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Feet Free
It’s summer time - and that frees many of us to go barefoot. My elegant mother loved to go barefoot. I don’t think my father liked that too much, although after his daily tennis or squash rackets, when he’d return home, he removed his shoes and put upon the ottoman his bare feet, smelling of talcum powder. Annually at Christmas he gifted Mother dozens of high heeled shoes, so she always looked elegant. But if there was a moment, an opportune minute, she would toss off her shoes, and go barefoot outside and inside - there was something - some secret - some memory - that she never told me. Why did she loved that feel of carpet, floor, dirt, crushed pecan shells in the stables, sand, grass, cold ocean waves?
 Truly, walking barefoot is the real you, the gait that steps out with the muscles and bones you have. Shoes distort mobility, limit flexibility and causes distortions like bunions, flat foot, hammer toe, and so forth. If you don’t wear shoes, the toes grow and stretch like they are supposed to.
Even Thomas Merton wrote “Going barefoot is a joyous thing. It is good to feel the floor or the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without noisy shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them.” He added “It would be good to take off shoes in church all the time. But …someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it…”
We are well shod in our Western world. Some of us are judged by our shoes, be they tarnished or shiny. When I meet someone, old or new, I always look at the shoes before the outfit. Shoes are an important part of our lifestyle - especially sports. With the Jordan Nikes, the Shane Battier shoes popular in China, the Venus tennis shoes - and I’m sure almost every superstar sports person has their own brand and design - now it’s big time for basketball players. There’s even a monthly magazine “SLAM” on basketball shoes that gives fame to many of the young superstar players picking out their first Nike or Adidas, ones they have designed. But many sports like kick boxing, Sumo wrestling, weight-lifting or Krav-maga are performed with bare feet as weapons. And feet can be deadly weapons.
Of course, today there are shoes for fiestas, for hiking, for swimming, for picking up a date, for school, for marching, or for the beach. I can’t live without my Keen sandals (now out of stock) which I wear all day in house. We even suffer uncomfortable shoes just to be in high fashion while we look down on people without shoes. The legend of my grandfather who never went to school and grew up in the late 1880s with a single mom in Grenada Miss., is he never owned a pair of shoes until he was 12 when he needed them to go work on the L&N railroad. He must have had great feet. He lived in poverty in his beginnings.
Many like the Masai in East Africa in the ‘60ties cut out an old rubber tires and made a sole which could be tied on with string. Those same Masai were accustomed to cover miles and miles daily in bare feet. I wonder if the rubber soles slowed them down. Feet of the strong and graceful Africans, no matter what tribe, were thick and tough and didn’t ask to be bound up by leather. Many hated the habit but endured back then because, like a business suit, it was a sign of prosperity in their new independence in the ‘60ties, 70ties. Today few runners run shoeless, -but in 1960s Abebe Bikila of Ethiopia won the first marathon shoeless. And then Zola Budd of South Africa in 1966 was first woman to do likewise. The original Olympics in Greece not only were competed barefoot, but often in nudity.
Native Americans, when they enter holy Sweat Lodges for spiritual sweating off the evil spirits, they enter barefoot, even when two feet of snow covers the path they must walk across. In India, Tibet, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Japan, China, even Egypt, people remove shoes and sandals, if they have them, as a sign of respect entering a home or holy place. And visitors or guests, on entering, are expected to do likewise. This is what I loved about travels in other parts of the world. My favorite holy place - outside of the catholic faiths - is to enter Wat Pho in Bangkok, Thailand, where one greets the largest reclining gold Buddha. It is huge. And to see it, one must take off shoes and not worry about one of the hundreds of Buddhist or tourist would pinch them. It’s a holy place and the joy is to walk around the giant holy Buddha and then put 108 coins in one of a series of pots for a blessing. On exit, there are our shoes, still alive and ready to be worn again.
Since the ancient Egyptians, barefoot also meant slaves. And even today in some prisons, inmates are forced to go barefoot, particularly in solitude. But all over the world, going barefoot can be an alternative, because no one has shoes, or it could be a sign someone’s feet are in pain from too much walking and tourism, or, it could be a decisive demonstration of holy respect.
And please don’t forget - those of the Judeo-Christian history also should take off our shoes when standing on holy ground. Exodus 3:5 - God told Moses to remove sandals from his feet “for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” That is at the scene of the burning bush, which is now cared for at the oldest monastery in the world, that of St. Catherine of Alexandria at the foot of Mount Sinai. Because God made this point clear, He is of all faiths. He invites Moses to get down - once he removed his shoes - because he had been chosen to confront Pharaoh to rescue the Israelites from their suffering in Egypt.
So bare feet are a sign of holiness for all of us, and even on Maundy Thursday, the washing of feet, is part of the holy cleansing of our souls and bodies with the crucifixion of Christ. One of my favorite churches in Nashville, the priest goes barefooted on the tile floor no matter how cold it is. It’s a promise of humility before God that they are who they are, not what they wear. These can be shoeless saints.
Around this earth, too many live-in conditions of poverty, but it’s normal to them. In Uruguay, I often see small children, who live at the edge of the garbage dump, walking barefoot along cold tarmac roads in the middle of winter. If I offered my own shoes and socks to them, which I have done, they’d sell them and continue the barefoot life which is normal to them.
Most who do go barefoot through their lives have tough feet, tough as their spirits. The soles cannot be burned by the heat of the sand or bruised by the soil nor feel the pinch from briers or prickly grasses. But today, a man on a journey must be careful to protect his soles from discarded trash or dangerous Western excesses like broken glass, rusty cans, nails, pins thumbtacks, even when swimming, barefoot of course, in the ocean or a river. In Wyoming, when I struggled to fit into hiking boots to climb a Teton or two, I was stunned by the fit hikers running barefoot pass me as they dashed up or down the dirt trails summiting the Grand Teton. There is hope.
Merton’s idea to go barefoot before God turns us back to the soil. if our soles are not cramped and masked by fashionable shoes then we can concentrate on that soul. If our souls are unveiled, we can see how judgment, fear, and greed have blocked our hearts so that we have failed to love and serve the Lord. In doing this, we will discover that we are not dull but exciting pilgrims, and that we don’t have to depend on our favorite things to keep us happy.
So, let us take off our shoes and begin that pilgrimage that takes on a deeper spiritual place.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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