wells

Early Monday morning on the run, I feel it full, the gnawing hunger growing in my fasted body, my stomach only a pleasing kind of empty; the gnawing hunger growing in my slowed mind, like shadows licking at the edges, making everything dim with an alarming sense of lack.

Hungry, but hungry for…what?

My body warms as my eyes trace the lines of all those naked Winter trees, reaching their empty, boney arms toward the sky.

I’m not always good at knowing the answer to that question, what am I hungry for, particularly when the hunger I feel arises from my heart.

All I know for sure—discontentment broods, like a blanketing cloud shutting out the warmth, dark and heavy with stormy potential, calling me toward escape.

But here’s a thing I’ve learned from God, that His glory once appeared as a cloud, and so, even a cloud can have light—or holy fire—at the center.

So, I lift the question—what am I hungry for, which seems to be important, this being the far louder, less agreeable kind of hungry, the grumble of discontentment which has, for these last few weeks, only gotten louder on weekdays, when responsibilities for which I feel grateful require me to follow a schedule and be out-going, when I want to be in-gathering.

I lift it like a prayer, let it fly from my lips as I exhale hard on a hill.

Kevin is talking about something he read in Genesis this morning, about when the Israelites grew large as a people and the jealous Philistines stopped up all their wells, wells that had been dug during the time of Abraham. 

“They filled them up with dirt,” he’s saying, and in my mind, wells become graves.

Our warm-up conversation about an early Valentine’s date has matured, between sprints, to thoughts about being filled, how not every filling is full-filling.

I think of the Israelites again, sick, with quail stuck in between their teeth, but still hungry.

At twilight, you will eat meat, God had said to them, and in the morning, you will be filled with bread.

They would remember this later, maybe, when they smelled the Bread of the Presence, steamy and daily fresh in the tabernacle, that a person can consume so many things that won’t even touch the hunger.

Valentine’s Day, did you know?  It started as a Christian feast day, maybe intended as a redemptive substitution for a Roman fertility festival, a re-direction of human appetites toward celebrating the loving and good provision of God—the bread of heaven, to put it another way, and not really a heyday for Whitman’s samplers and greeting cards.

“I was reading that this morning, and I realized,” Kevin starts again as I catch up in recovery and finally run back up beside him, “Jesus says He’ll make us wellsprings of living water, and when I try to fill my emptiness with anything but Jesus, it’s like I’m shoveling dirt right into the well.”

We can be wells, becoming graves.

And then there’s Riley, who can’t even tell when she’s hungry.

Me too, sometimes.

Every time we gather, our heads bowed over a humble feast at our table, Riley sits with her phone diligently poised over her dinner, that steaming plate, her bright ocean blues glancing from meal and back to digital display, her thumbs moving swiftly as she murmurs to herself.  You’d think she’s texting at the table.  You’d think maybe she’s lost track of the rest of us forking morsels of goodness into our mouths, processing the day aloud and catching up, amending our collective perspective, but no, she’s only trying to keep track of what she’s eating, trying to pay attention.  You’d maybe shake your head, thinking something about young people, these days, so attached to their devices, feeling puzzled as she suddenly pushes back her chair, maneuvers over to the refrigerator, mumbles something about let me see, as she lifts a dressing bottle out and lifts her phone to take a picture, or actually only to scan the QR code so she can record the dressing in her food diary, subtract it from her calorie budget, so she can take note of what she’s about to put in her mouth.

All this sounds extreme maybe, yes, feels that way to me too, except that I know she thinks of hunger as just having a desire to consume, which she always has, to taste and experience food, to eat, but she can’t quite attach that desire to an actual perceived need in her body for nourishment, for fuel.  And when it comes to indulging, she’s numb to any uncomfortable feeling in her body that warns too much too much too much.  About eating, she can be like many of us about shopping or social media or productivity or human praise, addicted, and completely unaware of the damage she’s doing to herself.

I’m thinking, mulling all this as I run alongside my husband, that I’d do well to pay a little closer attention to what’s filling up the shovel. Because I can be a well, becoming a grave.  Filling up on dirt.  Consuming things that don’t give me life; on food that isn’t really food at all, that is perishing, that only kills and steals and destroys. Work for food that will last, that’s what Jesus warned, is still warning me.

People with Autism experience disconnect across systems in their bodies, though the exact articulation of the challenge varies widely from person to person, and we are all somehow spiritually autistic, on a spectrum from disconnection to connection.  Autistic individuals often seek repetitive stimulation for muted sensations, and did you know that starving people don’t feel hungry anymore?  Discontentment can brood quietly, can leave us pressing hard into a bruise again and again and again to see if we’re actually feeling anything at all.  We can be so numb as not to even know our hunger is what’s at stake.

When Kevin and I realized this about Riley, we found a structured system, something to stand in for signals that serve, if we pay attention to them, to protect most bodies from overindulgence—from consumption that really self-consumes, that circumvents nutrition.  We taught her about calorie budgets and accountability, which has largely fallen out of fashion, but which can, for those of muted sensibilities, become a critical protection against self-destruction.

I have learned to journal my confessions as written prayers, because I don’t always even know I’m hungry either, because lately, beside my discontentment, once I’ve labeled it correctly, God has laid a precious truth, something Paul wrote that he’d learned, the secret to contentment–I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

And Jesus called himself the bread of life, the daily bread, the in the morning, you will be filled with bread bread, the Bread of the Presence of God, and I’m learning, moment by accountable moment, and not just to my journal but also to Kevin and my community in Christ, not only to recognize my hunger, but to remember what actually nourishes my soul, and to consume that first.   I’m learning to let the wellspring swell before I reach for my shovel—for my phone—for whatever else my fingers want to reach to consume, especially when I’m itching to escape, because the true answer to that question—what am I hungry for—actually always remains the same.

I’m hungry for Him.

And He said, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.