Never enough

You are
cool drink
and unquenchable thirst
you are
quiet satiety
and unapeasable hunger
you are
soft touch
and howling itch
the more I get of you
the more I want.

--Suzanne DeWitt Hall

Mocking trifles

Our misery is that we thirst so little for these sublime things, and so much for the mocking trifles of time and space.

-- Charles H. Spurgeon

At Jacob's Well

This is the most beautiful thing I've read in a very long time. Needless to say, it comforts me.

At Jacob's Well

Here's what I want to know about the woman
carrying her water-jar to Jacob's well
outside the town of Sychar, in Samaria:
what charms, what freshness bubbled up
from which corner of her heart, and made her the oasis
that she was? Five husbands and a lover
come one by one to slake their thirst in her,
and still some water-truce holds in Sychar, protects
this frank green spring from all polluting shame;
and now another thirsty man, this foreigner,
sits asking, and again her charms bubble up
like the water, like her questions. Could that be
what enchants them all, her way of asking
straight to the heart of things? And did she know,
before he spoke, how long her heart had thirsted
to be answered the same way? Hear the dance
of their talk, these strangers, as they sit together
on the path to Jacob's well, speak in circles
around the deep water: thirst and drinking,
husbands and lovers, mountain and temple,
Spirit and truth--askings and answers
bowing in, leaning back, swayed and spun
to the beat of two hidden drums. Here's what
I wonder about the woman, dancing back now
to the village, her water-jar left behind
for him to drink from: did she notice
what the disciples half-saw, how deep he had drunk
from their talk, from their dance? See the gleam
in his dark eyes, like sunlight sparking deep
on well-water; see his toes tap inside dusty sandals
in time to the dancer's steps; now see him rise
and laugh, shake his head, rinsed by her charms,
sated by her questions, enchanted by her thirsty
generous heart, a vessel after his own heart,
a dancer who matches his own steps in the dance
of ask and answer, of Spirit courting soul.

--Elizabeth A. Nelson

St. Augustine inflamed

"I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new! I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. You were with me, but I was not with you. The beautiful things of this world kept me far from you and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have had no being at all. You called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight; you shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I grasp your sweet odour, I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace."

(Confessions, X, 27)

Thirst for happiness and meaning

There is within every soul a thirst for happiness and meaning.

-- Thomas Aquinas

There is no other stream

From The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis:

“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.”

For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink,” and of course she remembered what Scrubb had said about animals talking in that other world, and realized that it was the lion speaking. Anyway, she had seen its lips move this time and the voice was not like a man’s. It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion. “I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill. “Then drink,” said the Lion. “May I -- could I-- would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill. The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience.

The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. “Will you promise not to--do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill. “I make no promise,” said the Lion. Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said. “I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill. “Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion. “Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

“It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion-- no one who had seen his stern face could do that--and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. Before she tasted it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be on the whole the most dangerous thing of all.”