One Man's Web

What happens if I read John Chapter 4 with a male gaze which sees a wicked ostracised woman forced to come to the well in the noon of the day?

Will I see a deeply symbolic dialogue between the Samaritan woman and Jesus at Jacob's Well, the well remembered as El-Elohe-Israel, the well at Shechem with the altar of "God, the God of Israel?^i. Will I notice that John, however, says the well is at Sychar, which means "drunken," a serious joke about the power of living water; that water where "those who drink [it...] will never be thirstyⁱⁱ…" The woman asks Jesus "Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well…?"ⁱⁱⁱ This question will be echoed later in John 8:53, "Are you greater than our father Abraham?"

Will I ponder all this or focus on the woman as illiterate and uneducated, an outsider, unclean, and shameless. The person sitting next to me in church this morning muttered, "All assumptions." She is correct. Yes, this woman would not have gone to school, but as a colleague remarked to me, "that doesn't mean she wasn't smart." Anyone who has spent time with "uneducated women," should know this. By amping up the stereotype of the ignorant, outcast woman, we unconsciously pander to masculine superiority and miss the startling literary depth of John.... Read on >>>>

In the years I’ve been riding a bike, driver awareness has improved enormously. Most car drivers show a level of awareness and courtesy towards cyclists that was often unimaginable. That said, there are drivers, and cyclists, who are simply arseholes, and who are dangerous to all other road users. The trouble with an article called what I wish drivers knew about bikes is that it can be a long whinge about these dangerous people. That’s not what I’m about here. I’m writing to drivers who’d like to be better, and to drivers who are puzzled or even annoyed about the behaviour of cyclists. Sometimes, looking at a situation from the perspective of the rider can help those of us who drive understand things a little better. Here’s a list:

Why did that cyclist scream at/abuse me?
I hope you’ve never had this happen to you, but imagine someone going for you with a knife or pointing a gun at you.... Read on >>>>

There’s a great ride just waiting for me out near Sedan. Quite beautiful, but not what you want to take your good car over, according to my colleague Jill. And also not 200km to take on a high fire danger day with a forecast that's in the 40’s and windy. So, what to do if it’s ride day?

I decided on a day on the bike paths that criss-cross Adelaide. The fire danger is way lower, the traffic is nil, and there is a surprising amount of shade. We live about 3 minutes from the Linear Park, which is itself a 70km loop from beach to foothills along the River Torrens, so I began with the ten kilometres up to the Gorge. We are on what I will call the North Adelaide side of the Torrens, and I took that up to the top end... Read on >>>>

I occasionally ride past several farmhouses clustered together in a way that speaks of a large family of sons, some time in the past. They are surrounded by junk. These brothers not only have great grandpa's old mouldboard plough and grandpa's header; they go to clearing sales and buy junk. Many tons of it; acres worth of rubbish. The scene contrasts with the neatness of my childhood farm, and I find it so offensive that it is clear it is triggering some deep and distressing self-disgust. Recently, far into an all-night ride, I recognised the shape of a corner and the silhouette of a hill in the moonlight. Those farms.

There has been a change since my last visit.

Two of the brothers have discovered led lights... Read on >>>>

Our little dog found a sweet spot on the bed in the flat where we lived a while. She could look out the window and see if Barbara or Jan from next door were in the garden, but with barely a flicker of her eyes, she could also use the big mirror on the dressing table to keep watch on the kitchen (and the fridge) behind her. She knew it was a mirror. If we came to the bedroom door and spoke to her, she would watch us in the mirror, but if it was something important, she would turn around to face us. Annie Rose understood mirrors.

At our new house, there is a Murray Magpie who owns the back yard and picks the bugs off our vegies. This morning it landed on the clothesline by the shed and noticed there was another magpie looking at it. It jerked its head at it, telling it to shove off. But the other magpie, instead of flying away, simply jerked its head back at our magpie. So, our magpie launched itself at the intruder, crashed into the shed window, and fell down into the parsley patch. The Murray Magpie doesn't understand mirrors. It flapped back up to the clothesline and did the same thing, all over again. A couple of times it half flew, half scrabbled, straight up the shed wall, which meant it had the intruder scratching at its stomach all the way up the window. This went on for a while because, as you may have observed, Murray Magpies just don't understand mirrors. There was one at the church which spent futile years attacking the other magpie inside the lounge window.

I'd like you to follow me in a leap of imagination here: We human beings are rather a lot like Murray Magpies. We spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, thinking what we see is real, us, rather than a reflection of something else. And much less do we realise how much the mirror lies to us... Read on >>>>

Why is it so hard to change some things about ourselves?

I think the answer is that some things are surface habits, and are only incidental bits of our lives. Other things we don't like about ourselves go deep into our foundations. They are a significant part of who we are, a part of our skeleton rather than something on the surface of our being.

When I was six years old, three big girls at the school bus stop began teasing me. Two things happened. I was devastated. My world caved in. I suspect they were gratified by my response, and I became a target for others, and spent the remainder of my school years always somewhat on the outer. Fifty and sixty years later, I have been able to recover other memories of school and see that it was not so bad as I remembered. There were good times, friends, and fun.

But my response very quickly deposited layers of being me that became bedrock as impenetrable as the sheet limestone our farmhouse stood upon.... Read on >>>>

First Reactions to Luke 14:1-14

I re-read my post of 2019: https://www.onemansweb.org/swollen-egos-or-bad-legs-luke-141-14.html

My first thought, then and now, is: Don’t leave out the dropsy. (vv2-6) It's part of the story. Dropsy was a disease of the rich. is about greed, self inflation, getting the best place at the table. Read more about it in my 2019 post.

Dropsy was common. Galen described Rome as, "This populous city, where daily ten thousand people can be discovered suffering from jaundice, and ten thousand from dropsy.

"Dropsy is used widely in the ancient Greek world, particularly in the writings of philosphers, and it is frequently a metaphor for greed and wealth."  (Chad Hartsock: Biblical Interpretation, Volume 21 (3): 341 – Jan 1, 2013. And see also here.)  In other words, dropsy was a well-known and proverbial disease.  We are meant to find meaning in this particular form of illness.

The reading from Luke ends up exhorting us away from the dropsy of  self-aggrandisement and self-promotion, because these are an idolatry. My idolatry is to pretend that I am a self-made person. If we seek to make ourselves—the name for this is social-climber, even for those of us who remain very realistic about how far we can climb—then we are inevitably based in a quid pro quo mindset.

The dangers of this mindset are clear from words by Karoline Lewis which I quoted at the end of my post:

Karoline Lewis:

The problem with a quid pro quo mentality is quantification. How do you measure or calculate repayment of love, of mercy? And the fact that we think we can is a rather striking theological problem.... Read on >>>>