{"id":878,"date":"2010-11-12T09:18:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T09:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity\/"},"modified":"2014-12-26T10:34:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T15:34:56","slug":"levity-and-gravity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html","title":{"rendered":"Levity and Gravity"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<p>C.S.Lewis once quipped, \u201cYou can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.\u201d I can remember the first time in my first parish when I cracked a joke in the pulpit. The congregation were astounded and shocked and didn\u2019t know whether to laugh (and I thought perhaps that was because they had forgotten how to laugh).<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m on the side of the traditionalists in religion, but I have to admit that we very often have a serious humor deficiency. One of the problems with this is that our culture has too often reduced humor to sarcasm, smut and slapstick. There\u2019s certainly room for satire in humor, but not cruelty and sarcasm, and smut just lowers the tone and slapstick is funny, but shallow. What we\u2019re missing too often is the good, deep down, belly shaking laughter that makes us human.<\/p>\n<p>Remember \u2018human\u2019, \u2018humor\u2019 and \u2018humility\u2019 all come from the root \u2018humus\u2019 which means earth. So humor keeps us down to earth and the best kind of humor is based on our own recognized humanity and humility. Humor sees the incongruous and hilarious situation that we are creatures of mud with the souls of angels. It sees the sad and silly situation we\u2019re in\u2013mortals who are made for immortality\u2013when the humor pokes fun at our vanity, pride and self importance it opens up a new perception of ourselves and our humanity.<\/p>\n<p>When then, are we so darned serious all the time? I don\u2019t blame only the traditionalist Catholics, although Lord knows we\u2019re a pretty glum (and secretely angry) lot, but the liberal Catholics are pretty sober and dour as well with their serious causes and their simmering anger. Where\u2019s the joy I wonder?\u00a0 The atheist Bertrand Russell was pretty sharp in his assessment, \u201cIf the Christians are all redeemed, why don\u2019t they look more redeemed?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If we are to evangelize, then we need to open our hearts to the enthusiasm that comes with the Holy Spirit, and the root of the word \u2018enthusiasm\u2019 is the Greek <em>en theos<\/em> or \u2018God within.\u2019 This is what people will find attractive about our faith\u2013not that we all become goofy comedians all the time, or (God forbid) that we priests become stand up comics, but that we start to evidence the quiet and deep joy that takes God and the business of heaven very seriously, but takes ourselves very lightly.<\/p>\n<p>Nor forgetting G.K.Chesterton\u2019s line that \u2018Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.\u2019 We need to take ourselves and all our super serious concerns a bit more lightly, for t a parodoxical truth here\u2013that if we can see the levity in gravity we\u2019ll soon realize how much gravity there is in levity.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>C.S.Lewis once quipped, \u201cYou can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.\u201d I can remember the first time in my first parish when I cracked a joke in the pulpit. The congregation were astounded and shocked and didn\u2019t know whether to laugh (and I thought perhaps that was because [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Levity and Gravity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"C.S.Lewis once quipped, &quot;You can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.&quot; I can remember the first time in my first\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Levity and Gravity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"C.S.Lewis once quipped, &quot;You can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.&quot; I can remember the first time in my first\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fr. Dwight Longenecker\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-12T09:18:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-12-26T15:34:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. Dwight Longenecker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fr. Dwight Longenecker\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html\",\"name\":\"Levity and Gravity\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-11-12T09:18:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-12-26T15:34:56+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#\/schema\/person\/9a47bc6ba9c0a8c532dc90230d7ad3ad\"},\"description\":\"C.S.Lewis once quipped, \\\"You can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.\\\" I can remember the first time in my first\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Levity and Gravity\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/\",\"name\":\"Fr. Dwight Longenecker\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#\/schema\/person\/9a47bc6ba9c0a8c532dc90230d7ad3ad\",\"name\":\"Fr. Dwight Longenecker\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8dbbfbf5b6d096630322e90bce3f0cec?s=96&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8dbbfbf5b6d096630322e90bce3f0cec?s=96&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Fr. Dwight Longenecker\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/dwightlongenecker.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/author\/frdwight\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Levity and Gravity","description":"C.S.Lewis once quipped, \"You can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.\" I can remember the first time in my first","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Levity and Gravity","og_description":"C.S.Lewis once quipped, \"You can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.\" I can remember the first time in my first","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html","og_site_name":"Fr. Dwight Longenecker","article_published_time":"2010-11-12T09:18:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-12-26T15:34:56+00:00","author":"Fr. Dwight Longenecker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fr. Dwight Longenecker","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html","name":"Levity and Gravity","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-11-12T09:18:00+00:00","dateModified":"2014-12-26T15:34:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#\/schema\/person\/9a47bc6ba9c0a8c532dc90230d7ad3ad"},"description":"C.S.Lewis once quipped, \"You can always tell the pillars of the church because their faces look like stone.\" I can remember the first time in my first","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2010\/11\/levity-and-gravity.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Levity and Gravity"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/","name":"Fr. Dwight Longenecker","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#\/schema\/person\/9a47bc6ba9c0a8c532dc90230d7ad3ad","name":"Fr. Dwight Longenecker","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8dbbfbf5b6d096630322e90bce3f0cec?s=96&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8dbbfbf5b6d096630322e90bce3f0cec?s=96&r=g","caption":"Fr. Dwight Longenecker"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/dwightlongenecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/author\/frdwight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/557"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}