Praying with Our Feet
Pursuing Justice and Healing on the Streets
Lindsey Krinks’s Praying with Our Feet is a passionate religious memoir about advocating for Nashville’s homeless community.
Krinks was in college when a devastating injury changed the course of her life. Facing excruciating pain, multiple surgeries, and a long recovery, she saw that “the comfortable life I was constructing would crumble like the Carolina clay in my hands.” Her dark night of the soul deepened her awareness of injustice and suffering. She immersed herself in the work of church and community groups, reaching out to the homeless community of Nashville’s Tent City. The unhomed people she encountered are referenced with precision and compassion; they include motherly Barbara, whose eyes hold light, and free-spirited Kentucky, a Vietnam veteran battling PTSD.
Krinks says that when she supports political movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy Nashville, she is labeled a socialist and an anarchist, but that these are nonetheless issues she’s compelled to confront as a Christian who’s called to fight for healing and justice. The faith she espouses is grounded in liberation theology, described with conviction, strength, and grace:
We are a clattering, a clamoring, the dry bones rattling. We are rising, inhaling and exhaling the recycled breath of all who have come before us. In this valley, the dead and dying awaken to life. The sleeping emerge from their holes in the ground. The oppressed begin to grasp their own collective power. And for a moment, we remember, as Mother Teresa said, that we belong to each other.
Praying with Our Feet is a powerful, timely, and inspirational account of mindfulness and action. It makes a persuasive case that it is in “the walking, the sharing, the breaking of bread” that people find liberation and salvation.
Reviewed by
Kristen Rabe
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
