Thirst implies the desire for something, but a desire so intense that we will die if we remain without it.
—St. Teresa of Avila
Thirst reminds us that, in order to live, we need to receive something from outside: it’s a need we cannot satisfy ourselves. The thirst of which Jenn Johnson speaks is the instictive need to fill the boundless void we feel inside. Now, before this vital impetus, we can have two attitudes: we can succumb to its strength, swallowing up experiences in a disordered way, allowing ourselves to be overcome by the obsession for what we lack, trying to change reality so that it continually satisfies us.
Or we can believe that this thirst has the amazing capacity to drive our whole being on to the eternal. Indeed, when a man realizes that the deepest desire of his heart is to know God, a limitless horizon of possibilities for being happy opens up to him.
It is dawn. The voice of Jenn Johnson interweaves with the wind. The void seems to vanish. Her song suggests to us that the best way to satisfy our thirst is to become a source of love for others, because happiness does not exist alone.
The song “In Over My Head” is from the 2015 album We Will Not Be Shaken.
Costanza D’ardia
And today we celebrate...