Fed by generations, torrents of history
running wild within the earth, the holy ground 
shaped and watered by the tears
of war and weddings, piety and pity.
Still waters run deep within the earth, 
seep between the shoulders of the land, 
shrugging off the stories that we tell, 
shifting and settling, remembering 
when it was all, when all was shapeless 
as water, and void, before he spoke, 
“I am thirsty.” Thirsty for love, a peace 
that brooks no derangement, defies
creation, spirited and true,
the stuff of life, if we but knew it. 

He came to a Samaritan city named Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink” … The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” … Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying otherwise you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.'” (from John 4:5-10)

Image: Christ and the Samaritan woman drawing water, Catacomb of Callistus, 2nd century AD, from the from the book Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms, plate 29, via wikimediacommons. Public domain.