Transcript
I am sitting this morning out on my porch. Well, actually, I’m sitting out on the steps of my porch. It’s just after dawn by five or ten minutes. The world is pretty quiet. And my toes are feeling their grip over the edge of the step. Not that I’m afraid of falling. I mean, after all, I am sitting, but because I enjoy the tactile sense of my toes making a grip, feeling the world around me.
Surfers would say that I was hanging five, or maybe ten, because they hang their toes over the edges too, a lot. But in this case, I’m not surfing. I’m just sitting and enjoying the fact that my bare feet can tell me as much about my surroundings as my hands can. We sometimes forget just how much information our feet, our toes, can give to us.
I really do like being barefoot. I can remember my Mama on a Sunday morning. We’d get all the way to church and Mama would realize I didn’t have any shoes on.
And she would say to me, “Sister, you know you have to have shoes on. We’re going into church.”
And I’d say, “But Mama, when my feet are bare and I’m in the sanctuary, I can feel everything from my toes to the top of my head. My whole heart, my whole soul can feel presence inside the sanctuary.”
Mom would shake her head and plan to remember next Sunday to make sure I had shoes on when I got in the car.
I still do not enter a sanctuary, no matter what the spirituality is there, what group is there. I enter sanctuaries barefooted so that I can say, “I’m here totally, head to foot, fingers to toes. I’m here to worship.”
Big sigh here, because another place that I was always barefoot, I used to free climb. That’s an activity where, without ropes, without security, you used your bare fingers and bare toes to climb the rock face. Your fingers would feel along until they found a crevice to hold. Then your toes would start to feel along below you to find another place to grip. Then you would release a finger and maybe release a toe and gently pull yourself up, just another small amount of distance, and up the wall you would go. Bare fingers, bare toes, face against the wall, breathing that rock.
I can no longer free climb, and I miss it. But there are other things in life now that let me know my presence is fully feeling all that is around me.
Oh, like that slug. Look, see? Well, no, you can’t look and see. A slug has just appeared over the edge of the step, is meandering its way towards my foot. Is it going to go up and over my foot when it gets here? Is it going to go around? Its little eyestalks are working. Aha. It just bumped my foot. It stopped. I could see the little eyestalks working. And I’m wondering, gonna go up and over or around?
I’m laughing because the slug fooled me. It made a U-turn and it’s heading back to the edge of the step, and it has slowly gone over the edge. You know, in a way, you could sure say that that slug was barefoot too. Yes, you could. And it’s sensing its world that way.
I used to run a lot of 5Ks. I always ran them barefoot. And sometimes the organizers would tell me I had to go put shoes on.
And I’d say, “Well, no. Show me in the rules where it says I have to have shoes on.”
And they usually couldn’t. Matter of fact, no one ever did. So I would run barefoot. They were scared that I was going to fall. I wasn’t scared I was going to fall at all, because my feet felt every inch through the bottom of my soles right up through my toes. And sometimes I would need to use my toes to grip an edge. And it never stopped my run because I knew where my foot was and where the next foot was going to go.
Bare feet, barefooted. Another way that I sensed the world around me.
Sitting here on the porch, my toes, one at a time, big toes through the little toes, one at a time, feeling the edge, enjoying the sensation of the rough brick and the smoother concrete. And knowing that barefooted, barefooted was a way I could still go, if only sitting on my front porch, on the steps of my home.
Thank you for coming through the open door. Thank you for letting me remember why I like being barefooted. Have a very blessed day. Take care, be safe. And maybe try hanging your toes over an edge while you’re sitting down safely somewhere.
