Slideshow image

This reflection came to me today while I was finishing my sermon for tomorrow. I’m using a short story from David Foster Wallace in the sermon, and it’s been sitting in my head all morning, so I thought I’d share a few quick thoughts here too.

“Two young fish are swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then one of them looks over at the other and says, ‘What the hell is water?’”

I love that story because it’s so simple. Most of us don’t notice the water we’re in. It just feels normal.

I spent some formative years living in Arkansas. Our family attended a small white baptist church, mostly because they had potluck each and as poor as we were, a free meal was a free meal. They were nice folks as far as I remember them and I think of them fondly. Anyway, the water there was church on Sunday, faith, and the King James Bible. Now some years later I’m here in Banff, the water is openness, kindness, and care for the earth. Both are beautiful in their own ways. Both can also go unexamined.

A few thoughts that came out of that today:

  • We all want to be good people.
  • We also want to be seen as good people.
  • In our culture, being good often means being agreeable.
  • But that’s not the same thing as being true.

Sometimes being good is just easy. You live in a place, absorb what everyone around you believes, and call it self-evident. It feels right because everyone else agrees. But if I had stayed in Arkansas, I might feel just as certain about very different things.

That’s what I mean by “water.” The atmosphere that makes our assumptions feel obvious, when really they’re inherited.

The trouble is that easy goodness rarely transforms us. It isn’t wrestled for. It isn’t prayed through. It doesn’t come from listening to people who think differently. It’s just received, not discovered.

I’ve invoked Hannah Arendt a lot recently and I’d feel guilty except her writings work again! She wrote on what she called thoughtlessness. Not stupidity. Just the habit of not thinking. Because real thinking costs something. It takes time, humility, and a bit of discomfort.

So instead of doing that work, we often take shortcuts. We meet a view we don’t like and attach it to a ready-made villain. Nazi. Marxist. Bigot. Snowflake. Once we give it a label, we can move on. We don’t have to listen or think anymore.

And today the sides are sharp. We argue about abortion, gender, race, politics, war, sexuality, freedom of speech, and faith. These are not small things. They go straight to how we understand what it means to be human.

One side sees the defense of life. Another sees the defense of freedom.

One side calls affirmation compassion. Another calls it confusion.

One side believes justice means liberation. Another believes justice means order.

These are not light matters. They touch real people and real suffering.

And when we stop listening, we lose more than understanding. We lose our honesty. We forget that we still live alongside the people we disagree with. We share the same streets, the same grocery stores, the same air. Life isn’t an online argument. It’s here, in the messy community where disagreement and friendship overlap.

So maybe the work for us is to stop for a moment and notice the water.

  • What assumptions am I carrying without question?
  • Have I mistaken agreement for virtue?
  • Am I thinking, or just repeating?

Jesus said the measure we use will be measured back to us. Maybe that includes the way we size people up in our minds before they ever speak.

I don’t have a clean conclusion. Just this sense that goodness has to be hard-won. It needs thought, prayer, and honesty.

Anyway, those are today’s thoughts. Just trying to notice the water a little.