Joshua Minden (00:01):

Hi there. Welcome to Stories and Other Things Holy. This week our principal storyteller, Dr. Terry Nelson Johnson, shares a story that invites us to reflect on the temptation to just keep going, to stay busy, to keep moving, and to resist the temptation to slow down and to be vulnerable. This comical story about aching Feet leads us to a reflection about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and encourages us to consider the ways in which God wants to get to us in the midst of our aching, our discomfort, our vulnerability. So I'm excited to have you with us for this episode of Stories and Other Things Holy.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (00:50):

Stories and Other Things Holy. If you are joining us for the first time or the 50th time, I'm just going to continue to repeat that because it feels like a prayer to me, Stories and Other Things Holy. But let me tell one, maybe one and a half. So at the time of the story, I had ruptured my Achilles tendon and was recouping. And those of you who, first of all, if you haven't ruptured your Achilles tendon, just run with that or don't run with it. Just count your blessings. It's a tough one. So I was recouping and I got to the point that I can exercise again and I exercised with a friend at five o'clock in the morning at some big gym. And so we had a tight schedule. We both had to go to work, blah, blah, blah, and we finish our workout a little early.

(01:39):

He's like, we should go to the hot tub. I'm like, ah, I can't go to the hot tub. And then he was like, come on, it doesn't take that long. And I'm like, no, no, no, I can't. And then he worked on me a little bit like, you are too busy. When people call you, the first thing they say is, I know you're busy. I don't know if that's an compliment or an indictment. So come on, just take 15 minutes, come to the hot tub. I'm like, okay, go to the hot tub. And then, I don't know, hot tubs. I don't like hot tubs where the jets don't work. I mean, when they're really timid, tepid not strong. I'm going for the jets. So I put my feet in and these jets are serious, and the jets get to the soles of my feet and my Achilles and the kind of comfort was almost overwhelming. And to be honest, I sort of went into verbalizing that comfort. And then some other people in the hot tub were like, is he from that movie? I'll have what she's having in the hot tub at five o'clock in the morning. I'm like, oh.

(02:51):

And I got out. My buddy said, guess you liked that, like I did. And then I thought, how badly I ached for comfort. And I had kept myself from it how bad my feet hurt. And then I obviously thought of the last supper, and I thought, why did he go for the feet? Teacher, rabbi, going for your feet seems to me that the reason Jesus goes for our feet is because I don't know about yours, but these dogs, they're weightbearing. They're unsightly, and they ache. And that's the part of me that Jesus wants to get to. It's the part of me that Jesus wants me to just be submerged, immersed in a hot tub of the soul so that I can be healed, but I resist healing. I stay away from healing. And I pride myself on being busy at the expense of my feet, the part of me that Jesus wants to get to, the weight bearing, the unsightly, the aching part. Yeah. Stories and Other Things Holy.

Joshua Minden (04:27):

I've created some kind of a hybrid between Mary Oliver and Jesus. In my head, Mary Oliver says, listen, listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life? I hear Jesus, Martha, Martha, are you scurrying in the kitchen and missing out? Get off your feet.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (04:50):

Get off your feet.

Joshua Minden (04:51):

Come sit down, take a load off.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (04:56):

Take a load off. Sounds so different in the wake of hearing that story, doesn't it? It does. Take a load off, put your feet up, put your feet up. I think of Come to me. All you are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. So we have this God that I think is passionate about healing. Roar says that if you look at the gospel with a little bit of a prejudiced eye, you can mount an argument to suggest that two thirds of the gospel have to do with healing. And in my own life experience and working with a lot of people, that there's something really true about it. And so if a God deeply committed to healing, and the irony is that we just fend it off.

(05:54):

I mean, you would think anybody want healing? You're like, yeah, how is it that in response to a God who says, come to me all you, who are we and heavy burden, we don't come. And my instincts are that there's vulnerability associated with healing. And the image of that particular scripture passage is that the healing is manifested in. It's sort of like the parent telling the adolescent kid, come here and the kid got drunk last night, is hung over, threw up and is in deep shit and thinks he's going to come downstairs and it's all over. And the parent's like, come here. And what the parent wants to do is to hold the kid,

(06:45):

But the kid won't come because he won't put his burden down. Come to me. All. You are a weary and heavy burden, and I will hold you. In order to be held in a satisfying fashion, you have to put the burden down. If you don't put the burden down, then the burden is between you and I as I try to hold you. And it's totally unsatisfying. It's like having somebody with a big backpack, but they're wearing it towards the front, and then I come to hold you. It's like it's not going to work.

(07:12):

You're being protected by your burden. And in order to be healed, you have to put the burden down and be held. But it just feels so awkward. It feels so exposed because in order to be healed, I have to show you my wound. And man, we just don't want to do it. And the visceralness of a, when they do the holy Thursday foot washing, everybody who knows they're having their feet washed. They go get a pedicure and they make those dogs look okay, or when they're invited, they're like, oh, no, I couldn't. I have a torn ligament in my toe. People don't want other people to see their feet because they look like feet and they go in different directions and there's little stuff coming out, and they're nasty and they smell. What if without knowing, I just want to wash and massage your feet right now.

(08:13):

Like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. But if I let you do that, I'd be back in the hot tub. Oh God, my feet hurt all the time. And somehow I don't get myself to a place where they can be held, massaged, healed, be held, and somehow communicate to me. They're not ugly. They're not. They don't know. Just so brilliant. Go for the part of me that aches, that's weight bearing and that is unsightly. It's the very part that I don't want you to see. I don't want you to touch. I don't think they're worthy of touch. I am embarrassed of them. So I go around for my whole life not being healed. I won't let you get to them. Oh,

Joshua Minden (09:05):

Man, I can't help but think of Pope Francis, especially the first year or two when he went to that prison for only Thursday. It's like a year in roughly a little less than a year into his pontificate. And he goes to that prison and everybody was just either thrilled or up in arms one way or the other. Never calm contentment. But I don't think anyone got a memo ahead of time that, Hey, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church is going to wash your feet. So I'd have to go back and look at the pictures. But I kind imagine that scenario, you're in prison. There's no pedicures.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (09:57):

No pedicures in prison.

Joshua Minden (09:59):

There's no pedicures. I imagine getting to trim your nails at all is probably a complicated process,

Terry Nelson-Johnson (10:06):

 I would think,

Joshua Minden (10:07):

in an incarcerated environment. And so I imagine there was a lot going on. Now, I'm sure somebody the second year sent a halo team to go clean some feet ahead of time. But that first year, and not only did he wash them tenderly attending each person really present, but he kissed them. I know the kiss, the thing that you're most embarrassed about. To your point, I know I can't have my feet washed on holy Thursday. No, I've got my feet sweat. I can't. No, I want, I want to kiss your feet. I want to hold your feet. I don't just want to wash your feet. I want to massage your

Terry Nelson-Johnson (11:06):

Feet. Caress.

Joshua Minden (11:08):

Yes.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (11:10):

And caress means to touch with exaggerated tenderness.

Joshua Minden (11:14):

And a number of people listening to this right now just got really uncomfortable, right? Because our minds jumped sometimes to the most immature places of these ideas, right?

Terry Nelson-Johnson (11:23):

Yeah. I taught sophomores, man. Yeah. Turn an eraser into a sexual innuendo. Like, oh, in a eraser. You guys just calmed down. Yeah, I got it. But caress, I love this. I want to caress your feet. I want to touch your feet with exaggerated tenderness like, oh man. Oh man. And the most recent year, a Pope Francis, they had to put the people receiving his feet washing, unlike a little riser because he had to sit in a wheelchair and he couldn't do it from the ground. And then it just begs us to contemplate nouns. The wounded healer,

(12:07):

The guy comes in the wheelchair to kiss your feet. This is not the athletic guy, not the guy that has the super feet. This is the wounded guy that's coming. And on a previous episode, we did the by whose authority, that phrase, by whose authority does Pope Francis kiss a feet? Well by his wounded authority, the people that you trust with your wounds are people that know wounds, those medical people that come in and you think they have never suffered in a bed. And the way they just treated me suggests they have no idea what it means to be a patient. And I want to be treated by doctors who know what it's like to be a patient. I want to have my feet washed by people who know that feet ache, et cetera, et cetera. And that's what the church does. The church have. Has the church lost its authority? And if so, how? Because we have a lot of rules, but no suffering, whatever. And I'm not going to throw the church under the bus, but I think sometimes we talk about the Paschal mystery, but we don't undergo it. We don't acknowledge that as a church, we know that our feet ache too, that they're unsightly and that they're weightbearing, et cetera, et cetera.

(13:41):

Ed Shea talks about compassion as the willingness to enter another's chaos. There's something so good about that for me, that in order to trust somebody else's touch on my feet, which are weightbearing, unsightly, and they ache, I have to trust that the person's doing that knows that. And that goes back to the reason we don't want to undergo healing is because we don't want to reveal our chaos.

(14:15):

I don't want you to theoretically what I delight in a God that I thought was willing to join me in my chaos, but in real life, I want to say thank you. God, could you come back next week when I've responded to all my emails that I haven't responded to when I've done the stuff, when I've lost some weight, when my house is not as disorganized, when my finances are a little cleaner, come back and then I'll welcome you and blah, blah, blah. Compassion happens when someone enters your chaos like, oh man. And the reason we fend it off is because we don't want people to see our chaos so we don't get healed.

Joshua Minden (15:06):

The Pharisee says to the disciple, wiser master, eating with sinners and task collectors. And Jesus says, I didn't come to save the righteous. I came for those who needed a physician. No, tomorrow to your image. Tomorrow never comes. Like if master come comeback when I've tidied up. If you could tidy up, you already would have. If you either weren't trapped by your mess or incapable of overcoming it, you wouldn't need a healer. I forget the U language. I wouldn't need a healer

Terry Nelson-Johnson (15:53):

If

Joshua Minden (15:54):

I was able. We wouldn't have spent anyway. I wouldn't spend a lot of time in spiritual direction lamenting a lot of things if I didn't need to unburden myself back to that image.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (16:14):

There's that book, bless this mess, and it begs the question, is it possible that this mess is worthy of bless? Is it possible that these feet, these funky, aching, weightbearing feet as a metaphor for the rest of my life, are they worthy of touch? And is there a God crazy enough to want to touch them? That thing about one of the ways that Fra Amini talks about advent is advent is a celebration of God's declaration, of God's intention to join us in our chaos.

(16:50):

And I sort of imagine God doing a memo saying, I sort of figured it out. I'm just going to come be with you completely. Not the great theology. And then it's just about his sin. And if you're like God's uncle or something, you want to get up there, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't hit send. And then you want appraise God of how much chaos there is. I don't want to distribute you, but do you have any idea how I know you started, it was great creation and everything. Seven days, you did a great job. There's a lot of chaos and you're promising to go identify yourself, weave yourself into host rest with touch, caress, chaos. Don't hit send. You don't want to do it. God's like do hit send advent incarnation, and then we are in the presence of a God that says, please let me caress and kiss whatever your feet are, whatever part of you you think is unsightly aches and is weight pairing, that's the part I want to caress and kiss. I'll have what she's having.

Joshua Minden (18:17):

It's interesting, I think there's an interesting tension here too, because I mean that in my journey of faith, I went through a season where I was really attracted to very traditional expressions of the way as a Catholic, the way that we worshiped and very fond of those traditional expressions. And as I've kind of moved through life, I realized there's this interesting juxtaposition that's attention where we're talking. There's this temptation. You think of the David's temple, Solomon's temple, and there's this temptation to create a place for God to dwell that is appropriate to God's glory that is indicative of his perfection. And so we want to make a place that's perfect and beautiful and pristine and pure, purified, sanctified or whatever word we want to use. And to your point, so we want to create these saccharine, not saccharine but sacred, these artificially sacred places for God to dwell, for us to meet God and God's like, that's nice, but how many times in the prophets and other places did he say, I don't your sacrifices of Bert offerings mean nothing to me. I want, I want your heart, and here's Jesus. I want your feet. Your feet. You'll never wash my feet. Peter says, Jesus, if I can't wash your feet, then I can't work with you. I can't, this isn't going to work, Peter, if you don't let me get into your mess.

(20:07):

So yeah, it's not, God doesn't want to meet us in the place. That's a poor shadow of his perfection. He wants to bring his perfection, his life, his order, his healing power into the absolute imperfection and the chaos. And I am so thankful for that tension of struggle to find the words. It's just

Terry Nelson-Johnson (20:52):

To our, we're sort of rookies at this, which I love. Thank you. And I'm fascinated by, we told what on the surface was sort of a innocuous sort of funny story that you might tell at the bar.

(21:14):

And then we just spent the last, I don't know, 15 minutes just like, oh, wait, feet caress kiss. And then the story becomes the source of contemplation, a long loving look. And then we get to do this soul riff off of a story. So important for me that we start with the story. The story is what then informs and fuels the conversation. The reason that I think so much religion doesn't work, no story. It's built on story. We don't tell the stories, we don't trust the stories. We just share these ideas and like, oh, homily without a story, what were you thinking? Tell the story. That somehow embodies the idea and then imperfectly riff about it. I honor the story. I want to revere the story and then let it lead to some rich, imperfect, awkward, insightful conversation. And thus Stories and Other Things Holy.

Joshua Minden (22:20):

Do. You were a teacher, you've worked with a lot of young people over the years talking about the story and the need for there to be a story. Christianity is one of the great epic stories of humanity and more young people are inspired by Star Wars and Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey. And it's an ethos, a creative ethos that has managed to continue to tell a story and to tell new stories in that world. And so you have young people today that are more inspired by Star Wars that are becoming Jedi. Jedi is a religion now in the United States and in other parts of the world are more inspired by that story because it's accessible. We haven't sequestered it.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (23:20):

Yeah,

Joshua Minden (23:25):

I mean it feels like thinking about what you said, it's like, have we just forgotten how to tell our own story?

Terry Nelson-Johnson (23:31):

Oh man, that's so good. And I wouldn't don't want to throw Star Wars under the bus. I think in some ways it's a manifestation of our hunger for stories, and it's Joseph Campbell's stuff that we yearn for the hero and the Odyssey and the journey. And I don't think that we have honored or different language, our read retold the story of Christianity in a way that's compelling. So we have a lot of work to do, dude, and with respect to this nascent adventure of ours, stories and other things. Holy, we just say one more time with respect to stories. This story, story of the Feet, God going towards the feet, the ugly part, the unsightly part, the aching part. Bless us, a Lord for these your gifts, which we have just received

Joshua Minden (24:51):

From your bounty

Terry Nelson-Johnson (24:52):

Through Christ our Lord.

Joshua Minden (24:54):

Amen.

Terry Nelson-Johnson (24:54):

Amen.

Joshua Minden (25:00):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Stories and Other Things Holy. It is a delight to have you with us again this week. If you're new to the podcast, I would invite you to go to our website stories and other things wholly.com and sign up for our newsletter. Each week you'll receive an email with links to each new episode, a written reflection that goes with that episode, as well as prompts that we call Gracer Sizes that you can use to take both your prayer and reflection deeper throughout the coming week. We also invite you to share the podcast, the emails or our social media content with your friends and loved ones in this new year. I'd also like to invite you to consider becoming a supporting member of stories and other things wholly through the Buy Me a Coffee platform. You can make a one-time or recurring membership contribution.

(25:54):

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