Riffin’ on those Samaritan Women (they’re all the “Same”) John 4

Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman

4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”

We are not the sole benefactors of our actions. In fact, we are locked into a matrix of interdependence in which all activity is comprehensively doled out/meaningfully experienced across the multitudes, with the only effective encapsulation of a “sole” focal point for activity and the effects of really being “God” (no srsly it’s a more true way of saying “individual”), and It containing within It the multitudes and then some… when we behave sensibly, as we should, whether this imperative be perceived as moral or so impersonal that its simply deemed practical, we glorify each other, the prospects of embodied life the planet over, even, in addition to simply doing good by God. Universal will not only animates us moment in and moment out, forcing us to behave in particular ways, or at least encouraging us to do as much, it also effectively tends to existence…something the thinking mind in this day and age struggles to glimpse/retain as a foundational sort of thing regarding worldview.

If we could understand the world, it would be the very same as if “that Messiah” who “is coming” actually coming and explaining “everything to us”. In fact, the two essentially go hand in hand; we have to actively seed spiritual wisdom with disciplined/effective behavior as practitioners across the adult life as we also accumulate life experiences before it all entirely…takes. To hear the truth, while transformative on the spot to the tune of perhaps stealing the light from the mid-day sky, rarely actualizes a person…that takes further action and deep seeking, as well as an eventual surrender to something beyond Man/bigger than us, fundamentally, even if such a thing doesn’t actually exist because of the yet realized grounds of our Selfhood… we try to realize a void but instead find ourselves tasked with both realizing it and equating it with Self…

Experience/life…is Christ’s curriculum. It was the Father’s realized. Christ is trying to transform the narrative on the intersection of the spiritual life and a subjective experience in general in this passage, so as to elucidate that we are to see God in all things, and in doing as much that we hit a new tier of “worshipping” that functionally is beyond the seeking which chooses to only see Him in the actively Deified. He wants to point out that, ultimately, although this doesn’t comment on secondary truths any which way definitively, it doesn’t matter where or when you worship because your entire life is to be seen as a form of service/worship regardless of how well you perform it… that we are to meet God in all moments moreso than partition him off to what we deem “spiritual practice”. If “spiritual practice” was always somehow a part of communal life, it needs to be re-framed so as to be associated with every activity ever performed, ever, or that could ever be.

While this sounds daunting, we’ve been doing this the entire time. It’s baked into social dynamism, it’s hardwired how we go about conversing/getting along with one another. We know to prioritize things along the lines of values held and play all sorts of cognitive games that we already play…we just don’t fully realize that this type of social-normative functioning, which amounts to being a good human and a part of the community, essentially salvation for cattle, being part of a decent herd, whether they realize it or not… is a symptom of God’s effective determinism which helps keep humanity afloat despite the wonderfully odd tendencies of the human brain, and is clear proof of “Spirit’s”…”Truth’s” dominion. The kingdom is already upon the Earth, it’s just the glimpsing of it…that we are accountable for, and Jesus is teaching as much in today’s passage.

Seek the spirit in any particular form, “Jesus Christ” even, and you run the risk of turning yourself off to messages the universe is sending you in live-time. You “run the risk”. It doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t, but also too all manifestations are equivalent images/extensions of the Father…as the Son… and everyone needs to functionally realize as much, as we do socially by way of unconditional love…    

Seek God in “spirit” or “truth” or simply “all” and you will see “all” in terms of Love. This is what defined “Christ” so to speak, which in turn comes full circle and actualizes who Jesus was as a historical man before actualizing spiritually through service to his fellow man.

Give to the thirsty, in service, while hopefully still rendering unto Caeser what is His… and you shall thirst not ever again. Wheres if you participate well in a social system in which you guys ration water and tend well to the waterhole, you are a really, really good person who will thirst predictably every couple of hours. The two somehow go hand in hand, one hand washes the other, both directions, and this is life, a sublime joy, with the amount of magic ever on the up-tick and the moreso directly laborious processes on the recede.

Seek God in all and solutions shall manifest. Tend well to the social system, follow the rules as you should, and He who is allowed to break those rules might show up and start miracle-ing ya for ladles of water. Have conversations with people. Consider breaking the rules if the spirit of truth seems to deem it compassionate on the spot. Believe in Democracy/cognition/interpersonal communication.

Understand that to be effective stewards of the natural resources leads to both a joyous capacity to give as well as to effectively being above condition one’s self. Be your master’s pride.

Also too, there’s an intense scene where for no apparent reason Jesus lets this woman know that her sex life has been a hot mess because she couldn’t get in tune with universal will…as opposed to social mores/norms. It must have been tonally gentle because the words on paper are devastating, but she doesn’t have a bad response. He’s saying to her “See, there’s only confusion as to what to do, no vagabonds here, just pain and seeking of the eternal waters…” He perhaps even equates it with female sexuality, the seeking of, so as to comment upon the social institution of using reputation to dox women along the lines of sexuality.

The Grateful Dead movement in the West smoked the Catholic Church in the latter half of the 20th century in regards to spiritual footprint 👣