The Parable of the Performer

One day while teaching, Josh was asked, ”Teacher, are the Oscars still the Olympus of acting?”

Josh spoke thus:

A performer was receiving his justified attentions.

“God bless you, God bless you all!” the performer called out to the crowd.  

The crowd rumbled expectantly.

“I trust it is not heresy to my critics among you to compare my life’s work to a fire burning in the hearth of my heart, a beacon I wish I could always share with you all.”

The crowd did not comprehend the joke.  The performer persisted with the allusion.

“Life is like a flame,” the performer said to the crowd, “Do you get that?  I’m saying that my life is like a flame.”

Someone in the crowd shouted, “Light the flame!”

“Just so!  Just so!” the performer said, “We must all light the flame!  Life is a flame that must be lit!  We must light that flame!”

“Burn!” another member of the crowd shouted.

“Yes!  Yes!  We all must burn!” the performer said, “That is what I’m saying!  We all must burn, and we all do burn!  You all will burn!”

“Not like you!” someone else shouted.

“Perhaps like me, perhaps not like me,” the performer said, “What matters isn’t how we burn, it’s that we burn brightly, as brightly as we can.”

“How bright can you burn?” a crowd member asked.

“How brightly can any of us burn?” the performer replied, “And can that burning last?  Should we burn in a flash, or should we sustain?  For like a fire, we consume when we burn, and the flame consumes us!”

“Consumes you, maybe,” a crowd member quipped.  This joke the crowd did understand.  The crowd voiced its approval.

“Yes, consumes me!  Consumes me!” the performer agreed, “I consume life and life consumes me!  I am the fire, I am the fuel for the fire!  I consume myself!  I create!  I destroy!  I am a beacon!  I am the flame of truth!  Is that heresy?  If that is heresy, then I burn in heresy!”

A man in black stood out from the crowd.

“You want to burn?” the man in black asked the performer, “I can help you burn.”

The crowd enjoyed this joke most of all.  The performer gave a wry smile.

“Yes you can, my friend,” the performer said, “And you can pray that my flame is penance for us all.”

The man in black turned to look at the bishop overseeing the execution.  The bishop nodded his assent.

The executioner set flame to tinder.