Woman at the Well

Usually I go to our home in the city for two days a week. But I have a Mama "percolating" so I thought it would be wise to stick around the farm for now. This created the need for me to go get some more water. There is a municipal, spring fed well just down the road. We went there for an emergency once, now we prefer it to any other water.

So I was the Woman at the Well. It caused quite a stir. I'm not sure where all the women in this community are, but evidently they rarely venture from their homes, once they get married at 18. Not less than 12 cars drove through the area (there is absolutely no reason to drive through,unless you are just checking out who is there) all men, all slowing down to watch me pump water, to watch it splash into my bottles, and onto my feet.

I imagined that old story about Jesus and the woman at the well. What did He see? What did She see? You know he had been traveling for a long time, on foot. He was probably as happy to see water as he was to see a woman. Water...Woman...they go together. They quench the thirst, wash over you, make you clean, change your inner temperature-up or down. She may have seen the Stranger, her first instinct to ignore, walk away fast, but the warring feelings inside her told her to stay and give what release that she could.

She had a man, a good man, at home waiting for her to come back with the days water. He loved her, and there were lots of women in the village who admired him. And yet this Stranger called forth something in her that she thought had passed with her girlhood. So she stands at the well, for all to see and gossip about later; the Stranger asks for a drink, she lifts her cupped hands to His mouth...They are both released, unglued, awed, made whole and it takes only seconds. Whom has baptized who?

No one knows who this woman really was, or if this actually happened, or if it is another great teaching story; for me she is the Magdalene. She gives her emotion and her body, risks her life and lifestyle, for love, for the lover, for the Beloved. Later, in a tense moment, when the Stranger called out "I thirst", it was for Her.

I do not typically wax biblical when doing random chores, but I felt exposed at the well, open, necessary. When offered help to carry in my water, by dear friends visiting the farm this week, I had to say no. Carrying that water to my home seemed like a sacred duty at that moment. I felt tied to all women by that simple task. I imagined African women with big pottery jars on their heads, South American women with skin bags tied with rope, ancient Irish women throwing gold into wells to bless them. I am just an average American woman, with bpa free plastic bottles, but we are all one, thirsting, at the well.