There are times when mere mortals so transcend the bounds of space and gravity that you think the angels envy them. Certainly taking two children, ages four and seven (themselves as innocent as angels) to see the extraordinary performance of the Cirque du Soleil and watching their faces glow, eyes wide, lifts you to angelic heights. Hearts overflow.
The athletes defy the laws of physics. I think especially the four young girls (could they be older than 17?) who, lying on their backs, juggle great spinning platters with their feet, then pass the platters back and forth from one girl’s feet to the next; and then as if the platters were not enough, they juggle each other with their feet. Here a girl, still spinning her platter, lies on her back on another’s feet, when whoosh! she’s tossed onto the feet of the juggler next to her at the same moment that the girl on that juggler is thrown to the next one over. It’s an aerial dance of grace and timing impossible to imagine.
But one stunning act is burned into my brain. A rope dangles from the ceiling. On it hangs a bag, a sac: the colors are gray in a dark surround, and slowly you realize that the bag is moving, bulging, shifting, hunching, until slowly an appendage emerges, another. You are watching the miracle of a chrysalis—the pupa emerging from its integument. The gray bag drops, caught on one heel, and just as you grasp that you’re holding your breath, the dancer arches back, lifts the cloth and transforms it into two huge trembling, golden wings: the angelic butterfly in flight.
Afterwards, the world looked different to us. The next day I took a walk in the woods. The light streaming through the trees, each quivering autumn leaf, the squirrel chattering from a branch, the bug boring deliberately across my the path—each moment holds a miracle, seen afresh.
