &
Bailey Circus performs its final show in New York City. When I heard this news on the radio this
morning, my eyes misted-over a bit… well, okay, I started to cry. I have so many happy memories of the
circus. The circus is something you do
with someone you love – your family, a close friend, a date. You can’t be disinterested when you are
sitting on the bleachers trying to figure out which of the “rings” of activity
you are paying attention to and you remember why people use the expression,
“It’s a three ring circus around here.”
I think if I had ADHD, I would melt-down at the circus. But I don’t, and so I love just letting my
attention float from one arena to the next.
I don’t demand myself to absorb it all, any more than a child has
expectations of what he/she is going to “get” out of any particular day at the
playground. To use a religious phrase,
“you let it minister to you.” And that
it has done for decades.
I take my hat off to the many selfless people who have
brought this form of entertainment to us over the years. They have chosen to live a truly transient
lifestyle so that others could be entertained.
They live in trains and trailers, always on the move. Their off-season homes are something they get
used to leaving when the Ring Master calls.
I read a fascinating article once in Catholic
Digest that talked about a priest in Florida who devoted his ministry to
the circus people. How cool is that?! (plus I bet he got great tickets and heard
awesome stories!) My friend Mary once
told me that the families of volunteer firefighters are like another layer of a
big family. I pondered that because we
say that about our faith communities, too, sometimes. So I imagine the circus is even more so like
that: you have an understanding of the sacrifices
and challenges that are unique to your profession and you can respect and
support your colleagues with a level of comprehension that is beyond most of
us. Ie.) I’ve ridden in a train, but
never lived in one for months.
I think the personal enrichment factor for them is that they
get to do what they absolutely love.
Sometimes that thing is bizarre – like putting a flaming torch down your
throat. I can honestly say I’ve never
woken up in the morning and said, I think I’d like to soak a stick in some
foreign substance, light it on fire, and see if I can put it in my mouth
without burning my lips. In the same
regard, I have honestly never longed to get face-to-face with a Siberian tiger
or tried to train a grizzly bear to ride a bicycle or the like. But I honor the fact that someone, somewhere,
in fact does wake up in the morning
and say: “this is what I want to spend
my time doing.” All of this has served
to bring levity and joy to families and friends, to get our minds off partisan
bickering and elections, and to help the beauty of our imaginations remain
engaged by wonder.
The word is that “ticket sales are
down.” I do not think that is because,
as some have asserted, they stopped using elephants in their performances. Although I’m sure it was a factor. I remember when I first moved to Central New
York someone told me that back in the day when the circus came to town on a
train there was a big parade from the rail yard down the streets into the venue
in the city where the circus would actually be held. I wish I had seen it – the concept of a circus
parade of that caliber is so wondrous to me.
And, yes, the elephants would be what I was MOST interested in
seeing. (I could insert here a spirited
monologue on my resentment against judgmental, ignorant people who presume that
any trained animal is abused. Frankly,
if you’re traveling with the likes of elephants and tigers, etc., you HAVE TO
GIVE THEM A JOB by training them so they don’t go all Marley-dog-whacko on
you. It is true for dogs; they need to be constructively busy or they
will make their own negative-busy. Why wouldn’t
that be true with elephants, tigers, bears or even monkeys? Hence the phrase: “engaging in monkey
business” when things go crazy.)
My best guess is that ticket sales are down in the circus in
proportion to the raising of interest in other things. Shall I go off on the over-the-top demands of
youth sporting programs here? Or perhaps
we could talk about the explosion of countless forms of social networking for
adults and kids alike (twitter, facebook, snapchat, and plain old email, etc.)?
We have so many means of communication
it is in defiance of logic that we remain such an underdeveloped generation when
it comes to true heartfelt understanding. Maybe we could interject the idea of the
dissolution of the traditional nuclear family as we once knew it (George, June,
Wally & the Beaver)? In the current
generation, you only give attention to pretty much three things: 1) what absolutely demands it – like work or
school; and 2) anything that is connected to keeping those things going –
groceries, parent teacher conferences, soccer practice; and 3) whatever you
elect to do to get away from those demands.
Perhaps just as the slogan “The family that prays together, stays
together,” was evidently true forty years ago; we could also posit that “The
family that PLAYS together, stays together.”
And the latter hypothesis is why I grieve the loss of the circus.
As a child, I was raised surrounded by my parents,
grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all pretty much in a 20 minute radius
from my home. I remember one of my
uncles taking four of us cousins to the circus when we were younger. It remains as important a memory to me as
that of riding the mini-bike with my younger cousin sitting behind me,
helmet-clad, holding on to me for dear life.
She trusted me to drive safely and that is why I am the only family
member with whom she would ride double on the motorized bike we all loved so
much. It was in these interactions of
leisure and levity that we all built the relationships of love and trust we
enjoy today. And into these
relationships, some of the cousins have brought spouses, and then their own
children. I was raised by the village
before the politicians even claimed it as their idea. And I am a better person for that. If I had my own children, it is what I would
want for them as well. I maintain that
events like the circus were an important particle in that mosaic of love.
The other great loss with the finale of the circus genre is
the loss of an outlet for some spectacular talent. It was the place where people of unlikely
forms of talent fit rather handily:
trapeze artists, tiger-tamers, motorcycle stuntmen, and so forth. It was also a place where the unusual
variances of animals and humanity could be observed and appreciated without spectators
being labeled as bullies or people who were politically incorrect. Perhaps more than one person who felt out of
sync with the larger set of society packed a bag and said, “I think I will run
away and go join the circus.” They had
some sort of confidence that there would be a safe haven there with like-minded
souls. Haven’t we all had days we’d like
to give two weeks’ notice at work and just go do something that was really,
really quite different and, at any rate, far more exciting?!
Now at this point, we will have to rely on local fairs and
summer festivals to see some of these oddities of nature. Even the less odd can be a source of
entertainment. I remember walking by a
travel trailer at the State Fair and seeing the advertisement for getting a
closer look at bears of the North Country.
I presumed it was some sort of a hoax but curiosity got the better of
me. I kissed my money goodbye and walked
into the trailer only to find the venue definitively
as advertised. Holy smoke! What seemed like a sheet of plexiglass
separated me and a few viewing humans from not one, not two, but four or five
healthy and very large bears. And they
weren’t sleeping either. Two of them
were rolling and playing with each other – which I am sure was a good
occupation as opposed to slamming the glass and eating the PEOPLE on the other side
– I examined their detail as they played.
Their fur was amazing and thick, even for the summer. Obviously the trailer truck was climate
controlled for them. But what made me
pause was the length of their claws: each
claw was as long as any of my fingers.
They were probably registered with the FBI as lethal weapons. At that point I found myself making my way
toward the exit, my curiosity was not only fulfilled for the moment, it was
abated from any need to see bears again.
Lastly, a word about clowns because what is a circus, if not
a haven for clowns? Clowns have gotten
some really bad press lately due to a few college kids having some sport by
scaring a few kids at a bus stop. In our
ever-heightened vigilance surrounding Stranger Danger, it set off some
community alarm when in fact it was young adults just being foolish and,
surprise, surprise, not thinking through
the consequences of their actions. I met a real clown recently. He sat at the bedside of his ailing wife with
a devotion and constancy that is only hinted at in Hallmark movies. I had
the opportunity to talk to him a bit and found him to be an incredible and
compassionate human being. He told me
some of his thoughts on clowning which, for him, is truly a ministry to people who need some
joy. I found my eyes brimming up, as I
pondered the importance of that particular effort.
Clowns can trace their roots at least back to the court
jesters of Medieval times. Their job was
to bring levity to the king and his entourage.
Was the presumption that beyond the obvious entertainment value afforded
to the wealthy and sometimes noble, the job of being a good king needed some comic
relief? I wonder if we sent some clowns
into the Senate and House of Representatives, they would lighten up at lighter
things, and re-focus on what is truly important thereby enabling them to come
at their interchanges with others with more civility and respect thereafter? I know, but I can dream. Maybe it was The Joker from the Batman series
that first combined the role of clown with villain. That has done us no good, because now we can’t
distinguish the good ones from the bad ones when we need to (ie. The college
kids mentioned above). Why can’t we have
just ONE thing in our world that doesn’t have a bad-side to it?! Then there are the men who serve as clowns
for the Shriners circus and raise money for things like the Dana Farber Cancer
Institute, or the Hospital Burn Unit in Boston.
Suddenly, the comic role yields to nobility: the clowns have become kings. This role of
humor being their message to us: search
inside to see that beneath the pain, beneath the humor that makes sport of life’s
incongruities, you too can become a king in your world. You can make The Difference.
So if the elephants must go, and the trapeze artists must
climb down from their high-wires, and the guys who eat fire and the ladies with beards and triple chins
need to go live somewhere in a trailer park to drink root beer and eat chips, I
make one final appeal: please,
somewhere there’s got to be clowns. I
don’t think we can make it without them.
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