to live in God so thoroughly, so unselfconsciouly, that we become pure act

Cristiani Bros. Circus 1956

A caption that goes with this photo:

After the teeterboard act, left to right, Ortans (Cristiani) Canestrelli, Oscar Cristiani, Belmonte Cristiani, Mogador Cristiani and Lucio Cristiani. Behind Oscar, may have been Daviso Cristiani or Freddie Canestrelli.

(Lax's friend, Mogodor, is front and center)

During the 1950s Lax traveled to western Canada with the Cristiani circus family.  He saw in this family something similar to what he intuited as "pure act", not only when they performed but when they interacted with each other as well:

"Everything they did was both spontaneous and confident, flowing the way a river flows. This way of being in the world came from years of practicing their art but also from a deeper well of knowing. They had been acrobats for several generations and the way they moved, the way they were, seemed bred in the bone. He found himself wanting to be a poet in the same way they were acrobats, his poetry flowing from who he was by nature, without the artistic calculations that kept it from being pure.
...

That should be our goal as people of God as well, thought Lax, who had converted from Judaism to Catholicism several years before: to live in God so thoroughly, so unselfconsciously, that we become pure act, too. In his Circus cycle, in comparing creation to a traveling circus, he equated God’s people with acrobats. How do God’s people move on the earth? Here’s his description of Mogador Cristiani, the book’s central character and Lax’s good friend:

He walks the earth like a turning ball: knowing
and rejoicing in his sense of balance:
he delights in the fulcrums
and levers, teeter-boards, trampolines, high-wires,
swings, the nets, ropes and ring-curbs of the natural
universe.

Beneath his feet the world is buoyant,
thin and alive as a bounding rope.
He stands on it poised,
a gyroscope on the rim of a glass,
sustained by the whirling of an inner wheel.

He steps through the drum of light and air, his
hand held forth.
The moment is a sphere moving with Mogador.

- from "A Gyroscope on the Island of Love" by Michael McGregor, an article published in Image Magazine, Issue 70, available HERE.

 See also:
Lax on Pure Act
acrobat and pure prayer - Phillippe Petit