Why I Probably Will Walk Away From THE WALK

counter clockwise from top left: Jean-Louis Blondeau, Annie Allix, Jean-François Heckel,
Jean-Pierre Dousseau, Jim Moore, Barry Greenhouse, and Phillipe Petit

I am someone who is always annoyed when people comment on movies they haven't seen, books they haven't read, music they haven't listened to, yet I'm about to become one of them.  On October 9th, 2015, TriStar Productions released the movie The Walk, staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  It is based on the incredible event of August 7th, 1974, when the French wire-walker Phillipe Petit danced back and forth, for nearly 45-minutes, between the Twin Towers in New York City.  I was just about 12 years old when this happened, and I can remember the sheer wonder and awe of it.  Something so impossible to even contemplate, and yet Petit didn't simply contemplate it, he accomplished it.  He made the impossible, possible, and it is not too much of an overstatement to say that my world changed on that day.  And with the relase of the 2008 documentary Man on Wire, I began to celebrate annually "International Phillipe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day."  (You can look back through my blog history and find a number of posts about all of this.)

You'd think that I'd be one of the first ones in line to see the new film, and I am tempted.  I might even see it at some point, but not right away.  And maybe not at all.  The reason for my hesitation is that from all accounts it tells only one part of the story of that day, and the story it tells is a misdirection from the true story -- a much more powerful story than that of a lone man overcoming impossible odds. 

In Man on Wire and, again from what I've heard, The Walk, it is noted that Petit had accomplices.  And this is how they are usually depicted -- accomplices who help Petit realize his vision, his dream.  Several years ago I wanted to use a particular picture I'd come across of Petit street juggling and discovered that this beautiful photograph had been taken by none other than Jean-Louis Blondeau.  I wrote to him in France and asked his permission to use the photograph.  We have corresponded back and forth several times now, and from him I have come to see the "fairy tale" (as he calls it) of the genius wire walker as the mere surface of the story, and a misleading one at that.

The truth as I understand it is that le coup -- as the walk was known among those who participated -- was very much a collaborative venture of a community of people.  In fact, the walk on that August morning was as much an achievement of Jean-Louis, Annie Allix, Jean-François Heckel, Jean-Pierre Dousseau, Jim Moore, and Barry Greenhouse as it was a feat of Petit's.  Without them it simply would have been impossible and, not to at all detract from the sheer courage, commitment, and skill shown by Petit as he stepped out onto that wire, it was in many ways that team of "accomplises" who really overcame those "impossible odds."  It may be an overstatement to say that the walk itself was the easiest part of the whole thing, but it is my distinct impression that it was not the most difficult, either.

In last year's post I noted that I will no longer celebrate "International Phillipe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day" in favor, now, of more accurately marking the anniversary of "The Dance Between The Towers."  This is not the story of one man overcoming great odds; it is the story of a group of friends working together to do the impossible and to inspire the world.  That is the movie I want to see.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

There is nothing new under the sun ...

When I was a kid I was a fiend for Monty Python's Flying Circus.  (Still am, actually.)  It came on at 11:30, and I'd stay up to watch, howling in the otherwise quiet house.  One night my dad came into the TV room just as Python was about to start and said that he wanted to see what I thought was so funny.  He sat through the entire episode, as I remember it, without laughing even once.  When the show was over I asked him how it could be possible that he thought none of what he'd seen had been funny.  He said, "I thought it was funny when Ernie Kovacs did it in the 50s."

At the time I thought that that was kind of a weird response, but later I experienced my own version of it.  When It's Gary Shandling's Show came on critics went wild.  They especially heralded his unprecedented practice of breaking the so-called "fourth wall" and talking directly to the camera.  And as I read reviewer after reviewer lifting up this cutting edge concept I kept thinking to myself, "but George Burns did that on the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show thirty years earlier"

This came to mind a couple of nights ago while watching the incredible fanfare surrounding Nik Wallenda's high wire walk in Chicago (brought to you with breathless hype by the Discovery Channel).  I don't want to take anything away from his accomplishment.  It was pretty cool, especially the second segment where he walked blindfolded.  And, as he said, he'd strung his wire higher than it had ever been in his family's roughly two centuries of wire walking.  None the less:

• While his wire was strung higher than ever in his family's history, it was still only about half as high as the wire Philippe Petit walked in 1974.
  
• We were told how his team -- of a dozen or so riggers -- only had two days (!) to rig the wire, which included guys lines that reached a thousand feet to the grounds and special hardware that was bolted into the buildings.  Petit's team of four people (led by Jean Louis Blondeau), not only had just one night to rig his wire, but had to do so while dodging police, with the time pressure of beating sunrise, with the need to secretly get the wire from one building to the other (they used a bow and arrow ... seriously!), and without the ability to to attach cables to anything other than the roof of the towers themselves.
  
• After his first walk of about three or four minutes the hyper hosts and commentators wondered if Wallenda would have the stamina to do the second leg of the walk.  Petit was on his wire for forty-five minutes, making about eight crossings.
  
• Both Wallenda and Petit performed their walks without any kind of safety gear but Petit, again at roughly twice the height, did not have trained rescue crews on the ready to rush out to him should he fall and catch himself to hang on the wire.
  
• Throughout his walk Wallenda was in constant contact with his family and his team.  Petit was entirely alone up there, and those who had worked so hard to make le coup possible could only watch and hope.
  
• Wallenda walked two wires -- one with a 19° incline and the other he walked blindfolded.  Petit, on the other hand made eight crossings, as I said, during which he knelt and saluted, sat down, and even lay down looking up, as he said, at a seagull flying overhead.  (And did I mention that his wire was twice as high as Wallenda's?)
  
• A reported 65,000 people turned out to watch Wallenda's walk.  It was hyped in the media as an event not to be missed.  There were commentators, expert talking heads, and even a computer generated model of what the winds might be like.  In James Marsh's haigiographic film Man on Wire there is a moving picture of some of Petit's friends and co-conspirators looking up at the speck that was Petit on the wire.  There are a few people who have stopped to look up, too, but there are others who keep on walking, oblivious.  Yes, Petit undoubtedly wanted an audience, but it does seem as though the experience itself was the driving force.
   
• And while I can not say this for certain, I cannot imagine that Wallenda's team had anywhere near the passion and devotion not just to the walk itself but to the adventure of doing something impossible (and getting away with it) and to the sheer artistry and beauty of this surprise gift to New York City.

Again, what Nik Wallenda did in Chicago the other night deserves to be celebrated.  It was an incredible feat.  But he is not the first to have done something like this, and I fear that there are those who know nothing about the history on which this act was built.  If it hadn't been for Petit's team, and Petit himself, walking between those twin towers forty years ago, no one would have even cared about something like Wallenda's walk.

Our history matters, and our pioneers should not be forgotten.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

The 40th Anniversary of the Dance Between the Towers

Each year, on the anniversary of the day that the French wire-walker and street performer Phillipe Petit danced for forty-five minutes between the towers of the World Trade Center, I watch the wonderful documentary about le coup, Man on Wire.  And each year I am once again inspired.

I am inspired by the raw courage and sheer lunacy of this feat.  At one point in the film Petit says of his attitude on first actually seeing the towers, "It's impossible, that's sure.  So let's start working."  Petit's confidence in his own abilities is mindboggling -- that anyone could imagine that they could do such a thing!

But this was not a solitary venture.  Although Petit was the one on that wire a quarter of a mile above the streets of New York City, in truth he was only there because of his friends.  In the dedication of his own reminiscence of the event -- the book now also called Man on Wire but originally called To Reach The Clouds --  Petit names twenty-one individuals, and leaves at least a few unnamed.  He says that it is to these that "this story belongs."  It was not just Petit's faith in himself that's inspiring.  He also had a seemingly innate, unquestioned faith in those who were working on this project with him, and they in him.

That's something that comes through if you watch the film closely enough, or read the book for the story within the story -- each of these people believed in this crazy idea as much as Petit did.  Each of them thought it was worth doing.  Each of them thought it was possible.  Each of them thought that she or he was just the person to make it happen.  They were not merely his assistants; they were his collaborators, his co-conspirators.  It was not Petit's coup; the walk belonged to all of them.

Storytellers love a hero.  Audiences want to see one woman or one man with the courage and the skills to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles and do what no one else can.  (This is true, at least, of American storytellers and audiences brought up in the dominant culture of the United States.)  We want there to be a pinnacle -- to inspire us, to give us something to aspire to.  And so the images of Petit on that 3/4" wire, alone, touches something in our souls.  It's nearly impossible for us to imagine anyone else out there with him.

But there were.  Yes, only he had put his life on the line, but they had put the life of a dear friend on the line knowing that if something were to happen he would die a poet's death whereas they would have to live with if for the rest of their lives.  It was the skill of his feet and that insane concentration that kept him aloft on that early Tuesday morning, but it was the skill of his friends and their insane dedication that got him there in the first place.  There is another story -- a less mythic, perhaps, yet deeper and more true story -- about le coup.

It is also, I think, an ultimately more inspiring one.  When I was younger it is quite possible that I aspired to be that solitary hero.  (I don't know for sure, I'm old enough now not to really remember!)  Now, though, I aspire to be part of a community that's doing daring things; to be one of a group that believes that, together, nothing can stop them.

I used to call this day "International Phillipe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day."  I will call it now, the Anniversary of the Dance Between the Towers because those who were on those roofs with him, and those who'd been with him in the planning and were now down on the street, and even those of us who merely watched and wondered ... we all were dancing too.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

UPDATE:  When I first wrote this post I was able to find photos of three of the team that were involved that day -- Jean-Louis Blondeau (who planed and organized the whole adventure), Annie Allix, and Jean-François Heckel.  I wrote to Jean-Louis, with whom I've previously been in touch, and he told me that there were three other people who really needed to be mentioned -- Jean-Pierre Dousseau (who is never even mentioned in the film yet who drove the van into the Towers' delivery area and who was an integral part of the feat), and both Jim Moore and Barry Greenhouse (who do feature in the film).  He also sent me photos of these three so that I might honor them and their role as well.

So this year -- the 40th anniversary -- I salute them.

Jean-Louis Blondeau

Annie Allix

Jean-François Heckel

Jean-Pierre Dousseau

Jim Moore

 

Barry Greenhouse

International Dance Between the Towers Day 2013

A few years back I decided to declare a national, an international holiday!  I called it:  International Philippe Petit Danced Between The Towers Day.  It celebrates one of our history's greatest acts of holy folly -- on August 7, 1974 the French street performer and wire walker Philippe Petit stepped out onto a wire that had been surreptitiously rigged over the preceding night between the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and proceeded to "dance" between them for approximately 45 minutes.

I was twelve years old at the time, and the idea of this was electrifying.  A few years ago a documentary film about "le coup" -- Man on Wire -- came out and recaptured my imagination. (It also captured the Best Documentary Oscar in 2008.)  My annual ritual of watching that film began, and the declaration of IPPDBTTD was born.

In June, Nik Wallenda of the famous Flying Wallenda's family got people talking about perilous promenades when he walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon.  Petit's accomplishment was naturally resurrected in people's minds, not least because he had considered following up his New York City crossings by crossing this same spot of the Canyon.  (Wallenda even had to remove the rigging Petit had been experimenting with.)  Still, for me, the events of August 7th still hold a unique place.  Why?

Well, firstly, it was such a surprise.  Following on their conquest of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in France and the Sydney Harbor Bridge in Australia, Petit and his companions prepared the Towers walk in secret, in the middle of the night.  (And for months prior.)  They did not have permits or approval.  They did not hold a press conference in advance to make sure the media were all there.  They didn't know if anyone would see them.  In a very real sense it seems to me that they didn't do this for anyone else -- they did this for themselves.  The did this to have done this.  Or, more precisely, they did it to do it.  Present tense.

And this added another element of risk.  Preparations had to be done in secret, which means that the team was limited in its ability to have their ideas tested.  And if you've read the book or seen the movie it is astonishing clear in how many ways le coup nearly didn't happen!  So many things could have gone wrong, almost did go wrong, that it's even more amazing than on face value that the whole thing worked.

One of the other things about that 1974 walk is that it was such a collaborative effort.  This seemed readily apparent to me watching the movie.  Although there's no question that it is presented as Petit's achievement and Petit's dream, it also seems unambiguously clear to me that there is no possible way he could have carried it out on his own.  This was brought home even more powerfully for me last year when I reached out to one of his co-conspirators -- Jean-Louis Blondeau -- because I wanted to use one of his black and white photos of Petit in his street performing days  for my blog post for IPPDBTTD.  To my tremendous pleasure he said that I could, and the two of us corresponded for a little while.  (I plan to send him a link to this piece and wish him a "happy anniversary.")

While those who made the walk possible did in many ways find themselves in the shadows of the spotlight that fell on Petit, that in no way diminishes their have been co-creators of that morning's magic.

Today, on what I now think of as International Dance Between the Towers Day, I am so grateful for all of those who were dreamers of this dream, and all of those who made it come true for the rest of us.  Jean-Louis said to me that there's another, in some ways even larger and more true story of that famous walk than the one I'll be watching tonight.  I hope that that story gets told.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Happy International Philippe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day!

"Magic Triangle"
© 2012 Jean-Louis Blondeau
All rights reserved.  
Used with permission.
See Jean-Louis Blondeau Photography

When I finally saw him in person he was dressed all in black, from his top hat to his shoes, and was riding his unicycle like a mad-man, zig-zagging through pedestrian traffic in Washington Square Park in New York City.  He stopped by a lamp post and, with a piece of chalk, drew a circle on the sidewalk.  Then he started to work.

What amazed me was that he didn't call attention to himself.  Aside, that is, from careening through the crowds perched on a unicycle and carrying a bag of juggling props -- that kind of got people's attention.

I mean he didn't make a big deal about who he was.  What he'd done.

He simply began to juggle -- and even that wasn't especially flashy.  Three balls -- simple, white lacrosse balls -- and his pattern was small and tight.  Like he was.  An extremely slender man, he was not particularly physically impressive.  Except for his face.  He had the smile of a mischievous elf and the sparkle in his eye is rarely seen outside the world of faerie.

It was clear to me that a lot of the people in the crowd that gathered didn't know who he was -- just another street performer out on a summer afternoon.

But this was Philippe Petite -- the man who, shortly after 7:15 am on August 7, 1974, stepped off the top of one of the World Trade Center towers and onto the 3/4" cable he and his co-conspirators had spent the better part of the night rigging.  The wire stretched the 200' between the twin towers.  It was about a quarter of a mile above the street below.

And it was here, amidst the clouds and the soaring seagulls, that Philippe Petit danced for approximately forty-five minutes.  And changed the world.

At least for me.

I was twelve years old at the time of Monsieur Petit's "artistic crime of the century," as it's been called.  I was already a magician, a bit of a clown, and I wanted . . . to be him.  I wanted his skills, of course, but I also wanted his audacity.  I wanted his whimsy, his magic.  I wanted his insanely poetic vision.  I wanted his courageous commitment to his art.

When asked why he would do something that was at once both illegal and so incredibly foolhardy -- he did this cross with no net and no safety cables! -- Petit answered, "There is no why."  He said that to demand a "why" was such an American thing to do.  Finally, when he could no longer resist the pressure for an answer he said this, "When I see three balls, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk."

He did this thing for no other reason than that it cried out to be done and that the doing of it would be so very, very beautiful.  I have read that Albert Einstein said that he realized the equations of his General Theory of Relativity were correct because they were . . . beautiful.  I fear that the dominant culture within which I live is almost entirely bereft of this understanding of beauty -- that it proves the "rightness" of things and that it is, in and of itself, all the reason one needs for doing something incredible.

Several years ago I began to intentionally celebrate what I came to call International Philippe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day.  I talk about Petit's walk with whoever I can get to listen.  (Most likely . . . again!)  I look at photographs of it.  (And here is an incredible collection, taken by his friend and collaborator Jean-Louis Blondeau.)  And I watch the awesome film Man on Wire.  I immerse myself in this legendary event. 

This year, as part of my celebration, I'm going to take out my own white lacrosse balls and do a little juggling.  Because ultimately the story of Philippe Petit's dance between the towers is not simply the story of an incredible individual doing an inconceivable thing.  That's the myth, and the myth has a certain magic to it.  Yet the truth is no doubt far more complex.  It'd be the story of a group of ordinary people who created together an extraordinary experience -- for themselves and for the world.  I hope that that story is eventually told.

One of the most incredible things of all, for me, about my encounter with Philippe Petit in Washington Square Park all those many years later is that I have heard him say that his dance between the towers was, for him, like the dance I saw him do between the lamp posts in Washington Square and that both, in fact, are just expressions of the dance he does every day of his life.

So . . . I still want to be Philippe Petit . . . living my life, like his, dancing on the tight rope.  And I also want to be like Jean-Louis Blondeau, Jean François Heckel, Annie Allix, Jim Moore, Jean-Pierre Dousseau, Barry Greenhouse, and all of the others who were equally invested and equally involved in purusing their own dreams.  Most of all, I suppose, I am inspired to be myself.

May you be as well.

Happy International Philippe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day!

In Gassho,

RevWik

PS -- This is the best International Philippe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day in the history of its celebration! In order to use the photograph of Petit as a juggler, I reached out to ask permission of Jean-Louis Blondeau, the photographer and Petit's collaborator on the World Trade Center walk. And he responded! One of his requests in response for his permission was that he have the opportunity to read this post before it was published, so that he could see in what context his work would be used. This means I have now had several e-mail exchanges with the man I personally consider to be as integrally involved in Petit's feat as the cable itself or, for that matter, Petit's feet! No one can accomplish something like what happened 38 years ago today entirely on her or his own. That is another lesson I take from that dance. Thank you, Monsieur Blondeau.

Dancing Between the Towers

This is the sermon exploration preached at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia.

If you'd like to hear the podcast, click here.

Erik Wikstrom's Exploration:

This is not the sermon I’d intended to preach this morning.  Not be a long shot.  I’d wanted to do something really clever.  Something a little bravura . . . with style and panache.  Something theatrical. 

That’s not what you’re going to get.

I’d told Wendy that after hearing Tony preach last week I really wanted to take this exploration all on my own – both, to be honest, to see if I still had it in me to do it, but also because what we’d said we were going to try to do this morning was not going to be easy.  I thought that I’d need a whole sermon length to be able to pull together what I had in mind.

We’d promised to try to show a link between three events the anniversaries of which fall this coming week.  August 6^th is the 67^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.  August 9^th is the 67^th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.  And in between, on August 7^th, is the 38^th anniversary of the day that the French wire walker Philippe Petit danced for forty-five minutes a quarter of a mile above the streets of New York City on a ¾” cable he and his accomplices had spent the better part of the night before stringing between the towers of the World Trade Center.  (I like to call this International Philippe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day, and it’s one of my . . . yes, the pun’s intended . . . High Holy Days.)

So I thought I’d create a juggling piece – I’m already all in black like Monsieur Petit.  I’d take these three dates, these three events, and . . . juggle them.  Create a pattern with them.  I’d imagined that I’d develop a lyrical, poetic exploration (in words and movement) of the folly of war and the wisdom of, well, folly; thought I’d try to dance on a tight rope myself, with the most horrific of human actions on one side and one of the most enchanting on the other.

But, as I said, that’s not what you’re going to get this morning.

I tried.  Oh, I really did try.  And it’s not just that my juggling skills aren’t quite up to it – as I often say to my kids, “if someone offers you the opportunity to fall down the basement stairs and break your arm in three places . . . say ‘no.’”  But what really got in my way is that this topic just doesn’t call out for clever.  Cute just isn’t going to cut it today.

Let me, instead, begin by sharing with you something I wrote back in 2007 when I preached about Hiroshima and Nagasaki to our congregation in Brewster, Massachusetts.  This is the way I started that sermon (those of you who like will be able to read it in its entirety on my blog tomorrow morning):

At 8:14 there was a clear blue sky.  Birds flew in the morning sunshine.  Children laughed as they made their way to school.  People were doing tai chi and calisthenics in a city park.  There’d been a scare earlier in the morning but it seemed now that everything was okay.  Even when the world around you seems to be going crazy, days like this can make you feel alive and grateful.  The air is clean; the sun, warm.  You can forget the insanity.  On a day like this.  For a moment everything makes sense.

And in that moment—31,000 feet above the birds, and the children, and the men doing tai chi—the bomb doors on the Enola Gay opened and let loose a metal cylinder.  Ten feet long and two-and-a-half feet in diameter, it would change the world.  Not just for the people below or the people in the plane, but for every man, every woman, and every child who lived or ever would.

Forty-three seconds after it was flung loose that metal cylinder was 1,900 feet above the ground and it exploded with the force of 15,000 tons of TNT.  The birds burst into flame in mid-air.  So did combustible things like paper—even as far as a mile away.  Instantly.

The people in the park right below turned to ash.  Instantly.  A woman sitting on the steps of her bank, waiting for it to open, was reduced to a shadow.  You can see it today in the Hiroshima Peace Museum where they moved the steps so that she might not be forgotten.

Next came the blast wave.  Moving at a rate of two miles a second, people were blown from their feet, buildings were blown to the ground, trolleys and cars were blown from the roads.  Glass shattered twelve miles away.  A boy was blown through the windows of his house and across the street; his house collapsing behind him.  Within minutes, nine out of ten people half a mile or less from ground zero were dead.

And the numerous fires that erupted around Hiroshima soon joined together creating a monstrous firestorm that engulfed nearly four and half square miles of the city.  In its heart it is estimated that this beast reached temperatures of over seven thousand degrees.  (For comparison, the surface of the sun is just under ten thousand degrees.)  An interesting fact:  a postwar study showed that less than 4.5 percent of survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima suffered leg fractures.  That’s not, of course, because those injuries didn’t occur but because those who couldn’t walk died.

It’s estimated that somewhere around 150,000 people died as a direct result of the blast and the fires.  150,000 people. 

And yet, as I noted back then, those are just numbers.  Joseph Stalin famously said that when one person dies it’s a tragedy; when a million people die it’s a statistic.

And then, three days later, it all happened again in Nagasaki.  Oh the more uneven, hilly terrain there contained some of the effects of the blast, the devastation was not quite as widespread, but it was as incomprehensible none the less.  When Robert Oppenheimer, lead scientist on the Manhattan Project and often known as “the father of the nuclear bomb,” saw the first test explosion back at Los Alamos he turned to the Hindu scriptures for his reaction.  “I am become Death,” he said, quoting the Bahagavad Gita, “the destroyer of worlds.”  Albert Einstein reflected that our capacity to destroy had advanced so dramatically that we now needed an equal advance in consciousness if we were going to survive.

And while neither we nor anyone else has ever again exploded a nuclear bomb in time of war, from that day ‘till this our planet has never known a period in which there was not some war going on somewhere.  I looked it up and found references to nearly 250 separate wars since 1945.  Not battles – wars.  250 wars in 67 years – that’s nearly four new wars each and every year.

Have we learned nothing?  Has that advance in consciousness that Einstein called for still not come about?  I’m afraid that we are still unconscionably good at savaging one another . . . and our planet.  And that’s why I just couldn’t find the way to be playful this morning.  When I ponder our penchant for positioning this against that and then bringing ourselves to the brink of oblivion to defend the differences . . . well . . . I just don’t really feel like juggling.

Yet maybe that’s exactly why I intuitively wanted to take the two poles of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and put a little line between them, and on that line place a crazy twenty-five year old French juggler.  A pixie.  A denizen of a magical realm where the impossible is possible and absolutely nothing is beyond our grasp.  The more outrageous, the more compelling.

At some time later today – and by Tuesday night at the latest – get yourself a copy of the movie Man on Wire.  It’s an extraordinary documentary – available on Netflix if you don’t have your own copy – and watching it has become part of my annual celebration of International Philippe Petit Danced Between the Towers Day.  I watch it over and over again, with tears in my eyes, because it reminds me that we human beings are capable of acts of profound beauty, as well as demonic devastation, and that our species’ tendency toward insanity does not just result in evil.  We can hatch plans of inspired idiocy, lyrical lunacy, and then literally put our lives on the line for them . . . and, really, just for the sake of having done it.  (When asked why he’d strung a wire a quarter of a mile above the earth Petit at first answered, “There is no why.”  The closest he ever came to explaining a reason was words to this effect:  “When I see three balls I must juggle; when I see two towers, I must walk.”)

Perhaps I am overly romantic.  Or perhaps it’s an occupational hazard left over from the old days.  But in Petit’s walk that August morning – and the way the whole world was enchanted by it – I believe I see a glimpse of that new consciousness that might just save us. 

Oh, I don’t think it’ll necessarily involve death-defying circus acts.  (Not necessarily.  Although by 2016, when the 7^th will fall on a Sunday I may be up to stringing a wire in here and preaching from up there . . .)  But I do think it has something to do with seeing the world as enchanted and enchanting, and believing that beauty is something worth striving for.  And maybe it’s not so much a new consciousness as, perhaps, a renewed one – did you know that when the Chinese originally developed gun powder it wasn’t for use in weapons but, rather, for fireworks?  Oh, to have a Manhattan Project dedicated to creating fireworks.

Because there is so much to celebrate in this life.  And, perhaps, it turns out that I’ve chosen to dance on that wire after all.  I invite you to join me.