living water: a manifesto

Nearly 20 years ago, I saw The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with a group of friends. The movie devastated me; I felt my humanity being brutalized on so many levels. As we left the theater, I tried to make light of it by throwing out a comment to my friends, who seemed to have altogether enjoyed the experience. A friend of mine looked me dead in the eyes, and he said, “Kate, you think too much.”

That night at home I bawled my eyes out in convulsive heaves. I wept for so many things: for the lingering wound of the film, for my destiny to be the one to ruin a good time with her thoughts, and – most deeply – for the reputation thinking had somehow achieved in our culture as that which destroys.

But it seems to me that the rise of blogging and podcasts is largely because there are many, many people who clearly “think too much.” Both those who create content and those who seek it give constant testimony to the fact that thinking can actually enhance an experience. It can lift something up and breathe new life into it; it can find something shining in that which is dark.

Clearly not all thinking is the same, though. The thirsty soul may grab any glass given it, but what it longs to find is living water, water that leads to life, to something of the eternal. That is the well this blog seeks to draw from, even if it is not always so obvious.

*Header image: “Passiontide” by Jaroslava Black.