Book Clubs and Dirty Feet

One activity that has recently made it to my calendar is a monthly book club with some girls from our church. I got an email towards the end of the summer from a friend who wanted to dig into the classics. Jane Austen, Hemingway, Steinbeck etc. We've plowed through two so far. This weekend we chatted about Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. INCREDIBLE book! I couldn't recommend it more. At its most basic level, the book is about what the world would look like if we no longer were able to or capable of exchanging ideas. It was brilliant.

I am excited to learn that classic novels are not lost on me. I always struggled with these in high school when classic books were required to make the grade. Now that we are reading for pleasure these great books take on a new form to me. I'll keep you updated on our progress. We're planning to read Moby Dick for the month of October.

I really want to digest something that came up in our discussions. You know how we girls can be. Start talking about a character in Jane Austen's Emma and suddenly you are discussing your Aunt's brother's wife and her strange allergy to chick peas. In that general pattern, we moved from the concept of book burning (a theme in Fahrenheit 451) to a friend's recent inability to discern what her response should be when she encounters the homeless in Galveston. I can't provide adequate statistics but there seems to be quite a large homeless population on the island. They often hang out on Broadway near the Salvation Army or by the local McDonald's hoping for someone with some extra change.

My friend expressed her frustration regarding a recent exchange with an area homeless man and wondered aloud to us how we would have responded, or really, how we are called to respond. Our scriptures mention the poor, the lost, the widows hundreds upon hundreds of times. If we were to tear through this book and cut out all the passages that relate to the world's "have nots" we would have a bible torn to shreds; clearly something very important would be missing.

While I know this intuitively, I must say that even as I discussed this with my friend I found myself completely understanding and emotionally tied into her story. She only had a few bucks in her pocket and this gentleman was asking her to supersize the meal that she was offering to purchase for him.

I've had a heart for the have-nots ever since I started my junior year of college. You ever heard of doctors in the ER who have a patient dying of heart failure? In a last ditch effort after all other efforts have failed, the doctor raises his arm and pounds his fist into the patients chest in an effort to shock that dying person back to life. At least I think this happens - if nothing else it makes for a wonderfully dramatic and heart wrenching addition to my favorite medical shows. Rest assured, I am on the edge of my couch shouting... LET HIM LIVE! as the doctor pounds away.

Regardless, as I think about my junior year in college I can only really think of this image. God shocked me back to life as I emerged out of painful experience and realized that I was not alone. Out of that shock came a release of all the things I ever thought were important and a movement into a warmth that was so different than I had ever experienced. Life suddenly became so much more pungent. Just remembering that time again makes me feel warm inside.

From this beautiful place came a response. Not only was I developing a deeper sense of gratitude but I was recognizing my former self in others lives. I emerged as a person who wanted to help heal the wounds that I saw in the world around me because in a very profound way, I felt healed. I quickly became interested in social justice as a means to respond. I soon found myself volunteering with the elderly, low income women, and eventually, working full time at Habitat for Humanity.

While this is lovely to think about and I have had some incredible experiences, there is always one place that is difficult for me to go. The homeless. I've walked into various shelters and handed out my share of sandwiches on city park benches. And it is always. really. hard. Its so hard to not want to give the sandwich and go. Its hard to not want to look beyond this dirty person with disheveled clothes and unpleasant smell and just get it over with. Its hard to listen to his or her ramblings and perceptions of the world and not want them to just take a shower, eat a hot meal and start fresh again tomorrow.

So as my friend spoke, I could identify in many ways with her concerns. And it frustrated me to know that our God calls us to love these people when I so often just don't want to. Yet we read that this is so critical to our understanding of the heart of God that he goes so far as to say that if I don't feed the hungry, clothe the naked or give a drink to the thirsty in my midst that I indeed do not know HIM. That very same God who threw his fist on my life and said

"WAKE UP!

I am here,

and I am glorious."

I came across this picture as I dug around the internet looking for some examples of those who serve the poorest of the poor. It was from an article covering a group of believers in Savannah GA who meet every week under a bridge and wash the feet of the local homeless. New socks, hair cuts, foot massages, once a week.

At first, I couldn't imagine it. Washing this foot? Can't I just stand far off and spray it down with a hose? This is not the image we get of Christ. He puts my foot right on his knee and washes all the grime off. He touches my calloused heels, he surely doesn't stand at a distance. I think with just a glimpse of this very picture I am understanding in a more profound way what sin truly looks like to our God. It is so humbling. And yet Christ takes our feet, dirty and smelly with sin, and washes us clean. He even gets under my toe nails where I thought I had things successfully concealed. This conversation and further thought kind of highlighted that again for me in a new and important way.

In addition to the reality of sin, I get this image of God full of joy when he finally removes the layers of dirt and grime and sees a beautiful newly manicured foot. All my efforts in the world will never remove injustice completely, nor should they. The injustices of the world are a God sized task. If I am focused on Christ however, my life in the world will be filled with compassion even for those with dirty feet, a smelly odor, or a perceived rude response to my offer of a hamburger. Whats more, I find that if I stop looking for a way out and actually speak authentically with the homeless that I meet I sometimes get a glimpse of God in them too. Not every time. But sometimes. And when it happens its usually quite profound. The faith of those with so little to their name is often a faith that can move mountains. I just have to be in their presence long enough to get a glimpse of it.