Winter is best for breaking bones.
Cold weather numbed the senses and so they waited. When winter arrived, the mother took her four-year-old daughter into the back bedroom where a basin of herbs was mixed with animal blood. Although a child’s bones are less brittle than an adult’s and less painfully broken, the mother understood the need for preparation. She set her daughter on a small chair and soaked each of the girl’s feet in the basin of animal blood. The cotton bandages were also soaked in the blood mixture while the mother massaged each foot until it was limber and warm. Each toenail was clipped back as far as possible. With the preparation complete, the mother took each toe and pressed it down into the heal of the foot until the bone of the toe broke. Each toe on each foot must be broken to allow for greater flexibility.
I do not know if the girl screamed. I do not know if the mother wept. I was not there, but I know that with the toes pressed down into the sole of the foot, the arch of the foot was then forcibly broken. Each arch on each foot was snapped so that the foot could bend in half with ease. With the toes folded over and the ball of the foot pressed toward the heel, the bandages were wrapped in a figure-eight. With each pass, the binding was tightened, the pain intensified, until the five meters of cloth was completely wrapped around the foot. The mother knew the temptation her little girl would have to undo the wrap, so she sewed the binding to prevent any meddling.
When all was finished, the mother stood and took her daughter’s hand in her own. “Come,” she told her daughter. “Come and walk with me. I will walk with you, but you must put all your weight upon your feet.”
With tears standing in her eyes, the girl whispered, “Why?”
“Because your weight will press the feet into something even smaller and more beautiful than they are right now. The bandages will grow more tight as they dry and you will surely be beautiful someday. Your feet will be beautiful like the Lotus, my daughter.”
The girl’s feet were unbound at least three time a week, the feet soaked and massaged and broken again to ensure the foot’s flexibility, and then wrapped more tightly. This ritual lasted for several years. The pain was intolerable, of course, but had to be endured if she was to attain the desired three inch foot.
So it was, in 19th century China.
Infection was the worst part of the ordeal. The toes would grow into the soft flesh of the foot, causing further injury and infection. If the infection sank deep enough into the bones of the toes, entire toes might fall off. No matter: with the toes gone, the foot could be wrapped even tighter and a smaller foot was the result. If a girl had rather large toes for her age, a shard of tile or glass was inserted beneath her toes and wrapped tightly as before. The shard would inevitably cause the desired injury and infection so that the toes fell off.
Seriously.
Foot binding was all the rage. There is some question as to motive for this practice. Some say it was the product of envy. Perhaps a favored concubine had small feet. Perhaps the dancing girls of the palace had delicate feet. Whatever the motivation, the practice began with the elite of society. Small feet were the sign of wealth, of economic independence, and of prestige. A woman with such small feet was known to be free of manual labor and married to an independently wealthy man. It became a national symbol of both power and eroticism. Beauty and sex were attached to those who hobbled and swayed in their Lotus shoes. Nearly all the wealthy women of China had bound feet at one time and in this way the practice spread from the wealthy to the poor. The lower classes admired and imitated the celebrity as they are wont to do and they desired nothing more than for their children to get a head start on the prestige.
When Christian missionary Gladys Aylward arrived in 1930, the practice was still in effect. Part of her missionary duty, perhaps at the behest of the Chinese government, was to encourage the unbinding of broken feet. She would travel from home to home and teach both hygiene and the gospel, encouraging women to see the loveliness of natural feet. She introduced them to both physical and spiritual freedom. Gladys knew that there are few more powerful metaphors for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, than the unbinding of feet.
Unbind the feet.
Unbind the soul.
My feet are not bound. My soul, however, is very bound indeed. I have intentionally and repeatedly broken my spiritual bones, wrapping them under and binding them until they are warped. Why? To please others, perhaps. Maybe I have bound my soul out of self-pity or for the sake of self-gratification. Sometimes I did it because I was afraid of rejection. Perhaps I have bound my own soul because I saw no alternative. The reasons are rather endless, but I know that I have bound my own soul by placing the wrong pictures in my imagination. Since the soul and the imagination are intimately connected, how I frame the world, what I picture, the story that I conceive defines me. Each of those activities is soul-shaping.
My imagination is crabbed, crooked, broken and, therefore, so is my soul. I alone have done this thing. Lo, I am the man. How easily I shrug off my spiritual deformation by blaming sin. The Scriptures do teach us that sin is to blame for our current state, but at its core, sin is simply choosing different pictures for the gallery of the imagination than the pictures that God wants. Sin is simply choosing the wrong pictures of happiness and pursuing them. The story we conceive that opposes the one that God is actually telling is the sum total of those ill-chosen pictures. When we conceive the wrong story, when we chase the wrong pictures, we not only head the wrong direction on our pilgrimage, we also bind our spiritual feet. We bind our own feet which leaves us ill equipped for the long journey home to God. What a painful thing is a pilgrimage to those whose feet are bound.
How can we unbind the feet? How can we loose the chains that have bound us for so very long? What an endless tangle of sins ensnare us! What hope for nimbleness do clubbed and broken feet enjoy? We cannot sidestep or hurdle such entrapment. No amount of back-slapping jocularity, perseverance, positive thinking, or accountability can save us from the habits that our imaginations have formed for us. Only a transformed imagination can transform habits and, therefore, transform a life from slavery to freedom. And this is what we not only long to have, but the very thing for which we were saved: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).
