The Unbearable Lightness of Being
In 2015, Pope Francis remarked that 鈥渢oday we are not living an epoch of change so much as an epochal change鈥濃�攐r put another way, 鈥淲e are not living an era of change but a change of era.鈥� Five years later, in the midst of the global pandemic, Francis concluded an interview by recalling the ancient poet Virgil鈥檚 figure Aeneas. Having lost everything in the defeat of Troy, Aeneas faces a decision whether to remain in despair or move into the future. He picks up his father and heads for the mountain. Francis concluded: 鈥淭his is what we all have to do now, today: to take with us the roots of our traditions, and make for the mountain.鈥� We live in a period of fleeting change whose lightness is nearly unbearable. In his lecture, the Hank Center鈥檚 2021 Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. Fellow, Stephen Schloesser, S.J., will explore the ways that we can re-source the Catholic intellectual heritage so that we might creatively engender its innovative radiance. What elements of our traditions might we draw from as we as we make for the mountain? What materials, attitudes, and dispositions will we need? Schloesser will integrate a sacramental approach and draw on the insights of figures including Paul Claudel, Annie Dillard, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Milan Kundera, and Denise Levertov, as well as Caroline Walker Bynum and Alfred North Whitehead. The cultivation of awe and wonder 鈥攚hich admittedly also entail some fear鈥攚ill be encouraged as a response to the surprising, puzzling, bewildering, astonishing, and mysterious.