41. The Mandatum

The young nurse named Grace had taken the time to minister to me in a way that was totally unexpected.  Her act of simple compassion buoyed me up from the depths of my agony.  My mind discovered no solutions to my plight, but some part of me was set free.   I would go on from that day to realize that my recovery needed my participation and awaited only my  consent for it to begin.   More important,  I would eventually learn to not face my fears alone and to listen to the music of others around me, rather than hear only what is in my head.  There would be times when I would lead, but just as many when I would heed the gentle nudge of someone wiser.

Death still awaits me.  It always has.  On mornings when I awake early to see the dawn open itself over the world and watch the light creep through my window,  I sometimes feel a momentary fright for what is beyond the pane waiting for me that day, or what inevitably waits for me at the end.   I bring to mind the foot washing.  I never saw Grace again,   but in our short dance of forty years ago, I began the life-long process of learning to reach out for the hands of an eternal dancer, to wait for the light touches of direction and to listen for the voice of the one who laughs in the face of death.

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Foot washing in some quarters is known as the  Mandatum ... the  mandate or great commandment ... from Christ’s “new commandment to love one another.”  The Lavabo,  Latin for  “I shall wash,”  is a ritual associated with the washing of hands when asking  for a blessing.  Over the years I’ve wondered if more took place  that morning than either Grace or I realized.  There is an economy in the realm of the spirit.  An event seems never to be singular, and nothing happens in only one space, or for the benefit of a single person.  As  the washing of my feet somehow signaled the beginning of my recovery,  it may also have served as Grace’s Lavabo, a ritual washing of her hands to invoke the help of an  unseen power in her future life’s work, her nursing career.  What better way to ask a blessing than by cleansing  one’s hands as we  wash the feet of another.


Arnoldl McCuller - Try A Little Tenderness