I still stand by this statement I wrote when around 19 years old, about Jesus as The Circus Master and an avant garde artist! I saw myself as a missionary to the church and art worlds back then….gosh, I was so much older then! Jesus is avant garde, was my title to this little excerpt I stuck in my clown suitcase and guitar case back then….glad I found it again. I’m still interested in about the same things…..I was a bit too serious about it all back then, to really join the circus, but eventually I did work as a clown to get myself through college! True story!

My original intro to my ministry, as a missionary to the religious and artistic: those trying to get “delivered from religion-even freed from the art world- into creative freedom”. Those who want an authentic spirituality. Those who want to join the Real circus.
I like mystics and artists, and it appears to me that Jesus is the Ultimate of both! He is the mist that came into the mystics, and the art that enters the heart!
Jesus was/is avant garde. His church unfortunately has lacked some of His experimental and exploratory tendencies. I’ve always been drawn to creative explorers myself. People who were Reality and then came and taught about it, interest me. Folks who lived it first, then spoke about it. Their art is overflow from who they are. Jesus was like that. People who were from more than about. Being precedes expressing, as they say. Live it to teach it–Jesus was and is that sort of fellow.
Jesus made everything, and then came into everything. Can’t beat that for avant garde. He was the artist, then became the art!
People still want to go to the Circus of what’s Real. And people still need to become kid like to encounter God. And that implies freedom to be.
One critique most artist have of organized religion is that it lacks creativity and the ability to improvise! “Where the Spirit is, there is freedom.” The book says, but most of institutional religion lacks freedom. Even freedom to be—ontological freedom! Much less freedom of expression or all the prized values of the West. Jesus knew He was loved, and He knew His own Name. That allowed Him to explore, to grow in Wisdom, which He was, and understanding, which He also was. That’s mysterious to me.
But one thing it models is that we are here to explore in relationship who we are, and who others are, and in this aquarium of wonder which we live within, to be in awe might be the highest calling.
Jesus was a circus Master, but the circus left town, and we were left with was some rules and buildings. But somewhere, He is juggling and the animals are dancing around Him. Somewhere, people are free to be. Somewhere there is an endless supply of cotton candy in every color imaginable. Somewhere there is an art gallery which never ends, an exploratorium which never runs out of wonder. That’s where He is. Or, at least that’s where I live, under the enormous Big Top!
And Jesus is often in the alleyways outside the churches and galleries, just waiting for a q and a with the Artist to occur!