The Bare Foot

simplicity // 21
the Bare Foot

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

What do you think of, when you hear the phrase “bare foot”? Hippies? A sunny childhood? Paddling by the sea? I suspect that most of us can only summon memories of walking bare-foot as a child, or at the beach, because we simply don’t do it any other time.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem called ‘God’s Grandeur’ in 1877, about humanity, nature and its Creator; and within it comes this intriguing line about the foot. The “soil is bare now” (since the Industrial Revolution) and “nor can foot feel, being shod”. We are disconnected, physically and spiritually.

In a fabulous book Born to Run, Christopher McDougall asks, in particular, why runners have slavishly worn heavily cushioned trainers (since Nike introduced them in 1972), which cause our natural muscles to waste, and which lead, he argues, to widespread injury.

“Just look at the foot’s architecture,” he writes. “[It’s] a marvel that engineers have been trying to match for centuries... Buttressing the foot’s arch from all sides is a high-tensile web of twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, twelve rubbery tendons, and eighteen muscles, all stretching and flexing like an earthquake-resistant suspension bridge.”

“The barefoot walker receives a continuous stream of information about the ground [from as many as 7,200 nerve endings] and about his own relationship to it,” writes Dr Paul Brand, a professor of surgery, “while a shod foot sleeps inside an unchanging environment.”

Even Nike awoke to the reality, in the end, and when Jeff Pisciotta, their senior researcher, filmed people running bare-foot, he was startled: “Instead of each foot clomping down as it would in a shoe, it behaved like an animal with a mind of its own – stretching, grasping, seeking the ground with splayed toes, gliding in for a landing like a lake-bound swan.”

We have disconnected from the earth in so many ways. I wonder what would happen if you took a walk, or even a very gentle run, today, in bare feet, in some place you’d normally wear shoes? I wonder what people’s reaction would be? I wonder what the ground would feel like? I wonder what you’d reconnect with? And I wonder what you’d be missing if you didn’t try?


* * *

action point:

Barefoot? Just do it!

You could also read the rest of the poem by clicking here


* * *

rsvp:

“I grew up in the Fens - somewhere many don’t like as they are ‘featureless’. I don't get back there often, but when I do it is like food for my soul. Big sky, endless horizon - wonderful...” Tim

“Got to love Proust! Get shivers down my spine (good ones) when I think of how he describes that feeling of connecting with intangible things and the past and the present and the future and the self...” Emily

“I'm enjoying this journey very much. It is challenging, encouraging, insightful and revelatory. I'm loving the journeying together of a community of ‘un-met, but known friends’... My challenging-joy during this season has been to constantly try and simplify my journey through this thing called life and to try ever increasingly to live in the now and to be as alive and as present to the present as I possibly can be... My eight month old son is an amazing lesson to me in living in 'the now'... his every need is immediate (and simple) throughout a day. Food, milk, play, sleep... Simple. And within that simplicity come beautiful moments... A whole day of them, each day. Bountiful simplicity. My personal prayer during and beyond this series is that I will be able to increasingly embrace the journey-as-destination sense of my life, thus raising my appreciation and awareness of the 'awesome normal' that I am surrounded by every single day!” Stuart

“I wanted to share my journal from Tuesday to encourage any other 'Lenten failures': ‘Not been able to do the Simplicity devotions for 4 days - before doing today’s I felt low - felt I had failed in the Lenten walk so far. All the things I said I would do, I’ve failed to do, so therefore felt unworthy to continue. But today’s task was to repeat for five minutes, “Father of all we thank and praise you that while we were still far off, you met us in our need, and brought us home.” As I repeated it I changed the 'we' and ‘us’ to 'I' and 'me'... It was incredible, the sense of God’s love! I no longer feel unworthy or condemned , just forgiven, loved and 'home'. I then picked at random a CD and the words from the recent Amazing Grace version spoke to me: ‘and like a flood His mercy rains, unending ,unending love, amazing grace'. My question? How does God go on being so patient with me? I'm so glad He does.’” Keith


* * *

May you feel the ground beneath your feet...
Go well!

Brian