Our Souls and Our Soles

"Our Souls and Our Soles" Such wayward wannabe followers, lucky to keep even single command! "Love one another!" Be willing washers of feet! Like "guest workers," we call them, risking everything, crossing our lines, crossing themselves, into the hearts of our lives. Heroes of Boundless, Borderless Futures, standing on corners long before dawn, with ten percent chance of working, for whatever they may be offered, whatever "wage" may or may not be paid, globalized, made repayable: "Home." In the noisy argument over what to do with illegal immigrants, the common assumption is that America has done a great deal for them already. The question now is what more should we give them? Should we give them a green card? Grant them amnesty? Or stop all this generosity and send them packing? No one speaks of what illegal immigrants have done for us. It occurs to me I have not heard two relevant words spoken. If you allow me I will speak them. Thank you. Thank you for turning on the sprinklers. Thank you for cleaning the swimming pool and scrambling the eggs and doing the dishes. Thank you for making the bed. Thank you for getting the children up and ready for school. Thank you for caring for our dying parents. Thank you for plucking dead chickens. Thank you for bending your bodies over our fields. Thank you for breathing chemicals and absorbing chemicals into your bodies. Thank you for the lettuce, and the spinach, and the artichokes, and the asparagus, and the cauliflower, the broccoli, the beans, the tomatoes and the garlic. Thank you for the apricots and the peaches, and the apples, and the melons, and the plums, the almonds, the grapes. Thank you for the willow trees, and the roses and the winter lawn. Thank you for scraping, and painting, and roofing, and cleaning out the asbestos and the mold. Thank you for your stoicism and your eager hands. Thank you for all the young men on rooftops in the sun. Thank you for cleaning the toilets and the showers, and the restaurant kitchens, and the schools, and the office buildings, the airports and the malls. Thank you for washing the car. Thank you for washing all the cars. Thank you for your parents, who died young and had nothing to bequeath to their children but the memory of work. Thank you for giving us your youth. Thank you for the commemorative altars. Thank you for the food, the beer, the tragic polka. "Gracious." (Richard Rodriguez) Thank you, Jesus. Amen.

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Feet up close and personal for me, the aching and paining of many, and why we choose no messing around with the feet of another, nor anyone messing with ours! Why in the World would Jesus choose to do THIS on that night? And ask us to do so, following him? "Gospel accounts do not report any of the disciples as believers!" Judas' betrayal, of course, Peter's denial, Thomas' doubt! But none of us, even, especially, Jesus' own family -- NONE understanding his words, comprehending his wisdom, loving his teaching, recognizing his works, acknowledging his authority, welcoming his vocation -- much less verifiable traces of any belief in this Jesus as Lord, Liberator, All of Creation!

Call us "variously enthralled, mystified, bemused, apprehensive, confounded," but cost-cuttingly call us, at all costs, and all his disciples, "steadfast in our disbelief!" (William Stringfellow)

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Is that not the sharp snag in the side of this week? Everything human about us screaming out against irreversible, irretrievable irrevocability of tragedy all can see coming and none can stop?

Jacob-like, Jonah-like, Job-like wrestlings with faiths as last furious resorts?

Cancer in family and friends, addiction in children and neighbors; greed in corporations and captive officials; poverty, ignorance, neglect, abuse in home and community; violence, vengeance, weapons, wars, occupation, oppression in mindset and world -- helpless at times to see and believe, much less to name, know, protest, organize -- even imagine alternative to?

Jesus till now rather mystical with us, cryptic, enigmatic, riddled, parabled --

"Whoever has ears let them hear," intensely instructing us not to tell others, not to make public, who he is, what he does; but now going for broke, betting his all on us, as he is gone for and bet on himself? Accepting anointment, arranging arrest.

Ideas overcoming our problems not likely to issue from those who create them.

Changes in how to do "power" led best by those with littlest of it. Our culture as numb to suffering as we are drunk with succeeding. "Take this cup from me." "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Surrounded me with forsakers?

"We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." Those who do Jesus best those who know Jesus least!

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Good Friday, Way of the Cross, in Haiti --

"I saw the roads and fields had worked their way into their soles -- a tough layer of dead skin and dirt that becomes a leathery shoe itself.

Some feet had sores, others had scars. Bare feet, flattened from running the rocky paths, had been stuffed into plastic sandals: two dollars a pair, three colors, four styles, split, dirty, too small.

"Heels hung over here, there callused toes stuck out of the edges. Sometimes the shoes were too big. A little girl's feet stopped midway into the pumps that mission-minded from United States discarded into relief barrel.

Guess I see the ministry here as caring for the homelier feet of this world."

(Rebecca Dudley)

Stripped to the waist, knelt like a slave, muddied the basin, soaped layers of grime.

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All this inspiring Paul to imagine the Body of Christ? Attending less to beautiful, thoughtful, prayerful parts of us; more to lowest, basest, sorest, dirtiest., hardest? Parts without which, without whom, we are pretty much stuck where we are!

Ponder the plucky persistence of those moving by canes, and walkers, and chairs, requiring elevators; Jesus clearly perceiving, when feet hurt, whole body bamboozled, discombobulated! Feel the point where our "souls" touch the Earth! How we stay "grounded," we say.

In Jesus, in Gandhi, in Day, in King, no moment, no part, no place, no person, no people, no project of us too low, too demeaning to share in together!

"Just plain ordinary tired feet. Jesus cared about feet. He didn't ignore the head, the heart, the soul . . . spectacular things like that. but I'm especially glad that He cared about feet! Not too many 'messiahs' ever did that!

"You can wax eloquently and beautifully abstract about people's heads, hearts, and souls. But it's hard to be removed from human need when you're kneeling on the floor washing one another's feet.

"Dusty roads are scarce and very few sandals are worn these days, but feet trapped in leather are just as tired, and just as ignored. There still aren't many 'messiahs' around who care about feet. Not many at all." ("Feet," 90 year-old nun whose name we don't know)