My Feet For a Kingdom

I could use a pedicure.

I could use a pedicure.

Usually when I declare my need for a pedicure it means I’d really, really like one for some special event upcoming. Because, let’s be honest, does anyone living in the two-thousand-and-twenty-third-year-of-our-Lord really need a beauty treatment for their feet in order to make it through the demands of the day? I can recognize a first-world western problem when I am forced to write it.

That said, however. If you were the unlucky soul, perhaps serving some sort of penance, and were involuntarily forced to attend to my feet for an hour, you’d likely beg for any other means of atonement.

I won’t regale you with the thickness, in depth or width, of the elephantine calluses on my big toes and heels. I will only say my shoe-size has increased by two men’s sizes, and I might have evolved enough to sashay, barefoot, through the thorns and fire-ants whose home is the red dirt floor of the Serengeti.

Neither do I want you to lose your appetite by describing the scabby, stubby, stumps that once were my toes, nary a one pointing true north. I wore flip flops to dinner last night and noticed the management hyping up my waitress in her corner (were those smelling salts?) like an outmatched boxer in-between rounds.

Like I said, I could really use a pedicure.

I’ve walked hundreds of miles up, down, and all around in the last few weeks; my feet carrying me up scarp donkey-trails flanked with purple-flowered wild thyme, to finally arrive at a white-washed monastery in the fast-moving clouds. I love these enduring fortresses of faithful monastic life, built step by step, stone by stone, prayer by prayer, for love of God.

I’ve walked home a thousand other ways down; my feet covered in the dust of green and gold shale, until stumbling upon a surprise chapel hidden in the cleft of the steep ravine. I love these tiny prayer-chapels; this one safely secured to slick black rock, as at-home and content as a white barnacle sunning in the sea.

My feet have been a means by which I’ve relearned to pray, and for this I thank God for them.

I’ve stopped to pray in each house of prayer that was open, and most were, a lamp always burning inside (Christ who prays for us without ceasing) waiting to spark into flame the prayers of all who humbly entered. My feet have been the vehicle by which I’ve relearned that ‘the Present is the point at which time touches eternity…” (C.S Lewis).

Lord, help me to be more present. Jesus, help me to pray without ceasing.

So while I long for renewed feet which don’t require smelling salts or a pep-talk to endure, I do long for more of the embodied spiritual marks formed and strengthened by walking the paths of this world, with Christ, in the present.

Not just my feet, Jesus, but change my hands to do your will. Change my eyes and ears to love your people. Change my lips to speak of your goodness and mercy. Change my thoughts and desires to desire your Presence above all else.

Shalom to you and yours, disciples of Jesus. May you be present to eternity; watchful and prayerful, as you walk with Christ up, down, and all around his kingdom-come today.

Kim