In a 1982 introduction to the book On the High Wire by the French tightrope artist Philippe Petit, the American writer Paul Auster wrote of his first encounter with Petit in Paris in 1971. On a Parisian street, he happened to encounter Petit as he was juggling, performing magic tricks, and riding a unicycle before a silent and captivated impromptu audience.
A few weeks later, late one night, Auster spotted Petit and a group of young people surreptitiously moving ropes, cables, and other equipment near Notre-Dame Cathedral. Auster recognized Petit as the street performer he had previously seen in action. He knew something was about to happen, but he could not imagine what. The next day, Auster discovered the answer when he came across a photograph in the International Herald Tribune showing Petit walking on a wire between the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral. This was the result of the furtive late night activity Auster had witnessed. For three hours, Petit had juggled and danced on the wire before an awestruck audience at street level. He was then promptly arrested and charged with violating the law.
But Auster never forgot the photograph of Petit’s tightrope act that he saw in the newspaper. He couldn’t forget it. Auster noted that the stunt was really no stunt at all. Petit was not a flippant stuntman who sought people’s attention by risking his own life. He was not a superficial crowd-pleaser. He was an artist. And he could see art where others could only see the possibility of death.
There was something beautiful and artistic in Petit’s dangerous forays out over canyons between skyscrapers, most notably when he walked between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. And for Paul Auster three years before, seeing a tiny figure suspended between the vast towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral transformed his view of the cathedral itself. Petit had shown it to be alive in some new and creative way. Auster observed that, because of the photograph of Petit’s tightrope dance at Notre Dame, his perception of Paris itself changed.[1]
When Petit repeated the tightrope act by walking from a tower of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York to an apartment building across Amsterdam Avenue, Austen recalls that not for a single moment did he think that Petit would fall. It was simply not a part of this artistic act. Death was not—could not—be in the picture. In Auster’s words, “[h]igh-wire walking is not an art of death but an art of life—and life lived to the very extreme of life. Which is to say, life that does not hide from death but stares it directly in the face.”[2]
Philippe Petit is an artist precisely because he can see possibilities for new life and new creative impulses in places and situations that most people would only regard in an ordinary way. Indeed, most people could only imagine a devastating end to a tightrope walk hundreds of feet above a hard city pavement.
But the mark of the artist is countercultural. It’s an ability to see with the mind’s eye, to envision that a lump of clay can become an exquisite piece of pottery or that a series of white and black notes on a piano can coalesce to form a sonata. To Paul Auster, tightrope walking is an “art of life” because it demonstrates that a thin wire strung several hundred feet above the ground can be the stage for a dance that leads not to death but instead enlivens the imaginations and hearts of its witnesses.
It’s not entirely obvious what the apostle Paul means when he speaks of regarding no one from a human point of view. But I wonder if tightrope artistry might help us begin to understand. Maybe St. Paul is enjoining us to see people and the world with the eyes of life. These are eyes that are colored by the new creation instituted by Christ. These are eyes that do not look away from death but, instead, stare death directly in the face, knowing that there is something greater that always triumphs.
The mind’s eye of a new creation not only stares death in the face. It sees through death into new life. Places and situations of fear are transformed into ones of possibility. What appears to be old is seen as new by the grace of God.
Does this seem to be an impossible thing to you? Aren’t our eyes usually tinted with jadedness? How can we see a new creation in pointless war and the slaughter of innocent lives? How can we see the image of God in a person who has deeply offended us? How can we see the potential for good in a person who is responsible for catastrophic evil? How can we see hope for the future when our past is weighed down by tragedy and trauma? And when does optimism and hope become naivete?
It doesn’t seem that St. Paul is giving us easy answers either. He isn’t summoning us to implement an action plan that will provide an easy fix for our shortsightedness. In fact, it doesn’t seem to be about us at all. It’s about what God has done in Christ. Paul’s words seem to be an invitation to recognize this and then let it captivate our mind’s eye. And then, in the mystery of God, what appears to be only death becomes an art of life.
Can we even begin to imagine that a tightrope strung hundreds of feet in the air between two towers might be art rather than a recipe for death? When we speak about original sin, we might imagine it as an innate tendency to let our inner vision become narrow, hardened, and stagnant. We can’t catch glimpses of a new creation. Our vision is impaired because we have not owned up to what God has done in Christ. Perhaps we can’t even see that God has done anything at all.
Think of the ways in which our vision is skewed from a human point of view. We only see sinners as the sum of their worst actions, not as those who were lost and have been found. We only see God as a scorekeeper, not as One who forgives endlessly. We only see wrongs done to us as grievances to hold, not as opportunities for forgiveness.
From a human point of view, our future is self-made, not created by God. Challenges are problems to be solved, not chances to become closer to God. Death is an end, not an entrance. Our ideological and political differences are insurmountable obstacles, not invitations to conversation. From a human point of view, we only see creation as serving ourselves, not as a gift for us to treasure.
But Paul says that if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. Everything old has become new. And while we are so used to looking to the future for newness, Paul tells us that, in some mysterious way, the new has already arrived. It is here. God has already done something beyond our wildest imagination. If only our perception could change, we might be able to see just how possible the impossible can be.
The invitation to be Christ’s ambassadors is to act as if the new has already arrived and to see the world as if it has already been made new. It is an invitation to stare death in the face and realize that God can string a tightrope across the most forbidding canyon and help us make art out of life.
In this art of life, the worst sinner can be forgiven. In this dance, the most savage enmities can find reconciliation. In this grand symphony, the deepest wounds can be healed without the difficult truth being erased. Here, the obsessive rehashing of our anxieties and resentments can be released into a more capacious future. Here, a Church that some say is dying can indeed spring to new life and be a source of inspiration for an aimless world.
It’s a bold and courageous step to walk out onto the tightrope of life and to accept its risks. It’s utterly countercultural to imagine that the entire world can be remade by the hand of God, to realize that it has in some sense, already been remade. It is almost incomprehensible to think that, in our humanity, we can still see the world with the mind of Christ and not only from a human point of view.
But Paul tells us that, with God, the impossible has become possible. The old has become new. Our broken selves can become whole. And a tightrope strung high up in the air can be more than a formula for tragic death. For the art of life is about staring death in the face and knowing that, in spite of the odds, it is only the beginning of something unbelievably and wonderfully new.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 27, 2022
[1] https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/03/philippe-petit-artist-of-life/
[2] Ibid.