The Middle of It/The Unfolding
John 4:5-42
4:5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
4:6 Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
4:7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
4:8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
4:10 Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
4:11 The woman said to him, "Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?
4:12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?"
4:13 Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
4:14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life."
4:15 The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water."
4:16 Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come back."
4:17 The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband';
4:18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!"
4:19 The woman said to him, "Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
4:20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."
4:21 Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
A Poem titled “There You Are” from Arielle Estoria’s new book: “The Unfolding”
Shape Shifter
by Arielle Estoria
When your voice begins to shift,
Do not be afraid which way it moves
Do not be alarmed at the way it dives deeper
Into a core you didn’t know existed
Do not be alarm how it wakes up,
Shakes up the depths of you
Or how it allows you to find God
Even still in all the mess, in all the questions
How could we ever assume that God
Was not God amidst the mess,
Soul deep with us, in the questions
As if my God was afraid to get her hands a little dirty
Does not meet me in the wondering
What if who you are
And who you were
Are competing for the whole of you?
You cannot live on a balance beam
Of being two humans
You are allowed to
Change and grow as time allows
You have permission to be who you want to be
In all the shapes in which you will become
May you learn to embrace the rhythm of change,
May you learn to shift with it
Sometimes the shifting feels like the breaking
But, love, breathe deeply
This is the shaping
