c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Everybody knows the longing that comes with the returning light of spring. We call it spring fever. It fills us with a yearning that we cannot quite name, and it inspires daydreaming about destinations so vague that even FedEx couldn’t find them.

Easter usually roughly coincides with the arrival of Daylight Savings Time _ last year Easter was celebrated a week before, and this year it comes two weeks after.

While spring fever has its own long history, Daylight Savings Time only started during World War I for practical reasons: to save energy by reducing the need for artificial light. Now we enjoy it for another trademark American purpose _ to stretch the day for leisure activity.

But these familiar rationales cannot explain away the Easter mystery of light and shadow that is symbolized by Daylight Savings Time and expressed by spring fever. Instead, they are aspects of a profound spiritual mystery that we all experience, even if we call it by another name or cannot name at all.

Easter, like Passover, is set at the intersection of shadow and light, when the hours of the day and the night are equal. In spring fever, we feel the pull of life that rises in us like sap in reawakened trees. Life flowers, we turn our faces toward the nourishing sunlight. We respond to nature’s rhythms in all creation at this season.

On the conscious level, the first advocates of Daylight Savings Time thought they were resetting clocks to accommodate commerce. But on a deeper level, they were acknowledging the tension between the sun and the moon that silently invades our bones this time of year. We feel the longing to break free of the frame of time and lay hold of eternity.

Think about sports, especially the difference between basketball, football and baseball. Basketball and football are dominated by the clock, symbolizing the urgency of time as winter’s shadows begin to gather. No wonder coaches emphasize the importance of “managing the clock,” “timeouts” and the “sudden death” of “overtime.”

Baseball, however, is different, and it is no surprise that its players are called the boys of summer. It begins with spring training and, free of time’s constraints, belongs to the summer sun that symbolizes eternity. It resists time as it is played past summer’s peak and remains timeless.

The mystery of the World Series is not found in who wins but in the lengthened shadows that the slanting sun casts across the playing field. “Wait until next year” _ a muttered grumble after loss _ is actually a cry of human longing for resurrection and new life after death.

Every day, we are engaged with symbols of the mystery of Easter, of wanting to throw off the moon’s shadows and allow the eternal sun to break time’s grip and flood us with the light of new life:

The Wall Street Journal tells of railroads adding 6 a.m. commuter trains because “more U.S. households are starting their days before dawn.”

Energy suppliers note that the greatest uptick in usage is between the hours of 5 a.m. and 7 a.m.

CNN and CNBC respond by scheduling their morning shows an hour earlier.

The New York Times tells of the Manhattan realtor who is trying to outwit time by showing properties and closing deals all night long.

That story has less to do with a midnight salesman and more to do with us, and our daily Easter mystery of seeking the light of resurrection and new life every day of our lives.

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

KRE/RB END KENNEDY

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