On Trust

[highlyeccentric]

On Trust

And during supper, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord are you going to wash my feet?’…Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ Simon Peter said to him: ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ –John 13: 2b-6; 8b-9, NRSV

This society of ours, a society which idolises sex and fears touch. Touch becomes a tool for sex- a precursor, to be hurried through, and too often pushed aside when we are done. And this world of ours, what strange twists it creates.
Women may touch women, but men must hold each other at a distance- save, of course, at sporting matches. Living among women, I find a surprised delight at the freedom to touch, embrace. It’s ‘such a girl’s insitution’. Our male counterparts need the excuse of alcohol to justify their bonding rituals.
Some circles accept, even encourage expression of affection between genders that does not encompass sex. Yet what risks- it demands that first trust, so unnatural to us, the trust without prior experience on which to rest. Complex codes bind our behavior, and to break out of this rigid mould risks all the fragile basis of our relationships.
And how strange these codes are. I might embrace my friend, even go arm-in-arm with him. Yet our hands, our most humdrum and practical parts, these we may not clasp. Why should we not hold hands, after all? There is no better way to say you go together, not merely in the same space.
Somehow, togetherness has been denied us, save as an adjunct to sex.
Did not Christ wash the feet of his disciples? He took upon Himself their most intimate concern, the care of their bodies, and they gave Him this simple and immense trust. Did they do so because He was their God? They did not; for all He tried, they had not yet grasped as much. He it was who had approached them in their daily lives, whom they had followed because He had looked into their eyes and said ‘Come’. He it was who loved them, who knew their faults and their dreams. Why should they not trust him, and trusting him, why should their be any barrier between they and him?
Trust. We fear one another. You do not truly believe that there can be more than one- one indeed is miracle enough- person who can know you, accept you merely as you are. And so you fall at once in love with those you trust, and we cannot understand expressions of trust-love without the baggage of romance, and above all of sex.
Oh, this strange code of ours, these walls that keep us safe and which lock us away. You ask where is the love. Where can there be love without trust? Where is the trust, when we are raised to fear?

Comments

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

And how strange these codes are. I might embrace my friend, even go arm-in-arm with him. Yet our hands, our most humdrum and practical parts, these we may not clasp.

In anatomy class, when looking at cadavers, the feet and hands were kept covered. Why? Because these are the most potent reminders of what it is to be human, even more so than faces. We are more the sum of our actions than our feelings, I think.

[highlyeccentric.livejournal.com]

wuh? feet and hands but not faces?

i find that odd.