A FRIEND from Epping arrives to show me pictures of her recently
ordained son. He and another youthful deacon walk on either side of
the Archbishop of Canterbury. They are clothed in white vestments,
but walk to a shrine in bare feet. Their white naked feet tread the
soft grass. The vulnerable steps make me think of Blake. My feet
are unthinkingly bare at remote Bottengoms, and are hardly ever
pierced by a thorn. But the feet in the photograph, due to the
robes, cannot but suggest the sacred as well as the natural.
The three men have taken off their shoes and socks at the
Walsingham Slipper Chapel, to tread the last mile to the holy place
(News, 9
August). They smile in the Norfolk sunshine. Temples of all
descriptions are barefoot places. The white cat sits in ceaseless
adoration of her feet, licking them into shape in the old stone
sink. Neither she nor I pick up a thorn. Or rarely ever.
In the shaggy August orchard, which I have begun to scythe, I
take note of my badgers' feet as they bumped themselves through the
faded grass to the bright stream. At the vet's house above the
track, I hear that the sturdy feet of a muntjac and her child beat
a hunger march to the kitchen door.
Jesus would complain that he had nowhere to lay his head. But a
woman not only bathed, but anointed his feet. The first was
ordinary enough, but the second was sensational. Drying them with
her hair, she elevated a common courtesy to a sensuous recognition
of their walk among us.
One imagines that societies that went barefoot in company would
have taken particular care of their feet. More, maybe, than their
hands. Naked, they were a form of levelling. And of freedom.
Frightened feet walked in the company of Jesus, all the way from
Jerusalem to Emmaus. About seven miles, they say. He, just behind
them, then catching up. What I find interesting is that they didn't
re- cognise his step. They had, after all, walked with him for
years. But then they had witnessed the nailed feet, whereas the
Emmaus Road feet were really stepping it out. So much so that when
they all reached Emmaus, it was assumed that the talking
fellow-traveller must be worn out.
Had the stranger walked on, he would have come to Gaza, where
poor blinded Samson brought the house down on his tormentors. All
the walkers would have known this tale. Instead, the fellow walker
- removing his sandals, of course - his feet washed but scarred,
identified himself in the second eucharist. It was Luke who records
this walk, this hospitality. No one else.
The Emmaus Road Christ was to become every Christian's travel
companion. His teaching would now for ever be seen as a long walk
that was often a trudge, and just as often a stepping-out of place
and time. "Abide with us, fast falls the eventide," the Emmaus Road
walkers said to the talkative stranger who was now in step with
them. These are the first words of the post-resurrection ethos,
beseeching Christ to become its guest.
Luke tells another hospitable story about a much shorter walk -
to Bethany. And to another hospitality. And to another resting of
clean, tired feet. The road-tiredness of Jesus is never left out of
history. And then there would be the foot basins and the towels,
for the "beautiful feet".