. . . from a performance of the Cirque du Soleil.
As a Christmas gift this past year, my dear sister-in-law Carol gave us tickets to see this group. A very enjoyable outing, with the added bonus of some penetrating insights which I now share with you:
1. You have to make it look easy. It’s not enough to do the gravity-defying act; you have to smile and look good at the same time. I find this a useful reminder about hospitality (which I guess defies gravity too): my guests will not enjoy themselves if I make it evident how hard I worked to get dinner on the table. There’s an incident in Edith Schaeffer’s autobiographical book The Tapestry about her having to stay in the background at some event for which she has slaved away in the kitchen; she feels that she’s too untidy and sweaty to make an appearance. Boy, do I sympathize! (And, by the way, Tapestry is a great book, all 650+ pages of it. I wondered when I read it if Edith recognized how unflattering her portrayal of her husband, Francis Schaeffer, really is, at least at some points. She never learned to drive, for instance, because of the way he yelled at her during their first driving lesson. She decided that her marriage was more important than acquiring that skill and so dropped the whole enterprise.)
2. Moments of enchantment are rare and impossible to predict. Know what I remember most from the performance? A truly magnificent — baton twirler. Who’d have thought?
3. Don’t let worries about the future overshadow the present. Pretty obvious, but a reminder I frequently need. I was very aware, as I sat in church that morning listening to an excellent sermon, that I wasn’t getting as much out of said sermon as I should because I was so worried about getting to the performance on time. We needed to be on the road absolutely no later than 11:30 to make the 1:00 showtime down in Colorado Springs. (Scheduling issues prevented us from going to the much easier 4:00 performance.) I’m afraid I did some sneak-peeking at my watch. And, of course, we made it with fifteen minutes to spare. The things that you worry about never happen.
Thanks again, Carol!