My kiddos and I were sitting on the mats in the library during lunch one day, and she jabs at one of my many corns on my feet saying, “Madam Teresa, what is this?” I answered that it's just skin and she laughed. I went on to explain that corns are places where the skin has been irritated until a protective thicker skin is formed. Amused, she goes back to reading her book. I start peeking at my kids’ feet. They have many scars from burns and bugs that burrow into their flesh and scrapes from football and the joys of running wild without shoes.
I remember hearing a homily once when I was in Tulsa from beloved Father Steve who said that today, we might get a little uncomfortable with the thought of washing someone’s feet and kissing them, but it’s not that big a deal because we are relatively clean. We almost always wear shoes and hardly, if ever, have sores (unless they are blisters from our new shoes rubbing against our skin). But in the day of Jesus, washing the feet of people was sort of nasty work, reserved for the lowliest of servants. And kissing the feet, forget it. Yet, Jesus did this. I like to imagine that the feet of his disciples were similar to the feet of my kiddos: scraped and injured from the places and adventures it has carried them to, perhaps bearing untold suffering and abuse, most assuredly toting all of the hopes and joys, and yes, fear. I imagined washing and kissing the feet of my kiddos, thankful for the journey that had brought them into my life. I imagined Jesus washing and kissing my feet, blessing the journey that had brought me here.
I went to mass at the Cathedral with my roommate, Susan, who has been in mission in East Africa for 31 years. The mass was all in Kiswahili, so when the priest said that something momentous would be happening and that they would be blessing the feet of people of different genders and different ages, I was sure I had misheard. “That can’t be right…” I thought. I must have translated wrong...again. My roommates told me last year when I was disheartened by the overt maleness of the feet-washing, that I better get used to it. Women, they had told me, would not have their feet washed in Kenyan churches in my lifetime. But with the example of Pope Francis before them (he washed the feet of prisoners last year and refugees this year, not to mention Muslims and women), the church that I love is finally cracking its doors and foot-washing basins to me and to my children. It is finally acknowledging that they must serve us too, that we are church, that our journeys too are blessed through kissing our scarred and broken, and corn-ridden feet. It is slow progress, yes, but something must be celebrated.
I don't know about you, but with the last few months of suffering and fear by so many, which have been manipulated to stir up hatred and vengeful talk in American politics, I need something to celebrate. I choose to honor the broken and battered feet of the journey, unsure of what trials the journey will bring tomorrow, but willing to celebrate all the same.
I honor you, dear friend, your journey, and the scarred and corn-ridden feet that have brought you here.