Bare Foot

Ash Wednesday is about kissing the ground. It’s about death and life. It’s about falling into a hole, then being rescued by God. It’s about giving up so we may take in. It’s about losing so we may win, dying so we may win. Ash Wednesday inaugurates Lent. It is the beginning of the pilgrimage that takes us to Easter Sunday. We can sign up for the journey, or we can go about our business and forget that it is a holy time for Christmas that is supposed to command our attention and restraint. We need to learn a bit more about ourselves, so when Passion Week arrives, we may accompany Jesus through his suffering, and be there when he carries all our sins on his shoulders. If we don’t know him, we cannot stand beside him. If we don’t know him, we cannot weep with him. If we don’t know him, we cannot rejoice when he is the victor over death, Satan and all the evil forces of the world. When we receive the cross of ashes on our forehead, this says out loud that we belong to Jesus and we are with him as He is with us always. How we accept these ashes measures our spirit and faith.

Thomas Merton remembers that in “some monastic communities, monks go up to receive the ashes barefoot. Going barefoot is a joyous thing,” he writes. “It is good to feel the floor of the earth under your feet. It is good when the whole church is silent, filled with the hush of people walking without shoes. One wonders why we wear such things as shoes anyway. Prayer is so much more meaningful without them. It would be good to take them off in church all the time. But perhaps this might appear quixotic to those who have forgotten such very elementary satisfaction. Someone might catch cold at the mere thought of it.”

We are so well shod in our Western world. We are judged by our shoes. They are an important part of our attire every day. Shoes for the office. Shoes for a fiesta. Shoes for sports. Shoes for the beach. Shoes to dance in. Shoes to shuffle in. Shoes to impress your fancy friends. Ironically, shoes are not so important in other parts of the world. When I was in Africa in the ‘60ties, I saw the result of foreign missionaries efforts to make Africans wear tight shoes, a habit completely strange to them. And to be truthful, on that trip, I didn’t see an African from Ghana to Zimbabwe who looked comfortable in any shoe but the flip-flops made from old tires. Their feet were thick and tough and didn’t need to be bounded by leather. Their “European” shoes become either run over on the edges, or untied, or busting at the seams. I think they hate the habit, but do it only because like a business suit, it was a sign of prosperity in European society. It was not a sign of culture. I think comfortable coverings for feet was a world-wide phenomenon, whether Nepal, China, Mexico, particularly in the ‘50s and ‘60s and what give me joy, that thanks to the hippy movement, men and women learned something from the African about how one can even hike in flip-flops or some of the tough sandals made by hiking companies. I could not walk if it wasn’t for my Keen sandals, (which they no longer make, but I bought 4 pairs to last me through the end of my life.

One’s feet should never have to suffer. I envy those with tough feet, tough as the spirit. They cannot be burned by the heat of the sand, soil or concrete. They feel no pinch from the briers of prickly grasses. A man with a trip to make may strap a slab of rubber from a dead tire on his feet to save slicing his toes on Western toss away trash like glass, rusty cans, nails, pins, thumbtacks and needles. People with no conscience, dump invaluable things in invaluable places, like dirt roads, sandy beaches, rocky cliffs. Only a tough sole can get through them without a cut. When the Africans worship in their simple and open churches with the dirt floors, no one wears shoes. Before God they can be who they are, the shoeless saints, because they know they come from dust and will return to dust.

So I like Merton’s idea about going barefoot before God. It turns us back to the soil. It takes one’s mind off of pain and balance. It’s refreshing and it’s humbling, like having your feet washed on Maundy Thursday, and that’s not always easy to convince a congregant that it’s okay to have one’s feet washed. It suggests a freedom to be holy, to offer oneself up to God in a humble way. Ash Wednesday is another way of remembering we came from dust and are returning to dust, one way or the other.  On Ash Wednesday, we marked ourselves with ashes that would otherwise be mixed once more into the dust of the earth. The ash cross is our way to proclaim we are of Christ.

Now our merry celebrations must be suspended for a while. Carnival has ended. The masks are removed. We must slow down and think about who we are, and what we are doing in our spiritual life. If we don’t slow down and look in the mirror, the moment will pass us by quickly and we’ll get too busy to take time to be holy.

Ash Wednesday, as we are marked with ashes, we agree to fast and prepare ourselves for spiritual combat. We attempt to put on God’s holiness. But first we must reduce ourselves to ground zero. Go back to the roots of our spirit to see what excesses we have attached to them, like computer viruses. We need to clean house, take a good shower, and dress in prayer and repentance. All the hatreds, the irritations, the jealousies, the false claims we have made in these past years, we must shake out of our pores. We must get rid of anything that interferes with our relationship with God. We must confess, if that will help us, and repent and then know that God in his mercy and grace has heard us and has forgotten us, just by our doing this act. This is His Grace.

So when we are marked with the ashes of last year’s Palm Sunday, we are saying, we are willing to kneel down in the soil and get dirt on our face and go barefoot through the realm of nature created by God and find our spirits where they have been buried. To take this pilgrimage which leads us eventually to the Holy Easter joy, we must reduce our obsessions our needs, our passions. For a while we abstain from our favorite things in order to enjoy the spirit which may show us we don’t have to depend so much on our favorite things. Then we may be made worthy to see the Passion of Christ and rejoice in the Resurrection at Easter.

 ~ Rev
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