We are rarely at our best. Too often, what shows forth in our lives is not what’s best in us: love, generosity, and a big heart. More often than not, our lives radiate irritation, pettiness, and a small heart. Too frequently, we find ourselves consumed by petty irritations, conflicts, frustrations, and anger. Each of these might be small in itself, but cumulatively, they take the sunshine and delight out of our lives, like mosquitoes spoiling a picnic. Then, instead of feeling grateful, gracious, and magnanimous, we feel paranoid, fearful, and irritable, and we end up acting out of a cold, irritated, paranoid part of ourselves rather than out of our real selves. As Christians, we believe that what ultimately defines us and gives us our dignity is the image and likeness of God inside us. This is our deepest identity, our real self. Inside each of us, there is a piece of divinity, a god or goddess, a person who carries an inviolable dignity with a heart as big as God’s. Our great dignity, the Imago Dei inside each of us, is meant to be a center from which we can draw vision, grace, and strength to act in a way that, ironically, precisely helps us to swallow our pride. St. John tells us that at the last supper, Jesus got up from the table and began to wash the feet of his disciples, against their protests. That gesture, washing someone else’s feet, has classically been preached on as an act of humility. When Jesus washes his disciples’ feet in John’s Gospel and tells us he is setting an example for us to imitate, he is inviting us to have the strength to bend down in understanding and wash the feet of those whom, for all kinds of reasons, we would rather not have anything to do with. It is akin to having Pro-Life and Pro-Choice, strident conservatives and strident liberals, fundamentalists and atheists wash each others’ feet. Normally we don’t have the strength to do that, there is too much pride and desire for righteousness at stake. When we are in touch with the fact that we have “come from God and are going back to God,” then, and only then, can we swallow enough pride to be genuinely loving. [Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s article, “Finding the Strength to Reach Across Differences”]