Walk In Their Shoes

As I was driving my daughter to school yesterday morning, the car radio was tuned in to the local “top forty hits” station. Only there was more talk than music, radio stations in general having adopted the ridiculous practice of continuous yakking over the air in the morning. Such was the case here as well. The basic format on this station was that the man-woman team of announcers would pick some story from the news flow and then make some comments on it, then going on to another. Eventually, if you listened long enough, you just might find yourself screaming for a commercial, much less a song.

On this morning, I knew that these DJs didn’t have it all together when they committed the worst infraction possible on the radio: no, I’m not talking about profanity; I’m talking about “dead air” with no one saying anything for a few seconds. After that, I was ready for anything. One of the announcers brought up a story from some city where the pastoral leadership in a church offered free pedicures to the homeless; both of them thought that this was a real hoot. The woman then indignantly asked why the church wasn’t doing something to meet their “real needs”. It was then that I realized that these “yakkers” not only were relatively incompetent for their jobs: they also were ignorant and foolish.

Most homeless people do everything on foot. They don’t drive, and most don’t even ride bicycles. And most of their lives are spent outdoors, under many different kinds of conditions. They have to walk and stand in various states of dryness and wetness, hot and cold, cleanliness and filth, and often on rough surfaces. Often without the opportunity to kick off their shoes and socks and attend to their own feet. Homeless people generally don’t carry around a full complement of footwear that they can change. They often sleep in their shoes. The fact that they are so dependent on their feet makes any cut or infection a vitally important factor in their lives.

Giving pedicures gives the involved church the opportunity not only to clean under the toenails of the homeless; that alone would help to reduce infections and would have been by itself a great public service. They can also see the entire foot and notice any outstanding problems that need immediate attention. Besides the benefits that they impart to the homeless people’s feet, the church further gave as a reason for their free pedicures the explanation that they are mimicking the foot washings that Jesus gave during his ministry on Earth. That really set off our announcers, who revealed themselves to be part of the population that believes that organizations founded on spiritual beliefs must necessarily censor themselves regarding the expression of those very beliefs when tending to the needs of anyone outside their group.

These two announcers apparently have lived very insulated, compartmentalized, easy lives in order to put down a religious organization that really is in touch with one of the major needs of homeless people. What is that saying? Something like, “You need to walk a mile in someone’s shoes to know what it’s like for them.” These radio jocks must not have ever had to do much walking!