Were You There ?
So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. John 13: 14-15.
When you think about it, what Jesus did was not all that radical. After all, washing feet was a gesture of hospitality in that time. Given that people did a lot of walking with sandals and the roads were filthy and dusty, by the time they got to their destinations their feet were pretty messy, covered with the dirt from the roads, which remember were unpaved.
Can you imagine offering to wash someone’s feet that was visiting you today? What made what Jesus did so instructive is that he was demonstrating humility and service. It seems like such an elementary point. But, sometimes I wonder if in our current society we get so lost in other things, including ourselves that we forget the simplicity of taking care of another in a vulnerable and sensitive manner.
In Let Your Life Speak, Parker Palmer talks about his episodes with depression and recalls a time when a friend would visit him daily and . . .
for half an hour simply massaged my feet. He found the one place in my body where I could still experience feeling—and feel somewhat reconnected with the human race.
Palmer’s friend rarely spoke more than a few words, just engaged in a loving gesture of kindness and care. When we gather with others we so often get caught in the chatter and don’t realize how valuable the silences, the space between the noise where feelings and gestures are imprinted. The pauses are just as important as the storytelling. Our social design seems to get all tangled up in reacting, responding a certain way, and sometimes even talking ourselves into being right.
If we remember that our words come through breath; I don’t know about you, but sometimes, holding onto my words is much more important than speaking everything that is on my mind. If I may just touch on this a bit. Our breath comes from inside of us, as do our thoughts and potentially the origin of our actions. Neil Douglas-Klotz reminds us that the culture from which Jesus arose, there was an understanding of the sacredness of all of life.
This Holy Breath fulfills its purpose by being the unique essence of breath. Like a clear note struck by a stringed instrument, Holy Breath gathers all small, individual expressions of breath to itself before it returns to the universal silence.
A silence that enfolds and embraces all of us. Perhaps, that is why the simplest gestures can have a most profound effect: a hug, a note, a foot massage. When we recognize or even witness a moment of that level of compassion we are never quite the same. Attempting to intellectualize about it diffuses the beauty and depth of the moment.
We are a culture of talk, so we totally miss the point of Jesus stooping down to wash his disciple’s feet. While I’m not advocating washing your guest’s feet the next time they visit; I’m suggesting that slowing the pace and allowing for silence in our dialogues, a pause between our thoughts and actions might have a healing effect on our relationships and the environment. The Gospel of Thomas has Jesus saying this:
Cleave a piece of wood, (the) I am is there; lift up a stone, you will find me there also. (Saying 77:2-3)
That makes every act and everything in between holy and divinely pure. I think Jesus knew something else. Our feet are one of the most vulnerable parts of our bodies. Unless you get weekly pedicures, we have to admit that we don’t pay much attention to your feet.
According to reflexology, the feet contain an entire map of the body. Just giving your feet a gentle rub and extra care can affect your health in numerous ways. So, imagine the benefit to another person of caring for else’s feet as demonstrated in Parker Palmer’s story. Attention to the feet can bring the whole body into balance. Whether or not one believes the science behind the power of touch, ancient cultures understood the significance of silence, simplicity, and touch.
Much of Jesus’s healing ministry had to do with touch, at the very least 23 recorded examples. They were probably many more, but, from lepers to physically impaired, the power of touch and faith were critical to bringing a person into wholeness. In several cases Jesus wasn’t even present, for example in the instance of the dead son o a Capernaum official John 4:46-54, the word that is remembered is “Go” and the child was healed. The state of aliveness and wholeness has no boundaries.
I believe that we are in a time of self-knowing, as well as internal healing as way of cultivating a more peaceful world. For peace will never occur outside without restoring peace within ourselves. I can attest to the wreckage of times in my life that I’ve had the urge to plea in the words of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586):
O make in me those civil wars to cease!
If it is true that we are affected by everything around us and play a role in everything that happens it would seem that we have a responsibility to be diligent in our contemplative life. A small role, perhaps, but not insignificant with others doing similar work. It is indeed a responsible act to ease our own inner turmoil, illusions, and fears first before expecting any outer world crisis to suddenly end.
And as Charles Eisenstein so beautifully portrays with his story that their are many, many factors and not to be deterred by the hugeness of it all, but remain persistent. Step into your livingness and grow into a new you during this time of transformation.