This essay is a product of the Collegeville Institute’s Emerging Writers Mentorship Program, a 9-month program for writers who address matters of faith in their work. Each participant has the opportunity to publish their work at Bearings Online. Click here to read other essays from the Emerging Writers Mentorship Program.
It’s 2:30 in the morning, and I have taken our three-month-old puppy Lewis outside for the umpteenth time. He’s back in his crate, and I’m attempting to sleep on the floor next to him. My husband had floor-crate duty the night before. It’s not glamorous; it’s certainly not the cozy, fun part of puppy-dom that you imagine when you look at all those cute faces in preparation for adoption.
As Lewis whines, protesting his imprisonment and letting me know he wants to snuggle, I wend my fingers through the crate, hoping to find a bit of him I can pet and thereby soothe him to sleep. My fingers land on his soft little paws. Slowly I start stroking them, whispering words of reassurance—to himself or me, I’m not quite sure.
It is then that I land on an image from our wedding. My husband Patrick was raised Methodist but no longer practices. I am Catholic and wanted a liturgical wedding. But I wanted a slightly different liturgy: in visiting with the priest who was to preside at our wedding, I told him I wanted a footwashing—not for the whole congregation, just for us to wash each other’s feet. John 13, in which Jesus stoops to wash the feet of his disciples prior to his arrest and crucifixion, has long been one of my favorite scripture passages. It holds, to me, the most profound expression of what Christianity is and can be: communion, service, love, forgiveness, hope, and hospitality. The footwashing from our wedding is an image I return to often: unshod feet, wedding clothes, basin and pitcher, towels, pouring, holding, and drying.
Footwashing is the most profound expression of what Christianity is and can be: communion, service, love, forgiveness, hope, and hospitality.
Footwashing is a ritual of the nitty-gritty. The traditional seven sacraments have such beautiful elements to them: food lovingly prepared and served, anointing and sanctifying with oils that smell heavenly, acknowledging wrongdoing and returning to right relationship, clean water gently poured over heads. These sacraments—beautiful, meaningful, grace-filled—run the risk of becoming too familiar, too pretty, too easy. That trickle of water over a baby’s head initiating them into the community we share falls short when you consider the death to new life that baptism is. The host, a wafer that looks nothing like bread, consecrated and enshrined in a monstrance for adoration is utterly divorced from the earthiness of a shared meal among friends as Jesus looks with certainty at betrayal, crucifixion, death, and—the most radical thing of all—resurrection to come.
But feet? You can’t hide from the bodiliness of feet: they can stink, have callouses, hurt from all we put them through as they carry us through life. And yet, to stoop and wash the feet of another is an astounding act of love. To have your feet washed is a profound moment of vulnerability. Marriage, in a nutshell. Dog ownership too, it turns out.
To have your feet washed is a profound moment of vulnerability. Marriage, in a nutshell.
Relationships—and not just those of the matrimonial kind—imply a ministry of care. Be it children, pets, parents, in-laws, siblings, or friends: we stoop before those we love. We take their grubby feet into our hands and we scrub. In turn, we place our feet into the hands of those who love us. In this action, this back and forth, this service and being served, we bear fruit.
In her book Just Love, Margaret A. Farley, RSM, writes: “Love between persons violates relationality if it closes in upon itself and refuses to open to a wider community of others. . . . [L]ove brings new life to those who love. The new life within the relationship of those who share it may move beyond itself in countless ways.” Fruitfulness ensures that the love you share does not cave in on itself. It sees relationship as the foundation out of which love grows beyond itself. We expand because of those we love—whether they have two feet or four.
We have this puppy, Lewis, because our older dog, Buddy, died earlier in the year. Buddy was rescued by my husband prior to our relationship. He was a one-hundred-pound Catahoula Leopard Dog. We suspect Buddy’s first year was tough: he didn’t bark for quite a while after Patrick got him; he was frightened of storms and fireworks; his anxiety would completely overtake him at times. I too have anxiety that requires regular management, and Buddy was often a reminder of how much tenderness is required when fears run rampant. Washing feet means being the safe place, the calm, in the midst of the storm.
Buddy was often a reminder of how much tenderness is required when fears run rampant.
We washed Buddy’s paws a lot during his life with us, but not literally. In fact, Buddy didn’t let us touch his feet. The one time we did, I hit something on the back of his leg that hurt him. He leapt at me, teeth bared, on his hind legs, head to head. It was the only time I was truly afraid of him, and he regretted it immediately, swiftly becoming a docile dog again, ears back, eyes lowered, gentle and quiet. Still, washing feet is not always without danger—emotional, spiritual, mental, if not physical. The washing and being washed breaks us open.
Buddy’s decline was pretty fast, and because he was a big dog with anxiety, our main concern was that he not injure himself and then become aggressive toward us or our other pets. He was losing the ability to walk up and down stairs and stand steadily. And so we washed his feet a final time as the vet injected him with medicine to put him to sleep. That implies an easy process, but for Buddy, it was not. He was scared and wouldn’t let us get close to him. We were helpless as we watched him die, unable to hold him until the sedatives did their work. Sometimes footwashing rips your heart right out of your chest and shows you just how powerless you are.
And then you realize that by washing paws again, by wending your fingers through a crate with a puppy uncertain about his new life in this new place with these new people, your heart is being put together again.
Like this post? Subscribe to have new posts sent to you by email the same day they are posted.
“We expand because of those we love–whether they have two feet or four.” Oh my, I absolutely love this piece. Thank you, Lauren.
Lauren,
Timely, beautiful and insightful on so many levels. Many thanks!!
Your ability to link life together in ways both magical and common never ceases to amaze me.
This is really, really beautiful.
Thank you for opening our eyes and hearts to the power of simple acts of love, touch and kinship with all of creation. May you, Lewis, Patrick and Cully have a blessed time of Nativity and a New Year filled with many reason to wash each others paws.
“We stoop before those we love.” So true. And what a lovely reminder that we, the washers, also need to be washed by those who love us. Sometimes that is even harder than holding the stinky, calloused feet of our loved ones. Thank you for writing this.