Dave Van Ronk, aka The Mayor of MacDougal Street, haunted my teen-age years with folk songs that still inhabit my soul. Some say The Mayor is the inspiration behind the movie Inside Llweyn Davis. But to me the growly voiced Mayor remains a poet who inspired me to put pen to paper. As I prepare to tickle my keyboard to create a sermon about John 4:1-42, his voice echo’s in my soul. van Ronk died in 2002 and imagining his journey “on down to Galilee, on that promenade in green” soothes the ache of his absence even as it inspires me to speculate on the rocky road the Samaritan woman travelled to that ancient well. “uka duke soda cracker!”
Keeping in mind, hopefully, that women at that time had no free will to end a marriage. So why did 3 husbands discard her? Was she promiscuous as traditionally believed? Or was she perhaps barren, or unsatisfactory in some other way? Women had no way of surviving without a male protector, so why did the ‘one she had’ that wasn’t her husband, keep her as a mistress when he should have done the right thing by her? I grew up thinking (because I was told) that this was a story about a wicked woman forgiven; these days I see it more as a story of a marginalised, abused, outcast woman liberated.