Update Heaviness v Lightness

Is it something about this time of year I wonder? Having been visited by the light touch of visiting angels and looking up to the skies to stars conjoined to the joy of the Incarnation we find ourselves plummeted to the constraints of earth, desert sojourns, mundane life, work, and ministry.  We now prepare to live the journey to the cross all over again.

My post earlier this week here also dealt with the heaviness v lightness theme and I have dug out again this quote from Anne Rice from Kathleen Basi's article:

"Christians are either Christmas Christians or Easter Christians. In other words, they find their faith centered around Incarnation and gift, or around suffering and redemption."

I ended up agreeing with Kathleen Basi that I am an ordinary time Christian, probably because of my inherent dislike of dualistic thinking.

I began posting today on one article by Fr. Ron Rolheiser but no sooner had I finished than I came across another by Eugene Cullen Kennedy which mused on heavy v lightness too.

Eugene Cullen Kennedy says :


 "There is, of course, the Mystery of Time itself, something that can fly or weigh heavily. In fact, time staggers and stretches out on the bench next to us when, for example, we are grounded by the nameless intermissions life reserves just for humans. These include the lusterless hospital spaces in which the next of kin sit helpless as fear and hope battle like fighter planes beyond the clouds, beyond their call or command, too. And we have all met on the common ground of holiday airport delays that resemble late-night horror movies in which the expressionless dead walk the unending concourses. But these, too, are filled with revelations about the Mystery of being human."

This is where I originally started my post  today!!


This article by Ron Rolheiser poses some interesting questions for reflection where he also draws on his own upbringing and identity.

 It's closing lines are :
 "In his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the Czech writer, Milan Kundera, weighs the equation: What is of more value, heaviness or lightness?

His answer: heaviness can crush us, but lightness can be unbearable:

  "The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. 

 But ... the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.”

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? ... That is the question. 

 The only certainty is: the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all."

Truly it is.

 I find I can relate to what he says in some ways as it applies to my own Irish temperament as recognised by W.B. Yeats.

Is this part of the equation too ?

Is it something to do with the different ways we use to approach God and life through language : i.e. the cataphatic versus apophatic way as described here

Is heaviness v lightness something that is associated with this ? 

Also perhaps the church is heavy not from success so much as the heaviness of two millenia behind us and a stagnation of spirit and expectation of change for the better.
No wonder re-evangelisation is on the minds of the hierarchy.

We all need a beginners mind to be creative... 

Isn't this the recurrent hope when we renew our baptismal vows and carry the hope of the Holy Spirit and resurrection to act in our lives ??

Lord I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed... or in the revised liturgical parlance :

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

(My church's roof is way too heavy and closes me in .
I hope you can lift the lid on it and open it up a little to the sky.)