Day 7.
humility. It shook my hand and sat me down cross-legged today. It marched to the chalkboard and filled my lungs with dust as it erased a new beginning. It was a lesson for my scaled-over eyes and deafening heart. It was a strip of the soul and a slap of the face.
Today was our second day spent with dialysis patients: creased faces who live while their pain sits on them. They're mainly elderly and mainly Arab. The room is a disorganized charade compared to Western hospitals: the windows are screenless and the nurses are preoccupied by the coffee in their cups. Blood pulsates through the veins of the room and feeds the patients, but also my disgust. It was there that I patented my career as a masseuse.
There is less lost in translation when it comes to offering the gift of touch. Arthritic hands reached out to us from throughout the room, like school children begging to answer a question. In some cases, calloused feet met our facial personal bubbles as they were offered. It was a tapestry of brown and pale, youth and old age. All those bones in one meeting place.
And then, as my mouth dry-heaved over spilled blood and unclipped toenails, it hit me. humility. I began to understand why Jesus yeshuwah washing others' feet was monumental. Not that I'm near the Son of God or the people's Messiah, but I understood that if He wasn't above it, I certainly wasn't. I understood that faith is about casting aside the demons of ego + self; those two demons we so rightfully serve here in Canada. Faith is about touching, embracing, masseusing the smell of feet and the hangnails of hands. It's about being His hands and his feet — whether literally or metaphorically.
Let pride sit in the corner, with its nose snubbed towards the heavens because it believes that's where it belongs. Let ego be kicked to the streets; where it deserves to be and where people do not. May your name be Worshipped.
No comments:
Post a Comment