On Gravity

George MacDonald wrote a charming story called The Light Princess, about a girl with no gravity. Without gravity, she floated about, neither stable on earth nor sensible in mind. The key to gravity was tears. Grave is a slow solemn tempo in music, a critical situation, a dangerous pass. The grave is where the body lies down.

            But gravity makes us able to walk in the world. It gives each thing its proportional weight. Gravity is the general attraction of everything in the universe, affecting matter, time and space. Without it, would anything hold together?

            What then is frivolity? Is it horses for courses? (Some view horses’ paces weightily.) Celebrities and crime? The serious life’s work of many journalists. Fashion, comedy, or laughter? Is it lack of weightiness, wisdom, or depth? Does each kind of frivolity have its own gravity, based on the attraction of things for one another?

            Veronese shows Jesus at the Resurrection, leaping up from the tomb full of life and lightness. Do we have the hope of losing gravity at the general resurrection, when our deeds call us to account, and the soul commits again to the body? How would gravity behave in a new heaven and a new earth?