Friday 31 December 2010

Sadness and Laughter

The first time my grandmother took me to a circus was in Leeuwdoringstad, a small country town in the Western Transvaal, near Klerksdorp and Makwassie. She told me how much I would enjoy it.
The two of us went into the tent, and the smell of the animals and the dust made me wonder if I should be there at all. I was only 4 years old.
Then the circus master announced the first event and the band played out loud with trumpets and drum rolls and smashing cymbals as the lions came into the cage. The whip cracked and it frightened me.
The people woed and aahd and applauded and I sat rivetted next to my grandma. Then it was the horses with plumes on their heads like ladies in the Pentecostal church choirs that I was used to on Sundays.
And then they sent in the clowns to keep our attention as they changed the scenery and the set.
They had painted faces that looked sad. Their mouths were too large and sagging and their eyes drooped downwards. Their hats were too small and their trousers and boots were too big. Both of them had large red leather gloves on. Inside the gloves were crackers. When they slapped each other through the face the crackers went off. It shocked me and scared me and I started crying. It was too much for a little boy.
'Let's go home Ouma,' I pleaded, 'I don't like all this fighting!'
Ouma oblidged. It was the last time she ever asked me to go to the circus.
I thought about this moment and thought about watching Cirque du Soleil in Disneyland with my friend Brian and his wife.
The absolute artistry and agility of the performers astounded me and the timing of every moment to the music was mind boggling. The trampoline act took my breath away. I hurt my back on a trampoline when I was 14 and suffered back trouble for many years until the Lord healed me completely. I tried to do a backward somersault without any coaching. Dangerous.
But today I thought of that first visit to the circus and today is the last day of the year. Tomorrow will be the start of another year, a new year, a brand new year.
And I thought of the sad looking clowns.
Clowns make people laught, don't they? Why are their faces always sad?
Charlie Chaplin,Peter Sellers and all the other comedy stars, Gene Wilder, they all have a note of sadness to their lives. It is almost an integral part of a clown's armoury: his own sadness.
There is sadness in most lives, but the antedote is comedy and laughter. Thank God for someone who can make you laugh. Laughter is like good medicine. A merry heart has a continual feast.
Patch Adams made the terminally ill patients laugh in the hospital and got banned as a medical practitioner, but he did more good than the medical profession realised.
I once prayed for a lady called Priscilla who suffered from asthma attacks since she was a little girl. When I finished blowing into her mouth she was at first upset and then realised that she normally pumps air into her mouth with the asthma pump and then she started laughing until we all laughed with her. Dr. Sachs, a doctor in our church in Milnerton, came forward and explained how laughter is used for chronic asthmatic patients to bring relief.
So at the end of the year, let us lay aside the weight of sadness we might have experienced and let us remember the moments of sunshine and laughter. Let our spirits be revived and perked up again, because the Joy of the Lord is our strength, after all.

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