'Some time ago I read a remarkable book, the Confessions of a Chiropodist. The writer reveals an interesting fact: all her patients (she insists this is a rule without exception) ask, when they first turn up, forgiveness for their feet - for the general state of them, their shape, their relative smallness or largeness. Most of us, it seems, are ashamed of our feet. That explains, perhaps, why so many people are reluctant to take part in foot-washing on Maundy Thursday. It sheds light, too, on what went that night, long ago, in the Upper Room. When Jesus took the feet of the Twelve, one by one, into his hands it was to say: "I know you as you are. I love you as you are."'
Erik Varden, Healing Wounds, p.40.
