My visit to my 23-year-old nephew Kurt in Taiwan these past two weeks has been about feet. We did a lot of walking. As Kurt and I walked a lot together, we talked a lot too, especially about whether or not he should return to the United States the long way around. He and three friends are teaching English in Taiwan this year, and his friends want him to finish off the year by traveling through Asia and Europe with them. But Kurt felt this might be an extravagance that flies in the face of so much poverty in the world. He'd like to do some service during the trip, but will he be in any one place long enough to do much good?

Kurt's been doing a lot of reading and thinking about important things and about the kind of lifestyle he wants to lead. One of the many writers he's been reading is the beloved Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who warns us about how we sometimes walk through life: "Although we walk all the time, our walking is usually more like running. When we walk like that, we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth." Kurt wants to walk through life in a life-giving way.

As Kurt and I walked together these past couple weeks, our feet took us into a lot of new experiences. Especially with food. Food is always my first interest when I travel. As Moses said to the Israelites, who were on their feet for forty years, God "fed you in the desert with manna, a food unknown to your ancestors." Well, God certainly fed me these past couple weeks with some food unknown to my Irish ancestors.

My favorite foods were at the wonderful night markets, where we'd stroll from booth to booth sampling whatever struck our fancy. I especially liked the stuffed rolls and dumplings, served steaming hot with spicy garlic sauce. I thought I was adventurous, but I couldn't bring myself to try the stinky tofu, let alone the snake blood served on Taipei's old Snake Alley. Kurt and his friends have even discovered an exotic eatery in Taipei called Subway, which they dutifully frequent in order to fully experience Taiwanese culture.

But new foods weren't the only new things I encountered on my journey. I'm always interested in the plumbing when I travel out of the country. (I did try to go to a museum one day, but I couldn't find the right bus.) I was intrigued by the showers in Taiwan, which aren't divided from the rest of the bathroom. This gives you a lot of room in the shower. It also assures that the toilet will get showered as much as you do.

Really, the whole island of Taiwan is one big shower. You never know when it's going to rain. And it's not even the typhoon season yet. The abundant rain is like manna from heaven, even if the acid content is on the high side. While I walked in the rain, everyone else in Taipei was on a scooter, sometimes a whole family on one scooter. Scooters everywhere. Scooters that spew a lot of pollution. Many people wear decorative masks for protection.

I didn't participate in the scooter culture, but when Kurt and I spent a few days on the Visayan Islands in the central Philippines, we spent plenty of time being taxied by motorcycle, the operator, Kurt, and me all on one bike, Kurt and me holding on to our backpacks with one hand, holding on to the bike with the other, and holding on to each other with our third hand.

Even more fun were the omnipresent Filipino "tricycles," motorcycles with a little passenger cart attached, which Kurt and I seemed to fill yet which quite a number of Filipinos were able to occupy without complaint. These tricycles were all proudly decorated, often including a dedication to God.

Still more fun were the buses we took along the beautiful Philippine coastline, windows wide open (when there were windows). But the inside of the buses was as entertaining as the outside was beautiful. Lots of people, and some animals, filled the seats and aisles. The conductor surfed the aisles, often in front of the always-open back door, while punching holes in peoples' tickets in intricate, indecipherable patterns and somehow keeping track of where every one of the passengers was supposed to get off.

We had an incredibly relaxing time in the Philippines, where life was turned down quite a few speeds from Taipei (and L.A.). We even discovered the beach where God lives, where we were cradled in God's hands in the gentle, warm wavers. Perhaps God cooks there, too. They serve pancakes for dessert as well as for breakfast, thick, cake-like pancakes filled with mangos and bananas.

God was not only recognized by the tricycles and the village patronal feast days in the Philippines, but also in the churches and temples of Taiwan. We celebrated Pentecost at a mostly English mass. It was Mothers' Day there, too, at least in that parish, and the mothers processed with banners that proclaimed "love" in many languages. The intercessions asked God's help in a Pentecostal range of languages. (Speaking of languages, I tried my hand at some Chinese in Taiwan, although the tonal quality of the language makes it very difficult. If you don't pronounce a word just right, you run the risk of saying something quite different than you intend.)

Longshan Temple is a particularly beautiful temple in Taipei. It was originally intended to be Buddhist, but it incorporates many Taoist deities and other religious elements. It's quite an experience to watch all the early evening worshippers offer incense and food. I even saw tiramisu being offered.

One night, Kurt and I happened on a huge outdoor ritual celebrating the Buddha's birthday. And right next to that ritual was a transcendent concert by the internationally known Taiwanese drumming and dance group called U-Theatre, whose members dedicate themselves to a life of meditation.

While this trip was about feet, about journey and discovery, even pilgrimage and dancing, at some point I became more deeply aware that all of these new experiences -- this manna of food, culture, people, and ritual -- came from God's hands.

This is the same God who extends his hands on the cross to hold out to us the gift of himself: "The bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world...Unlike your ancestors who ate and died nonetheless, the one who feeds on this bread shall live forever." Thich Nhat Hanh suggests to us Christians that Jesus knew that if his disciples would eat one piece of bread in mindfulness, they would have real life.

But there is a lot of death in the world. And over there I was not only close to the death of the storm in Myanmar and the earthquake in China, even the death in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other warring places, but also close to the death and dying of poverty that is experienced in every corner of the world.

During our long walks and talks, Kurt awakened me to the complexity and extent of the need to manage God's resources so as to avoid the death and collapse suffered by past societies that failed to reverse their environmental degradation. Speaking of feet, it's not just carbon footprints we need to be concerned about. It's whether we tread lightly on or trample all our resources, from food to fuel to forests to fish. These themes are spelled out very persuasively in a book Kurt's been reading called "Collapse."

As we talked about the environment, Kurt once again found himself questioning the proposed two-month journey home. Would the benefits of such a trip justify the ecological impact? He'd like to do some research along the way for his proposed career building environmentally-friendly homes. But he wonders if he has enough experience to benefit from such research.

Food, fuel, forests, fish. And people. Take the Filipinos. After more than three centuries of occupation by the Spanish, the Philippines were taken over by the United States, which quickly slaughtered as many as one million Filipinos, mostly civilians. Then the United States occupied the country for decades more.

The death and dying, our greedy grabbing from God's hands, was most poignantly and clearly made apparent to Kurt and me one evening in the impoverished Philippines. A little girl approached us with her hand out. And as soon as Kurt reached in his pocket for some change, she called three other children over. Kurt now saw four little hands extended to him, God's hands. And with God's hand Kurt pulled out his change and thankfully had a coin for each of the four small hands. Once again, Kurt wondered if a two-month trip back home would be unduly lavish.

I saw God's hands in other places during my trek. The hands of Kurt's Taiwanese friend Hamy prepared a delicious meal for us one night. Groups of Taiwanese took to the streets to extend their hands for relief money for their somewhat estranged Chinese sisters and brothers suffering from the earthquake. I even met a Canadian resident of Taiwan who has a large tattoo of a hand blending into a wave, with a Chinese inscription that says, "In God's hands."

There is a park in Taipei called the 2/28 Peace Park, commemorating the uprising of the people on February 28, 1947, an uprising which finally led to justice in recent years. Of course this was, like in the Philippines, after centuries of occupation by various nations. The central monument in the park has two hand imprints in which visitors from everywhere have placed their hands. When I put my hands there, whose hands did I touch?

At mass, we practice recognizing the hand of God feeding us, and we practice allowing our hands to be God's hands as we share the eucharist with each other. And because our food is God, our sharing is not only practice but nourishing, transforming power. With God's help, we are capable of creating a world where everyone is fed, a world where all the resources God gives us are sustained and shared.

Kurt finally decided to take that trip with his friends, to shake hands with and learn from people of many nations at the risk of leaving some ecological footprints. By encountering many people, Kurt will encounter the fullness of the one body of Christ. And as Thich Nhat Hanh recommends, Kurt will try "to walk in a way that [prints] peace and serenity on the earth...to walk as if [he is] kissing the earth with [his] feet."

We are on the journey with Kurt and with our sisters and brothers everywhere. Taking each other's hopeful hands, God's hands, we process together into the future with faithful, reverent, and joyful feet.