Posts tagged water

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not dam the water.

“If I close these fingers, try to hold, hoard the river - dam up the grace - won’t the water grow stagnant?

Long ago the children and I once looked at photos of the dead Dead Sea, and we read how the sea and salt content rises and everything dies.

I think of this.

That fullness grows foul.


Grace is alive, living waters.

If I dam up the grace, hold the blessings tight, joy within dies…waters that have no life.”  Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The wound of the water.

“A fly cuts the surface of one full glass.  

I can see it - the wounding of the water.

“Yes…”  There. 


The wound of the water smoothes…fades…heals.”  

Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

…smoothes…fades…heals.  

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the wound of the water.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Getting into hot water.

“I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.”  G.K. Chesterton

…tepid transformation?

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to getting into hot water.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not drink the light that is in the water.


“You flowers and trees, you hills and streams, you fields, flocks, and wild birds, you books, you poems, and you people, I am unutterably alone in the midst of you.

The irrational hunger that sometimes gets into the depth of my will tries to swing my deepest self away from God and direct it to your love.  

I try to touch you with the deep fire that is in the center of my heart, but I cannot touch you without defiling both you and myself, and I am abashed, solitary, and helpless, surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me.


But this sadness generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pure and perfect and they belong to God and are mirrors of His beauty.

He is mirrored in all things like sunlight in clean water: but if I try to drink the light that is in the water, I only shatter the reflection.



And so I live alone and chaste in the midst of the holy beauty of all created things, knowing that nothing I can see or hear or touch will ever belong to me, ashamed of my absurd need to give myself away to one of them or all of them.

The silly, hopeless passion to give myself away to any beauty eats out my heart.

It is an unworthy desire, but I cannot avoid it.  It is in the hearts of us all, and we have to bear with it, suffer its demands with patience, until we die and go to heaven, where all things will belong to us in their highest causes.”                                              Thomas Merton, Journal II, September 14, 368-69

…surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to not drink the light that is in the water.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The throes of yearning, not just for water or floss.


“Now he had to go through Samaria.

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son, Joseph.  Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well.  It was about the sixth hour.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her,

“Will you give me a drink?’

The Samaritan woman said to him,

“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman.  How can you ask me for a drink?”

Jesus answered her, 

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, 
you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep.  Where can you get this living water?  Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered,

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him,

“Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”  John 4:4-15


The water Kurt Vonnegut drinks isn’t bottled in Samaria…but it might as well be.  I learned more than just creative writing from these words of his:

“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it’s only a glass of water.  Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.  One of my students wrote a story about a nun who got a piece of dental floss stuck between her lower left molars, and who couldn’t get it out all day long.  I thought that was wonderful.  The story dealt with issues a lot more important than dental floss, but what keep the readers going was anxiety about when the dental floss would finally be removed.  Nobody could read that story without fishing around in his mouth with a finger.”


She…and I…still have to drink water from time to time.  

Paralyzed by what may seem to be the meaninglessness of life, I, like the woman from Samaria, need to ask Jesus for a “drink”.  

He “had” to go through Samaria, didn’t he?

She…and I…deal with issues a lot more important than the dental floss.

But I think it’s wonderful that it gets just as stuck between the left lower molars of “she”, who is a nun…as of “me”, who is not a nun. 

Especially if I couldn’t get it out all day long.


Thirsty?

Something stuck in your teeth?


I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the throes of yearning, not just for water or floss.