Dear Friends in Christ,

Just beginning Lent?

It’s not too late. We have some pointers from last Sunday’s Nicodemus and this Sunday’s unnamed Samaritan woman at the well. Two seekers. One by night, educated, credentialed and cautious with a lot to lose. The other, a woman at noon, full exposure, nothing left to protect, stripped of pretense.

The woman didn’t plan for this. She stumbled upon him while doing an ordinary errand. She thinks she is out for refilling her water container.

Neither is lectured on moral improvement. The teacher gives no tidy prescriptive admonition to Nicodemus but rather gives disorienting images of wind, breath, darkness and light. There is no scolding of the woman. He simply sees her and tells her about her life without a trace of criticalness.

These encounters are not hinged on moral improvement. This is not about moral rearmament. There is no lecturing on becoming better but rather becoming more honest to God and to oneself.

Elemental ungraspable images—wind that blows where it will, water that wells up from within. This is not transactional: you fast, God rewards. The grace is already moving. Your practice is simply to notice it.

Speaking of practice, give yourself this grace. Return to the well daily. Bring one question, one honest conversation, along with your thirst.

There is the one who comes with questions and cannot quite get past tying himself up in knots, and there is the one who has moved past blocking and barriers and has embraced this Messiah, this Christ. The well is always there; in fact, it’s in you.

Your fellow traveler,

—Richard