I have a friend, Jem, who is a juggler.  He’s very good at it.  I’m not. I’m a rubbish juggler.  I’ve tried it.  I’ve even tried quite hard, so I’m aware of how difficult it is to tell jokes while juggling, juggle fruit of amusingly different shapes and sizes, juggle on stilts.  It’s very hard indeed and Jem does all these very well.

Most days, I wish I were a better juggler, although that has nothing to do with stilts and amusing fruit.  It’s simply that most days, like most people, I’m thinking about getting to work, doing my job, raising my children, paying the bills, getting the car MOT’d, keeping in touch with family and friends, not being grumpy… generally doing all the things that make up a life.  With varying degrees of success.  And failure. Often failure.

The thing is, it’s hard to keep the balls in the air and I reckon I’m not alone in letting them drop occasionally.

Reading the Old Testament of the Bible, it’s clear that God knew how hard juggling is.  Like everybody, people in Israel dropped the ball.  They gradually got into debt they couldn’t get out of, found themselves stuck in dead end jobs they couldn’t leave, got separated from their families, cut off from their homes.

So God told Israel that once every fifty years they should have a fresh start – a year of jubilee, when debts would be wiped clean, property returned to its rightful owners, workers released from unjust contracts, families reunited.

It was an astonishing agenda for social justice, built on the understanding that not everyone is a great juggler.  We make life-changing mistakes and sometimes we all need help.

Jem the Juggler and I were once in a pub, while Jefferson Starship were on the jukebox, singing, ‘We built this city on rock and roll’.  ‘Rock and Roll’, I echoed, loudly, at Jem: ‘Not juggling. Juggling built nothing’.

To be fair, I was a little tipsy, but I was also wrong.  Nothing gets built without juggling. Nothing useful gets done without keeping more than one ball in the air.  And it’s hard.  So I believe we need help; to be forgiven when we drop things.  And every so often I need to wipe the slate clean and start again.

Then, maybe I might get better.

Jem is also an escapologist – here he is being strapped into a straitjacket at Greenbelt festival in 2017. You can find out more about his work as circus performer Thomas Trilby here.

I can’t find the recording of this. Sorry, Jem.