There was tension, for there in the both/and were opposites, but there was also rest, as I trusted Love. And I needed to rest from chasing those nine little words, so in 2013 I resigned my job, reluctantly dismounted the horse I had ridden for six years and began sitting with those being wooed to the deserts of their own souls.
I spent much of the summer living in the concrete, while meditating on John’s Gospel, particularly chapter 4, and the story of the Samaritan Woman. Early each morning I walked out my door, entered creation’s bible and sat at the well with Jesus.
I traversed between the actual words in scripture and my imagination, pretending to be the Samaritan Woman. I negotiated between the historical Jesus who left, providing His Spirit to live within me and the transcendent Jesus who comes to me in the here and now.
In the beginning, I sat with a tired Jesus, tired of me being stuck, but as the summer progressed, I sat with a carefree Jesus, very different from the Jesus with whom I recently walked, during Holy week. Morning after morning we sat together and communed. Occasionally, He would say to me, “Go, fly away”.
“Go”? Where? It was not that “go” was the point of our conversations, but it crept into our talks often enough to keep me hanging onto the reigns of the horse that I had finally, finally stepped down from. Why couldn’t I just let go?
Morning after morning, I met Jesus at the well with remnants of the burden I carried; this time next year, you will not be here. Every day, I looked deep into the well, dropped my pennies in, watched the ripples and wished and prayed to understand.
But each day, as I looked at the water in the well, the ripples mesmerized me by spiraling down deeper and I realized that by concentrating on the abyss, a void welled up in me. But by letting the Sacred spring up naturally within, I was already calm and settled and what I knew or did not know about the deeper rumblings was enough.