Yesterday I was walking home from a local cafe and was listening to Mumford and Sons, as I have been since acquiring their album Babel. Well their song “Below My Feet” was playing and it gets to the chorus “…Keep the earth below my feet. For all my sweat, my blood runs weak. Let me learn from where I have been. Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn. Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn…” and I am not sure why I hadn’t picked up on the lyrics before, however it reminded me of a poem I had written back on 10 May 2009 while sitting in church. I realize that makes me seem as if I wasn’t paying attention to the church service, maybe I wasn’t, maybe something wasn’t keeping my attention, I probably had something else on my mind. I wrote two small poems that day… maybe not poems but a string of words. Well here is the poem I wrote that I was remind of while listening to “Below My Feet”
Give Love
Give Peace
Give Hope
Give Faith
Give Heart
Give your hands to work
Give your feet to walk.
It is possible I was thinking of walking in Crop Walk back in September or October or I was thinking about TOMS One Day Without Shoes, either are completely valid thoughts. Crop Walk that year I had walked with a friend barefoot for 5 miles in Abington, Virginia. Walking five miles barefoot on cement, gravel, brick and grass (delightful temporary relief) is an eye opening experience. Maybe if I had trained my feet beforehand by walking barefoot more often it wouldn’t have been as bad and I wouldn’t of had two and a half inch (?) blisters on my heels, however I don’t think that would have left the same impression on me and my thoughts towards the causes that TOMS and Crop Walk support. TOMS supports the world and the need people have for simply one pair of shoes to keep feet protected and Crop Walk raises awareness for world hunger their motto is “We walk because they walk.”. Did you know that in many places around the world people have to walk up to six miles most of the time barefoot to get their supply of water for the day? Stepping on sharp rocks and many other things getting cuts on your feet and all without access to even simple medical supplies to keep cuts from getting infected. Just imagine having to do that everyday just to get water. A lot of my friends asked why I would walk five miles barefoot when it wasn’t necessary to the walk, they also asked what would it prove or what did I gain by doing that. We no longer seem to have the ability to do something just because we wanted to do it, according to society we have to have a motive or a reason. Okay, if that is the case, my reason for walking Crop Walk barefoot is simply because there are millions of people out there that have no choice but to walk barefoot and risking infection and injury and having to suffer through that, if I had had worse than blisters on my feet I could have gone to the doctors and would have been given the proper treatment to keep me from getting an infection. The next time you have the opportunity to do something that supports a cause and do something that causes people to ask you questions about what you are doing, you take that opportunity, because it means getting the word out there about something that you support. Lastly, always take the opportunity to do something that is humbling, it makes you look at the world around you with a new perspective.
This blog post was inspired by Mumford and Sons and Tom Hiddleston for also mentioning the song mentioned earlier because it reminded me of writing about a poem I wrote.
PaperDaisyGirl 