By Andrea Lingle

Thy Kingdom Come

The Kingdom of God means the complete filling of the entire soul of intelligent creatures with the Holy Spirit…We must invite him purely and simply, so that our thought of him is an invitation, a longing cry. It is as when one is in extreme thirst…One merely thinks of water, actual water itself, but the image of water is like a cry from our whole being. (Simone Weil, “Concerning the Our Father”)

Only those who have experienced the shock of transitoriness, the anxiety in which they are aware of their finitude, the threat of nonbeing, can understand what the notion of God means, Only those who have experienced the tragic ambiguities of our historical existence and have totally questioned the meaning of existence can understand what the symbol of the Kingdom of God means. (Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Volume 1)

Her lips were drawn tight enough to break the skin, and one corner was dark with dried blood. Her voice had dwindled with her thoughts to one point: water. Her mind ran with the cool trickle of a mountain stream while her legs began to swell. First her ankles began to expand over the rim of her shoes, then her knees and finally her thighs began to bear the weight of her failing body. Her tongue became inflexible, inarticulate, unable to scrape out the one word that would save her. She lay, face down, protecting her eyes from the sun and crows. Surely, somewhere on the wide face of the planet, there was someone who had the luxury of laughter. It could not be that every living being had been reduced to thirst, but she could no longer imagine it. Her mind had shriveled to one resounding pitch: water. Her skin reddened and blistered, her swollen arms cradled under her forehead, unfelt. Her eyelids could no longer overcome the friction of her desiccation, leaving her eyes sealed against the glare of the sun—rendered blind by her thirst. Nothing, not love or wealth or honor was left. Only thirst. As her heart began to skip and stutter, she rasped the only word left in her language: water.

“The Spirit bloweth where he listeth…We can only invite him…It is as when one is in extreme thirst, ill with thirst…the image of water is like a cry from our whole being.” (Simone Weil, “Concerning the Our Father”)