This is Water: David Foster Wallace

goldfish“Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” David Foster Wallace
– This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

As a pastor, I am often asked to define spirituality. Over the years I have explored many definitions of spirituality; all of which fall short of capturing the experience of the awareness of the sacredness of life that I believe spirituality is. In his efforts to define the value of the value of an education, David Foster Wallace comes close to describing an awareness that is spirituality. Spirituality opens us to the awareness that there is life before death, here and now and that life is sacred. Enjoy the video. You can read the full text of the speech here

The audio comes from a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallacewallace in 2005 to at Kenyon College. The video was made after David Foster Wallace died. Wallace was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and professor at Poma College who has been described as “the most gifted and linguistically exuberant American novelist and short story writer of his generation. 

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