An Easter parable.

April 16, Hemet.

I, the non-believer, had hoped for a miracle. I'd hung on to the belief that my cat would come back to me on Easter.
She did.
We found Gramo after the Easter mass last night. She was inside the wooden boxes that close the ring. Sister Priscilla came knocking on the door of our trailer to say that they were hearing a cat crying somewhere in the ring; we rushed back to the tent in time to see her running out like a fury, terrorized. It took three of us to corner her behind the ring's curtain.
She could have manifested herself during the Thursday mass and the Friday congregation, but she chose Easter. This morning I'd written my mother about the symbolism of Easter - rebirth, regeneration, Christ coming back - and how I wished Gramo would come back to me then. This was one of the times when I wished I were a believer, I added. If there had been more people at mass they wouldn't have heard her. She would have come out when they were taking down the tent tomorrow night, and she would have panicked at the noise and chaos and run away again, probably never to be found. She waited for the end of the Easter mass and cried.
Voila, c'est Paques. I hugged the Little Sisters and then hugged them again, my little blue-eyed cat in my arms. This is Easter.

The mass began with a fire outside.
Father Bob said: right now this is only a bunch of twigs and paper; only when I light it will it be a fire. He was referring to the symbolism of Easter of course - there was darkness and then the light of Christ resurrected. To me it brought to mind the teachings of Buddhism on the ever changing quality of all living things: the fire is already present in the match.
After the symbolic lighting of the fire and of each person's candle there was a procession back inside the tent to the ring. Afterwards everyone was treated to a hot chocolate and Easter eggs. Father Bob took off his robe, said goodbye to the sisters and got into his rented PT Cruiser to go spend the night at the local parish before flying back to Cincinnati. I went back to the trailer to write this and ponder my epiphany.

There is something special about mass at the circus, even for a non-believer like me. Maybe it is the fleeting quality of life here, the not knowing if you'll be together tomorrow as friends are constantly separated and reunited again in travel, the detachment it teaches you, as Sister Priscilla said. Maybe it is the humility of life at the circus, the hard work and bare bones and simple things and simple joys. Maybe it's the similarity of this nomadic life with that of Jesus.

Happy Easter.