the shoes

For more than a year, I have been taking photos of Pastor Michael’s shoes when he takes them off to preach. I don’t know why I started. I guess it felt like something that needed to be documented!
 
Now, however, it is much more. The shoes, usually left alone on the front row, have taken on a story of their own, a dual symbol of both the comfort of feeling at home and of being exposed and vulnerable to the elements. A perfect metaphor for what happens at Central, this radical way we welcome, care, and make ourselves vulnerable to the love of each other.
 
While I am certainly not going to walk around Central in my bare feet, the invitation to be
engaged in the messiness of life is everywhere and in everything that makes this place so special.