May 2009

Women Walking in Loud Shoes

On a Saturday I went to a hospital in the city to make a visit to a patient. This was a big place, and as always I managed to park as far as I could from where I needed to be, and so took myself on an accidental tour of the entire hospital campus, through miles of corridors and hallways, most of which were deserted because it was the weekend. I was wearing new shoes, sort of fancy shoes, and suddenly became aware of what a racket I was making in those empty hallways, clickety-clacketing in loud, lonely, staccato echoes, sounding either very important or very clumsy or both, and either way, ridiculous.

I had read an article about the many offenses for which the oppressive Taliban rulers in Afghanistan might arrest and imprison people. Among the crimes was listed “women walking in loud shoes.” They could go to jail for that. They could be seized on the street, or in their homes, for that. For some reason this scrap of information floated back to me that Saturday on my long pilgrimage from the parking garage to the critical care unit, and though I did try to go respectfully on tiptoe when I got to floors where patients might be sleeping, I have to confess that in the empty hallways, in the stairwells, the corridors, once or twice, I wanted to see exactly how loud those fancy new shoes could be. And this was not just for fun—I stamped with defiance on the tiles, and that was a noisy prayer and a blessing for the Afghan women.

My walk through all those halls was long enough that I had time to think not only of women’s torment by the Taliban but of the thousands killed now by our retaliatory bombing there—women, like us, their children, their old ones, and men. And I had time to think of women in the West Bank, Palestinian women with no shoes at all, terrified Israeli women, Pakistani women, and the women of India, who might or might not be annihilated at any moment by their leaders’ arrogance or ignorance. I clattered for them also. I clattered for the women and the babies of Iraq, for the women and the babies everywhere. It was a fearsome sound.

These days it sometimes feels as if stomping our feet is all we can do—but you know, even that can be a sacrament, a first step, as it were; any crazy act of solidarity with sisters halfway round the world (or halfway round the room) can be a prayer, if you’re mindful, if you’re artful, if you’re doing it on purpose. Once you realize that walking in loud shoes (or in any shoes at all, or simply walking, safely, as many of us do every single day) is a privilege and luxury, then the burden is upon you. The burden of response, of giving back and taking risks for what is right, the burden of courage and clear speaking and clear thinking, the burden of gratitude and compassion, is on you, and one thing leads to something else.

by Victoria Safford, minister of the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota, from her 2003 meditation manual, Walking Toward Morning. Published by Skinner House, this book is available from the CLF library or (617) 948-6150.