Here at the Showbear Family Circus, we’re less concerned with becoming the foremost literary magazine — still less concerned with even turning a profit — and more concerned with an idea. That idea is moral courage: how virtue upholds civic society and how civil society works best when minds are liberated to manifest ideas in the world. In other words:

Cities thrive when people make what they’re called to make.

And to do that properly — to make what you’re called to make and manifest the ideas you’re most convicted of and least inclined to voice into the gnashing teeth of the mob — that takes a sort of courage that you often cannot find these days. It’s the courage you find in the first book of Harry Potter when Dumbledore awards — of all people — Neville Longbottom for standing up to his friends, which in his mind is more courageous than standing up to Voldemort himself. Why? Because we all have a bit of Voldemort inside of us and it’s that part that needs purged: the mea culpa side. Even Harry. And that’s why Neville, not Harry, slays the snake at the end. And why Harry finally takes a page out of Neville’s book in standing up to his friends.

Or it’s Sam standing up to Frodo. The other knights to Lancelot (to use my namesake in a pejorative sense). It’s the courage to be disliked, as one psychologist put it. And for all the gun toting in this country, there’s a lot of cowardice hiding behind a lot of locks, stocks, and smoking barrels: it is fear and not courage that prompts one to hoard guns and ammo. Or toilet paper. Because, you know, there’s obviously nothing worse than wiping your ass with leaves in order for your neighbor to have just one roll. Or baptizing it with water as French Catholics do so that your neighbor can see again how water can make us all clean and free from fear.

When civil society starts to tear at the seams from a fusion bomb, the most sensible thing is for those who feel so called to learn to be seamstresses right when everyone tells them they ought to stock up on fig leaves. When civil society starts to decompose from a microbe, the most sensible thing is for those who feel so called to learn to become composers right as everyone in line at Costco shouts in some great cacophonous din. When civil society starts to go not-so-gentle into that good night from an electromagnetic pulse emitting out of some solar flare, the most sensible thing is for those who feel so called to learn to become candlestick makers and candelabra founders right when everyone else is lighting torches and threatening Parliament with bombs. 

It is, you see, sensible to study the great history of sense in our age of nonsense. 

It is, you see, productive to make right in the teeth of destruction.

We believe the best thing we can do — right now — is to encourage people to get off of of Twitter, Tinder, and other forms of trivial banter and to read again and make again. To discover the deep thoughts that move us to morality, to civic virtue, to the fruits of the Spirit, to the Tao and then to manifest those thoughts in every sector of society, every craft, every discipline. It is the tinker and tailor who take on the soldier and spy. It is the butcher and baker and candlestick maker who may threaten kings or help them thrive, depending on which inmate of Joseph you’re following.

And so I’m keeping a little log as I meditate on this theme. Because I think it’s truer now than ever: more than ever we need the old thoughts of virtue ethics, more than ever we need the old ways of liberal arts, more than ever we need to make the things we feel called to make and seek our deepest calling. And LISTEN to those who sought theirs: epidemiologists know more than you about this disease, but the monks and missionaries know a bit more about taking care of the poor. And it is the poor who will suffer the most from the disease. So trust one another. And love one another. If you’re in medicine, give balm to the bomber (didn’t Hippocrates say so?). If you’re in theater, give good drama to the over-dramatic (didn’t Shakespeare and Sophocles say so?). If you’re in agriculture, give food to the hungry and the hoarder in equal amounts (didn’t Aurelius and Augustine and every agrarian parable of Jesus say so?). 

And if you write?

Write with courage, conviction, and deep reflection rather than screaming emotional soundbites into the void, for we put one of those in office and it clearly hasn’t helped. Submit your work here. And mindful that our long-term goal is to commission makers of all crafts and researchers of all disciplines, jump on board with regular contributions — however big or small — here.

Sleep well.

Wake brave.

And make what you’re called to make right in the teeth of the mob. And maybe, while you’re add it, dump a ton of water on the gunpowder barrels of those who keep saying, “Keep the powder dry.” Or, in the modern case, do what you can in your neighborhood and sector to keep the drones grounded and ICE — our modern secret police — at bay. 

Until The End,

Lancelot + Tara

PS — Thank you as always for your submissions. There continues to be an overwhelming amount of submissions — which has only increased in the crisis — but we’re working through them all. Thanks for the interest and support: keep it up.