Normally, the only thing I celebrate on 31st January each
year is my sister’s birthday. But this year is a little different. A few weeks
ago, I found myself in a school hall, listening to a headteacher introduce some
professional training to staff. He began by showing us a picture of a juggler,
a tightrope walker, and a magician’s hat and asked what they had in common.
Me! I thought. Obviously! But nobody there knew that. Circus in
general? Too obvious… what’s the trap?! While I paused to consider, a hand shot up.
"Don Bosco!" came the confident (and correct) answer.
Wait — what?! I was both surprised and curious.
I had heard of Don Bosco before—an Italian priest famous for
his work with disadvantaged and at-risk young people. "It is not enough
for a child to be loved; they must know they are loved," is one of his
key quotes. I was fortunate to experience that knowledge first-hand, both at
home and at the two convent schools that educated me.
The first, albeit in Sussex, had 26 Southern Irish nuns, and
if you’ve ever watched Derry Girls—while that’s set north of the
border—it was hilariously close to home. The second convent was far more
avant-garde. We learned to meditate in a fusion of Eastern and Western
Christian traditions and were encouraged to think for ourselves, to question. Gone
was the starched-white box arching the wimple and the black habit—replaced with
home clothes, the only sign of their religious order being the cross they wore.
Both schools had one thing in common—aside from the fact
they were also staffed by lay people of both sexes—the nuns set the ethos. They
were fiercely strong, opinionated women who had no qualms about speaking their
minds, were fabulous raconteurs (raconteuses?!), and were devoted to the
principle that faith seeks reason, to quote St. Anselm.
But back to today’s saint: Turin-born St. John Bosco (“Don”
being the title for Italian priests), known as the juggling saint. A
century before my own education, he pioneered teaching methods that were
innovative for his time—combining reason, religion, and kindness, prioritizing
prevention over punishment. As a boy, he had been fascinated by local carnivals
and fairs, teaching himself to juggle, perform magic tricks, and cross a
tightwire—skills he later used in the classroom to inspire his students and
ignite their imaginations.
He founded the Salesians of Don Bosco, a religious order
dedicated to education and vocational training for young people, particularly
the poor, inspired in turn by St. Francis de Sales—the 16th-century saint
renowned for his gentleness. And, fittingly, the patron saint of writers,
journalists… and, I imagine, bloggers.
Playing around with ChatGPT the other evening, I tried
generating an image to send to the Salesian school community I had met,
celebrating their patron saint’s circus spirit on this his feast day. But the AI
kept inserting macabre details—memento mori imagery, particularly
skulls—despite my prompts to remove them.
ChatGPT’s algorithms had a point. A saint’s feast day
commemorates the day they died rather than the day they were born. As I’ve just
discovered—rather belatedly—their death is seen as their dies natalis
("birthday into heaven"), marking their entry into eternal life with
God.
For me, the AI’s eerie insistence on memento mori
wasn’t entirely out of place. Classical philosophers embraced it as a reminder that
we all die—not to instill despair, but to sharpen our focus on what truly
matters. Seneca used it to avoid procrastination. For Marcus Aurelius, it gave
life purpose. Epictetus taught that by keeping death in mind, we free ourselves
from unnecessary distractions.
However, wary of how this might land with pupils, I kept trying to edit out the skulls —getting increasingly frustrated with each prompt revision, culminating (sixth or seventh attempt) with an exasperated: “NO, NO, I SAID REMOVE THE BLOODY SKULLS!!! …please!” It still didn’t register. Maybe I was too polite. Or overdid the exclamations!
In the end, I took matters into my own hands—quite
literally—transferring the image to PowerPoint and using some copy and paste to cover the unwanted details with flowers. While
Don Bosco might have approved of my sleight of hand, it was probably not very
Stoic.
My stubborn battle against macabre imagery reminded me of
another meditation on impermanence. Recently, I listened to The Miracle of
Mindfulness by Nobel Prize nominee (nominated by Martin Luther King), Global Peace Prize Winner and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He
describes a practice among young monks in training: meditating on their own
mortality—visualizing their bodies decomposing, flesh returning to the earth,
until nothing remains but dust. Morbid as it sounds, such reflections lead not
to fear, but to a deeper embrace of life. Carpe diem.
On that note, Don Bosco also urged: “Do good while you
still have time.” That phrase has been on my mind lately, as I approach a
milestone birthday and feel an increasing urgency to get my words
out—especially as my back struggles to keep up with my energy levels, and I find
myself on standby for surgery, a stark reminder of time’s passage.
So, in writing this, what began with a professional
development anecdote has taken me on a diversion— one with all the fun
of the fair! Teaching, in many ways, is its own kind of circus act. We juggle
responsibilities—lesson planning, pastoral care, endless administrative tasks.
We walk a tightrope—balancing discipline with encouragement, structure with
spontaneity.
Doing a litte more exploring this week, I discovered the Circo Social Saltimbanqui in Córdoba, Argentina—a Salesian social circus that embodies Don Bosco's legacy by using circus arts to engage and uplift young people. This initiative not only preserves the spirit of Don Bosco's innovative educational methods but also resonates deeply with my own personal Trinity: All things Spanish-speaking, the circus arts and my own speculative pilgrimage of faith.
Reflecting on all this, I realize that the best educators are
those who not only see the wonder in the world but also find creative ways to
communicate and share it. Don Bosco's transformation of a childhood fascination
into a life-changing philosophy serves as a powerful reminder of the impact
that passion, when combined with purpose, can have on the lives of young people
worldwide.
Click here: Circo Social Saltambanqui
