ALPHABET POEMS

Uses letters as points of departure for lines or whole poems.

exercise uno

Write a poem just from the way the letter looks.

WHO ARE YOU. CROOKED Z?

Scurrying down the steps

your keys wait by the door

next in line
your wallet waits in the pocket
of another coat.

exercise dos
write a 26 letter poem with a-z as the first letters of each word.

bold catastrophes drip energy.
forget gain.
hold instances judiciously
(karma.)
like monkeys navigate
orangutan prairies.
(quite.)
red supermodels
trust underwear
(vixens.)
witchdoctor xenophobes yell zulu.

acrostics one and two

First letters in each line make a word, phrase, or sentence.

Exercise Uno:

Single Acrostic

Write a word/phrase/sentence down the side and then try to fill in the words. Best written at top speed.

BABY SITTER

Of course we don’t know much;
next to nothing, only the vaguest details,
we might say.

Across oceans of ambivalence,
roads, winding around passion,
did we stop to breathe? Did
we once take a moment, and,
earnestly, count what has been
made or what had been destroyed?
Are we made to worship this
reality? On the dining-room
chair: hardened macaroni, a golden
hair, a sticky blob of warm vanilla.

Exercise Dos

Double Acrostic

Make a phrase on both sides of the line


another girl has
negotiated with a guru:
drug dealing aphrodisiac
of a part-time patch
the man did not know
her heart, ripped into
ephemeral fleets of promise
revealed only to the greats

Abstract Poem III

Exercise tres

Take an existing poem and take out enough words so it makes no sense but the words sound cool


4th of July

(Version One)

the world's in flame
or so it seems
i hear cannons and popcorn
two neighborhoods away
i see red and blewdust and smoke crawls
over pines and maples
and oaks in bloom
surrounding my subdivision
this is not war, this is
celebration, the grand finale now
mimics the more exuberant display
over windsor, hart plaza, for fearless
crowds who've dared to cross
the city line. canada and states uniteto salute the flags that stream behind
jets above the river tonight
explosives equal freedomwe are free

mysterious creation
the sliver of pink haze moon
still glows. you can find it
somehow still more spectacular


(Version Two:)

this is not war,
this is the grand finale.

fear crowds salute:
explosives equal freedom.

(mysterious creation of pink haze moon
somehow more spectacular)

Abstract Poem II

Exercise dos
Take a poem by you or someone else and change most of the words:
Count the nouns, verbs, and adjectives. List these parts of speech in numbers equal to that in the poem. Replace the corresponding words in the poem. You can play around with the choices and modify the verbs appropriately.

(from ee )

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of allnothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--
(verbs(12): grow, find, search, greet, hate, heal, snuff, reach, teach, grasp, cut, quit
nouns (20): blanket, queen, perfume, alligator, novel, feather-duster, scythe, prayer, pain, top-hat, passageway, nation, steamboat, snowflake, ladybug, amulet, talisman, wrinkle, timepiece, swirl
adj (14): gray, withered, stooped, crunchy, stiff, lackadaisical, carefree, ephemeral, caustic, roundabout, grand, lofty, equivocal, soft)
--

i find You God for most this stiff
top-hat: for the searching crunchy passageways of scythes
and a withered soft steamboat of pain; and for everything
which is grand which is equivocal which is yes

(i who have taught and am caustic again today,
and this is the nation's talisman; this is the amulet
queen of prayer and of ladybugs and wrinkles: and of the stooped
ephemeral feather-duster carefree timepiece)

how should greeting hating grasping cutting
healing any—growing from the blanket
of perfume--alligator merely reaching
snowflake lackadaisical You?

(now the swirl of my swirls roundabout and
now the novel of my novels is gray)

Poetry Forms

(I am going through my mom's book of poetry forms. I was doing this before, in the US, but lost my disk with them on it. Woe was me... Luckily, I had posted many on this blog. Since moving halfway across the world lends itself as a nice fresh start, I decided to go through the forms again, from the beginning.

Feel free to take the forms and experiment with them. High heavenly rankings to those who post their poems in the comment section...)


1. ABSTRACT POEM

Experiments of pattern and sound
The meaning is secondary to the sound of the word
Can also be abstract based on density of images

Exercise Uno take a word and say it over and over until it loses its meaning so then the mind is focused on sound. Then write whatever comes to mind because of the sounds.

(Word choice: peanut)

The Plexiglas crack of finery
spews gross pleas into cherry tree smiles. The girls
forgot to love the sticky canvass of personality
and whisk the brisk bunny away. Many swish
across the velvet mud; the whole of happiness
stirs pudding in wooden hate, crying out to woven
pitfalls. Stopping. Cursing
the swords of saints,
generosity seeps deep into bowls of lemons.

saai can mean left, sand, or late, depending on tone * the cup i'm drinking out of says: If you want a wicked time/then Amy is the one/Because she's really funky/and flippen loads of fun! * There is a blue flower painted on the back of the cat Joel sent me from MexicoTOWN * I can still wear flip flops * I always buy the wrong drink because I don't read labels carefully enough to find that the contents are written in English somewhere on there too * Eating Thai pineapple is a sort of rebirth * P'George spelled Sinderlela like that * I have my own room * My mind is expanding * I'm eating a chocolate covered bread stick and when an officemate handed it to me she said, "pock-EE" because it's called Pockey * I have a blue ink spot right above my writer's bump because I had a leaky pen when I prayed this morning... through ink * I don't have to impress anyone * I'm not driving and don't pay for car insurance * I eat Indian food everyday for 20 baht a plate, in someone's front "yard" * P'Nui always says "closely" when she means "close," so to her, something is always "closely to" something else. * My friend May has the most mischeivous laugh I've ever heard and it is loud * Pink is not a feminine color in Thailand * Being a transvestite is perfectly acceptable here * I don't have to prepare for auditions anymore * I have three poetry braids going on at once and they are good for me * My relationship with God is not abstract * Thais believe that if your spoon hits someone elses at dinner (when you're both taking soup from the same bowl because everyone shares the same bowl) that means you will have a visitor and for some reason that's a bad thing * I have enough

Song For Joel

(guitar picking includes what sounds like a clock chime... hurray)

I wait for the clock
There are better things to do
learn the language, or sleep
write a letter to you

I wait for a prayer
confirmation song, a dream
Walk across an ocean
wake a faithless scream

I wait for the silence
when words are not required
just a sigh, from time
a whine: I'm tired

I wait for surprise
hope I'll not expect
so much I'm disappointed
and don't want what I get

I wait for a selah
a break into a twist
when nothing can be questioned
when no one can be missed.

This is for Bose. And anyone else who is cool enough to appreciate it.

INTERVIEW GAME

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better ! If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!
3. You WILL update your [online journal] with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions

These question are from my cousin:

1. Do you find yourself gravitating towards/exploring any particular subject matter in your writing lately? Say a little about that...

I wish I was more disciplined in my writing so I could answer this better. I’ve noticed that disappointment—in others (particularly leaders and mentors), in the protagonist’s self—comes up quite a bit. I’m haunted by what the English language means to the rest of the world, but I’m struggling with a way to express my thoughts about it. In my songs, the idea that God is everywhere keeps popping up. In free writing, these ideas of what the blues means to me are brought about three or four times per session. I don’t know how to write about that because everything I could say about it, James Baldwin has already said better in Sonny’s Blues. I’m not really working on a particular piece at the moment, so this question is a bit hard to answer.

2. How do you and your brother relate differently to your parents?

He might disagree, but I always figured Ian could relate better to my mother than I can and that I relate better to my dad. I have a lot more in common with my dad and ha, know how to get what I want out of him. I’ve always been able to put the cute on so he’d run out the door to buy me a pack of skittles. My mom doesn’t operate that way. I’m being silly here… Actually, I think it’s because my personality is more similar to my dad’s. Even though I don’t talk to him as often as I’d like, I find that he pops up all the time in my actions and reactions. For instance, the other day an Indian gentleman tried to sell me something at the market--like a lottery ticket or something--by buttering me up, saying, “Hello Beautiful. Where are you from, Beautiful?” And I looked at him straight in the face and said, “India,” and walked away. That’s the kind of gruff thing my dad pulls on salespeople. Also, when I come up against something that hinders productiveness—people dallying around trying to make decisions, I tend to get overly frustrated and grumpy. Not to say that all that I get from my dad is being gruff and grumpy… we’re both quick to act, looking for ways to be wise, apt take adventures, prone to talking a lot and too loud (something that separates me from most Thais. Ha.), sociable, and uninhibited. I think we usually attack assignments in a similar way and that’s why we can communicate well. My mother is a dear, but we misunderstand and misinterpret each other a lot.

As far as how my brother and I relate to our parents as a contingent, well, I guess that is always changing. He sees them more than me now, but when I lived with my parents, Ian coming was kind of a phenomenon. I think my parents have been trying, for the past few years, to figure out how to relate to me as I am not really living with them, but they still believe I am under their authority (from a Haskell principle I was reminded of many times about a woman being under the authority of her father until she got married…) Ian never had this kind of philosophy to factor into his relationship with them. So, though I’m not sure of the specifics, I know that Ian and I relate to them quite differently.

3. How do you think other people see you; is that something you think much about?

Whoa, what a question. I have had a lot of relationships with people—blame it on years and years of theater friendships, when I’d have three weeks to try to spend enough time with someone to feel comfortable on stage with them, the performance-run time of feeling like I’d gained a new best friend, and then another two weeks of show-friend with drawl. In this context, I am quite used to the fact that people see me as quiet and mousy at first. Maybe even ditzy because I get quite nervous and stammering when I am with people I don’t know. Then, they hear me say something like, “that shit cracks me up!” and they know I am cool and have a naughty sense of humor. As a short person, I will probably always try to compensate size with volume—and I don’t just mean verbal volume.

Those are the generalizations. People who know me well probably all see me quite different. I think at the office they think I’m the loud American who never stops playing around. I’m not sure, but that’s what I think. I’ll always wonder what my Christian brothers and sisters think of me—they are the people I whose opinions I think about the most.

So I think about this stuff a lot. I will admit that people’s opinions of me don’t factor into my actions much. Ha.

4. Your experience of coming to faith seems much different than mine, but I've only heard scraps. Can you talk about that--give your "testimony," in a nutshell? What made you follow?

Coming to Faith. Right. I guess my testimony would be just an account how my faith has grown… It’s all in phases, you know, but I do believe it gets bigger every time. Some people would condemn my story as maybe an account of “roller coaster faith” but get real… resurrection requires dying and being brought back to life. Okay, I’ll try to stay nutshellish.

I can’t remember a time I didn’t pray regularly. I do remember a time when my mother and I prayed for me to receive Jesus. I’ll be damned if I was older than four. As a child, I always talked to God and God got out of all kinds of messes. When I was about seven or eight I told God that I felt pretty comfortable with him but I didn’t know who Jesus was. Around the age of 11 I heard Jesus talking to me around a campout fire and pretty much made a deal with him that if he let me do theater, I’d follow him. Two years later I got baptized and my mother started bringing me to Haskell’s Weds. Night study. I noticed that it spoke to me and that was probably where I learned how to use the Bible—as an opportunity to listen to God. After a break-up and what my HS teacher called me “hitting rock bottom” (I would later find out to be my first major fit of depression) I gave my life to Jesus again, this time no strings attached. That was on my seventeenth birthday, the day I decided to hate the world and find life in Jesus.

Then I went to college and my faith was tested, but it didn’t take me long to find out that God was a living creature and not someone that could just disappear if I decided He didn’t exist. I did decide that a few times, but it didn’t last long. It was as ridiculous as saying Erinn didn’t exist. I’ve known them both for about as long.

Then I got out of depression and had a lovely phase of “no condemnation” that some might call my Zooropa days… Ha, you know, “the greater the fall the greater the grace.” I joke about that, but it actually happened. I’m probably still in that phase but honestly, I know it is necessary and that God is in on it with me. Because of it, I have been able to be more vibrant about the gospel, fall in love (not in a romantic sense) with tons more people then when I was trying to be a careful Christian, and be all together more alive. So, the current phase of my faith is God showing me how to actually live it… you know, Living Hope type stuff. Eternity starts today, type stuff. This is the best phase yet. I have learned how to ward off depression with solid, life-giving truths. I still have a lot to learn, but the best thing about learning to follow Jesus is that there are no deadlines.


5. How have you changed during your travels?

Each travel experience has been it’s own beast and changed me in different ways. I’ve only had three major experiences. Here they are:

a) Traveling around the country basically taught me that I am a human. It’s the kind of stuff I’ve heard most learn after being married for a year or two—all of our own annoying qualities. If you sit in the car with someone (who is not involved with you, romantically) for two months and only spend about 6 hours away from them the entire time, you get the crash course self-horror… and you don’t get the make-up sex to help you deal with it. Ha, I mean, the romantic euphoria.

b) Going to South Africa felt like a major failure. I learned that the world is full of terrible people and most of them are Anglos. You’d think that 13 years in Detroit Public Schools would have taught me that, but visiting Post-Apartheid South Africa was like the icing on that white-guilt cake. That said, I look back at South Africa as being the most beautiful country in the world—the astounding landscape, the misery, and the beauty that has come out of the misery. I’d go back there in a heartbeat. Plus, not a week goes by when I don't think of the wonderful friends I made there.

c) Moving to Thailand has given me a lot of confidence; I have better sense that God is leading me. I feel that everything in my life was necessary so that I might have ended up here … it’s a really solid feeling—all the bad things that led up to me wanting to leave the states, like that horrible van with no heat in the winter, being in debt when it was time to pay taxes, getting bombed with huge medical bills for a misdiagnosed eye--all of that bullshit has just paved my way for this fabulous experience. On the material end of things... From Thailand I've learned so much about globalization, about asian culture, about how to tolerate chili peppers (and how once you start eating them you must apply them to your food, lest you eat a tasteless meal...)

Overall, I've learned how to travel. It's a skill, ya know. You only learn it by doing it. Like Tai Chi.

Kid's Cartoons - Dave Chappelle

something Ben might call hiLARious

Barack Obama

Okay, so most of you know that I have adopted a new form of entertainment: Keeping track of Obama. His words of uniting the American government has helped ease my cynicism that our government is just two sides trying to win some terrible game. I have been informed of a critique that "for all his talk, he comes down liberal on every issue." Though it took me a little while to work through that, I have come to terms with it: Of course he comes down liberal on every issue. The man is a liberal. But that is not his point. He's not asking the American liberals to be more conservative or conservatives to be more liberal; he's asking us to listen to each other, even though we are conservative or liberal.

Okay, so after reasoning that out, I asked myself, "Yeah, but is the man listening to the other side or is he only saying that he's listening?"

I put the question aside and then got my answer in this article:

No Music to Their Ears
By: David Yepsen February 13, 2007 07:58 AM EST
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., smiles with his wife Michelle at a rally on the University of Illinois-Chicago campus. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
url:

Barack Obama is a different sort of presidential candidate.
Yes, we all know he's the first African American with a realistic chance of winning the presidency. But he is also downsizing the pandering.
In appearances, he often tells Democrats things many don't care to hear.
For example, at his rally in Cedar Rapids on Saturday, he was asked about cutting military spending to free up money for other priorities, something liberal Democrats have been after for decades.
But Obama said "in terms of the overall military budget, I will tell you that we are going to have problems making immediate cuts, because one of the untold stories about this war is the way it has depleted our military.
"The fact of the matter is, we are going to need more troops than we currently possess" because of the pressures Iraq has placed on the National Guard and reserves, he said. "We're going to have to build up the size of our active regular forces. We're going to have to replace the equipment that has been depleted ... There's probably going to be a bump in initial military spending just to get back to where we were."
After that, the United States can reprioritize some military spending. "If we do those things, potentially, over time, we can see some savings. That doesn't mean, by the way, that we're still not going to have to have some of the conventional military forces that we need to protect ourselves from more potential attacks or threats." He cited North Korea as an example.
Obama got virtually no applause to that answer.
Later, he took a question from a teacher about the No Child Left Behind Act. That law is hugely unpopular with many teachers and their unions. Bashing it is popular with Democratic politicians. (No applause line is left behind in attacking it.)
Obama didn't disappoint: "No Child Left Behind left the money behind," he pandered.
But then he talked about "the things that were good about No Child Left Behind," like high standards for students because American children will have to compete for jobs with students from countries with more rigorous schools. The act also identified groups of students who need extra help in school, such as minority students, he said.
Obama told one teacher questioner that teachers deserve more pay to attract people to the profession, a line that drew whoops and applause. "I have to say though, there's got to be a bargain with teachers in terms of more pay," he said.
"They've got to get more pay, but there's also going to be more accountability." (There was audible rustling and mumbling in the seats at that.)
"Now, the accountability can't just be based on standardized test performance only, but that has to be part of the mix, and there has to be assessment tools that are developed in concert with teachers," Obama said.
"If teachers are underperforming, we're going to get them the help they need. But we're not going to pretend they are not underperforming, and that is something we're going to have to make happen," the senator said.
Such candor is refreshing, and it may contribute to his initial success in attracting voters looking for something new in a politician. He said in an interview later it's one way to end voter cynicism about politicians.
But can a candidate win if he tells Democratic constituency groups things they don't want to hear?
"We'll find out," he said. "If you go down that path of trying to tell everybody exactly what they want to hear, you can't actually build a consensus to govern. And I'm not just trying to win an office. I'm trying to figure out: Can we build a consensus to actually solve these problems that are complicated? I've got to make sure that I'm taking the voters through a process whereby when they vote for me, they know, 'Here's how he thinks.' "

David Yepsen is a columnist for the Des Moines Register. The Register and politico.com are sharing content for the 2008 presidential campaign.
---

Some final words about this and then I'll give it a rest. I have really been blessed by his mentioning that teachers will be held accountable. I am discovering that my politics are really based on the education system. I am not a one issue voter, but as some people are drawn to abortion politics and some others are drawn to the environment politics, I find that it's education stuff that really hits me the most. This is based on my upbringing, no doubt, and the anger instilled in me about DPS. I joke about how little funding we got at DSA, or how awful some of the teachers were, but seriously, Obama is the first person(I've noticed) to really hone that problem down into productive and reasonable ideas.

Tom Waits- Letterman interview 2002

another great combo

Latest song

I wrote this when I couldn't sleep the other night because of my backpain. It might go on the gospel album, if the others like it:

No title yet, but if I was held at gunpoint about it, I'd probably say it was called "You Are Alive."--it has a slow, traditionalish gospel tune.

If every moment is a renewed blessing
If every choice is a chance to progress
Then Lord, take this day, this very hour
Teach us to live out your righteousness

You are alive. Our hands are open wide
You are alive-- and faithfully dwelling inside
You are alive. Our hands our open wide
You are alive. You are alive.

We give you our plans. Our every idea
We think that we have as direction from you.
We give you our longings, our lacks and our fears.
All the lies that we cling to, we exchange them for truth.

And we believe-- our hands are open wide.
We believe-- you are faithfully dwelling inside
We believe-- our hands are open wide
We believe. We believe.

There is nothing we could do
To be worthy of this gift from you
Beautiful giver of life
You desire mercy, not sacrifice.

If every instant is a renewed blessing
If every choice is a chance to progress
Then Lord take this day, this very hour
Teach us to live out your righteousness.

We believe. Our hands are open wide.
We believe you are faithfully dwelling inside.
You are alive. Our hands are open wide.
You are alive. You are alive.

Most shocking statement I've made in a long time:

"I spent a week with a Mormon family.

It was the closest to God I've ever been."

Pandora Observation II

Ani DiFranco: No, thank you.

Talib Kweli: More, please.

This Pandora.com thing has really blessed me at work. But today I "discovered" for myself a genre that I hadn't realized I loved so much. I put in Lauryn Hill. As a result, they made a radio station of acoustic guitar R&B. THAT, I decided, is where music is at. It's what the Blues has become.

One of the delights of living in the days of miracle and wonder, is that we have exposure to so much music and we will never get to the bottom of it. Good music (bad, too, but let's focus on the good, right?) is being put out every day. Yep. Another reason to smile.

Johnny Cash on Sesame Street

Vocabulary List

shit
Thai people use the word "shit" alot. It sounds like "sheet" when they say it. I am starting to believe they don't know that it's a curseword. It has made me start to wonder, myself, if it is a curseword.

curseword
I just invented (perhaps) this word, "curseword." I think before this post, it was two words?

invention
The definition of "invention" should be explored. If someone has a thought that came to them on their own, is it still original? Or does the rank of "original" thought go only to those thoughts the first time they were thought of, by the first person who thought of them?

farang
Thai for foreigner. Perhaps it is only Thai for "westerner." It was invented when the french came to Thailand, then Siam, during the Ayutthaya period. Thai people couldn't say "French." They said "Farang" instead. Farang is not just Thai for "westerner," it is Thai for everything westerners do and everything westerners are about. Blue eyes are farang eyes. Low tolerance for prik (chili peppers) is farang. I have to investigate this, but farang might never be Asian. In the world there are Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Malaysians, Thais, and Farang.

emergence
That's the name for a religious movement. The ideas behind this movement (perhaps outlined in The Velvet Elvis?) came to me one year and a half before I read that book. Reading it made me think "Oh good, I'm not the only one who thinks about this stuff this way." I read some stuff the other day on this webpage that is called something like "apprised truth" or something? Something apprised. Anyway, the guy is vehement against the ideas outlined in this emergence thing. But reading through that webpage made me appreciate the ideas outlined in the book even more. If I had to choose between seeing beauty in the world in all things or living at the dead end in a tunnel of exclusiveness, it doesn't seem like I've been given much of a choice.

pridesource
It's the webage for the gay pride magazine from Detroit (or probably really from Ferndale) and I have been reading it quite regularly since I've arrived in Bangkok for Donald Calamia's theater reviews. From it, I learned about a tremendously interesting show going down at the UDM theater... Starring Arthur Beer and James Bowen. I wish I was in the D to go see it: The Sweet Trials Apparently, it's about a trial that happened in 1920's Detroit that dealt with a black man and his family who moved into a white neighborhood.

ex-patriotism
It's a heart condition.

John 4:1-47 "Jesus and the Bad Samaritan"

1-3) Jesus has celebrity status--people are talking about Him. He’s ticking Pharisees off because a carpenter is drawing more attention then their theological degrees and qualifications. Jesus is constantly on the run. Jesus is probably pretty tired.

4) “He had to go through Samaria.”
There’s enough in those six words to keep me fed for a long time. Because, actually, Jesus did not have to, geographically, go through Samaria. (According to a British theological scholar named Arthur Pink who died in 1952 haha) Jesus could have crossed the river and went through another land (Perea). So He took a route that was longer and out of his way. But still, John writes, “Jesus had to go through Samaria.” This shows us something about God’s ways… he doesn’t take the easy route always. I’d say he seldom takes the easy route. Jesus does a lot of things that seem unnecessary but in His eyes they are required. There is no other way.
We also know from those words that Jesus doesn’t act in response to what the Pharisees have outlined for him. Sometimes it seems like Jesus is a fugitive, but Jesus never bowed down to them—held them in reverence in the way that he would let them determine, through fear, what to do next. Jesus had one god, Jehovah…
To sum up: Jesus, hot and tired, goes out of his way… he must be up to something.

6) “It was the sixth hour.” Noon. Jesus walked an extra stretch in this hot land and the sun is high. Our Jesus could be exhausted, too. We think we have busy schedules. Imagine what was on Jesus’ plate.

7) Taboo. Jews weren’t really supposed to speak with Samaritans-- especially not Samaritan women.

(8-9) Also, his disciples had left him so he was alone with the Samaritan woman. What a trouble maker. The woman is quick to point that out to him. “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan and I’m a woman…” Our Lord doesn’t let that stop him. He knows this woman needs His life… Jesus never lets cultural differences stop him from doing what he’s got to do.

10) “If you knew…” Jesus has got something so incredibly wonderful for this woman. Something that cultural boundaries, the walls this world his put up around this woman (and as we will see, she put up for herself) cannot stop from reaching her.

11) Jesus mentioned living water and this woman still has her mind on the boundaries of this world. “You don’t have anything to get water with.” She’s thinking about one part hydrogen, two parts oxygen.

14-15) Jesus is obviously (to us) speaking in spiritual terms but he woman is still interpreting this as H2O water—she’s thinking he is talking literally (and why should she not?)… She’s seeing this water as something convenient. But there is more to it than just that. Maybe she thinks Jesus is going to whip out a magic potion from the fountain of youth.

16-18) Jesus then broadens the discussion to another level. “Go call your husband.” She says “I have no husband.” This might actually be true. She might not, technically at this point have a husband. But Jesus isn’t looking at her with the “technical eyes of this world.” He sees her for what she truly is (if he were looking through the world’s lens, he probably wouldn’t be talking to her, as we already established.)

So, she says she’s got no husband and then Jesus tells her something about herself that she may or may not know: “You’ve had five husbands.” Whoops. So then this interaction is really going into the dangerous waters… Not only is she 1) a Samaritan (taboo) 2) a woman (bigger taboo) but now we know she’s a slut (run, Jesus, run!!). So Jesus went out of his way for a woman that was, culturally (to a Jew) at the bottom. This is our Jesus. “While we were still sinners, He died for us.” That statement permeates all that he does.

19-22) Okay, so now the woman is starting to understand that there’s more to this conversation than H2O… She first recognizes Jesus as a Prophet. He is clearly from God. But she’s still blind in the area of what Jesus is truly offering here. She brings up “Well… you worship over there and we worship over here…” Jesus says he’s from God and the first thing she thinks of is “church.” This happens to us, right, when we share the gospel? At least in America. Someone finds out I’m a Christian and they say, “Oh, are you catholic or protestant?”
Jesus is not offering the woman a nice church. He’s offering her something that goes way beyond “church.”

23) He tells her, “The time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kinds of worshippers the Father seeks. God is the spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
This is a message for a Samaritan prostitute. To God, there is no Jew or Gentile anymore… that is huge. It’s as huge today as it was then. God doesn’t care what our background. I look around our “congregation”—a Kenyan fellowshipping with little white American women, a couple Indians, a Philippino, and a bunch of Thais. We can do that because we worship in God’s spirit. If we get away from God’s spirit, if we start to look at our “church” circumstances, we are lost. We are as lost as this Samaritan prostitute, who says, “well… you all worship over there and we worship over here…”

24-26) Praise God, because this woman starts to get it: “I heard there’s supposed to be a Messiah coming… He’s going to explain all of that to us.” Jesus says, “You’re looking at him.”
The world is waiting for a Messiah and this woman, this bad Samaritan woman is looking straight at him. The impact of that moment was incredible… especially when we see what follows

27) The disciples come back and boy are they confused… “Why are you talking to her!?” Are you trying to get us creamed? They are exhausted and tired too… and Jesus just made them go out of their way so he could talk to a bad Samaritan? When the Lord is leading our lives, we can expect moments like these. “What, you called me all the way to Thailand so I could have one three minute conversation with a Burmese girl at a bus stop and now you’re sending me home?!” Jesus works like this. Be prepared.

28-29) Jesus works this way because he sees the bigger picture. We see one Burmese girl but he sees nations of people through the seeds we plant. He tries to get his disciples to think that way. We see it in this account—the woman leaves her water jar behind and goes and tells people about Jesus. “Could this be the Christ? Check him out!” And now the Samaritans are all running to Jesus wanting to see who he is. Praise to God, because he does things that seem like a waste of time but he never wastes our time. God doesn’t work according to what the world thinks is practical or timely. We do, and that’s usually good… but God doesn’t. If God is going to be the one who leads us, we know that he will through us for some loops of confusion, but he’s He knows what He’s doing… We can trust him, like May trusts Him. “I can’t WAIT to see what God will do!” I pray I will never forget those words from her.

39) “Many Samaritans believed because of this woman’s testimony.” John acknowledges that in his gospel, that Jesus had the best plan. And that he chose a bad Samaritan woman to reach multitudes of people. And Jesus loves these people… They ask him to stick around and he does. He takes his time with them.

42)The real miracle of this story: The people hear about Jesus and then go see for themselves that His is, truly, “The savior of the world.”

nice combination...