Balancing Act, 12

The juggling fool at the centre has long been for me a strong and powerful metaphor. This goes back to my late twenties when I was reading the Christian mystical fiction (more magic realism) of Charles Williams. I can't go into a lot of detail here, and if you want more information, Gentle Reader, simply Google his name and don't say I didn't warn you. In one of his novels, the Greater Trumps (nothing at all to do with the loathsome ogre in the White House) he deals a lot with archetypes using figures from the Tarot, especially the Fool. This was when I first embraced the Fool as being my own central unifying force. He had always been there, at the centre of my being, just as he lives at the centre of our universe, juggling his multitudinous brightly coloured balls, those cardinal realities that hold our humanity and our place in the universe intact. The Fool is a most peculiar and outstanding fellow, or should I say, archetype? We think of him as the clown, the jester or the comedian. And yes, these are all faces of the Fool. But there is also there a nimble grace and shimmering beauty that radiates through the humour and jest. They hold each other in place. It is the oddest sense of balance. Hee are some words with which I would describe the Fool: impossible to define; humble; joyous; ironical; creative; dynamic; obscure; colourful; compassion; empathy; wholeness; movement; light; grace; diversity; vulnerable; lover of truth; universal; visionary; absurd; courageous; imaginative; kind; impossible to pin down; eloquent; beautiful; nimble; silent; music; silly; self-deprecating, state of flux and dance; playful; spiritual, holy and sacred; self-sacrificing; resilient; risk; danger; flirtatious; always being reborn and recreated; juggler. I could go on, and these are merely lame and inadequate adjectives for describing what is essentially indescribable. Those are not necessarily my personal qualities, perhaps some, there are others that I aspire to. some that I find rather frightening. And, of course, why would anyone want an archetype so obviously unreliable and flaky to be at the very centre of things. But the Fool is at the very centre and heart of the universe, for the Fool is also the image of Christ, the image of God made incarnate in our very imperfect humanity. When I was in Bogota, Colombia, I was particularly intrigued by some of the street jugglers I encountered. Their skill was something amazing, but it wasn't simply their skill, but their stupid and reckless daring, making them at the moment the very image of the Fool. Whether the young man standing in front of traffic stopping at a red light to show his tricks and juggling licks (and if you have experienced the horrible drivers and dreadful traffic of Bogota, you will have an idea of to which I am referring. Then there were the two bicycle jugglers in what must be one of the world's most dangerous traffic circles. I myself got so sick of almost getting killed while negotiating that miserable traffic snare, that I began to detour on a pedestrian overpass nearby. For those of you who have lived in Bogota, you will know it: it is at calle 100 and Carrera 15. So there they were, the two daring young men, balancing, standing on top of their bikes and steering them with their legs while juggling more balls than I could count. So dances the Fool. But the Fool, no matter how many times he falls or is toppled, will always land on his feet, and rises up again to continue to scandalize the world.