I read Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak for the first time about five years ago. I was feeling the rumblings of a mid-life questioning and wondering about the lifestyle choices I had made. My soul was curious, and he helped me name and understand this season of my life. He struggled with depression in his 40s, and in the chapter titled “All the Way Down”, he shares that there were family and friends who “had the courage to stand with me in a simple and healing way”. His friend Bill, after asking permission, showed up every afternoon to visit Palmer. He would sit at Palmer’s feet, remove his socks and shoes, and would massage Palmer’s feet for about 30 minutes. It was the one place in his body where he could experience feeling and a reconnection of sorts with the human race. Bill never gave advice, only touch, and observations of what he felt in Palmer’s feet.
Today I listened to a short podcast episode where Parker is interviewed with the question of “how do we communally rub each other’s feet?” There are many great takeaways from his thoughts, but the anecdote that stuck out to me the most was that his friend Greg had a grandmother who taught him that “while he can’t change the whole world, he can change what’s within three feet or so at every moment of his life.”
The interviewer Krista Tippett makes the observation that we can get so overwhelmed by the violence and atrocities happening in the world, the barrage of news images, that we can forget and even dismiss what is possible within three feet. Three feet is our actual reality and “where our power and our agency are at all times”.
Many of us spend the majority of our days within our homes. Who is in my domestic three feet? My husband and my children. My guests. My neighbors. Who is in my three feet during my weekly rhythms? The person in front of me at Publix. The librarian that attends to my books. The cashier at Goodwill. My instructor at water aerobics. We can offer metaphorical foot rubs (or actual!) to those in close proximity of us, and change their lives. It’s real love and real ministry. Compassionate listening is an emotional foot rub, and if there was ever a season in my lifetime that begged for that, it’s now.
All of us have been impacted by this pandemic in small and big ways. And no two experiences are the same, even under the same roof. Our children’s experiences are different from ours even if they looked similar. Our spouse’s job challenges affect them in unseen ways that we can’t fully understand. Our young adults have missed social celebrations and school/university opportunities that are grieve-worthy. Our aged neighbors are lonely. Our friends have lost incomes. And some have lost dear one’s lives. They will each come close to us, in proximity, whether in person or through a screen or text. How can we use the care and compassion of Christ to love and listen well? How can our homes be hospitals, rehab centers, safe spaces to heal? I am sitting with these questions this afternoon. My children will be walking in the door in fifteen minutes, no longer 3 miles away but 3 feet away. What does it look like to offer my careful listening? I am going to try.
With an open heart,
Aimee
“Compassionate listening is an emotional foot rub”~definitely pondering and thinking on this! I need one and need to give one~