Table Talk: Miracle

Sunflowers mixed media with collage by Phillip Hoyle

     My primary massage teacher, Mark Manton, told our class we’d be lucky if we didn’t work miracles. I felt relieved, as if some expectation was lifted from me. I went into massage because I enjoyed the work and thought it to be a good way to make a living so I could afford to do my artwork. But in massage I had encountered assumptions about healing and miracles that paralleled those of some Christians. As a minister, I never wanted to be perceived as some kind of miracle worker. I understood events that some people considered miraculous simply to be experiences beyond our common understanding. Still, some people wanted their minister to perform miracles, and now I find myself dealing with the same issue in massage. Some clients want and even expect miracles. 

     Mark reasoned that people get the best results from massage therapy if they contribute to their healing by changing habits of posture, hydration, and more. But sometimes a therapist releases a trigger point, and a person who has endured pain for years walks away from the session pain-free. When that happens, all their relatives and friends may line up at the massage therapist’s door looking for the same instant healing. Always a teacher, Mark wanted his clients to learn responsibility for their own health, not dependence on him for miracle cures.

     Obviously, miraculous-seeming releases from pain do take place. They indicate something important about the wonders of the human body to heal and of the potential for human relationships to encourage that healing. That’s enough of an explanation for me. I don’t want to be responsible to perform or believe in miracles in massage. Still, I do my massage work in the context of Christian images and stories, a context full of miracles.

     Although I am not very interested in the miraculous as such, I do find a strong correlation between the traditional actions of Christian healers and the modern-day practice of massage therapists. Reading the Bible, the lives of saints, or church history, I pay close attention when a healer takes an ill person into his arms or uses oils to anoint. Such images spark my imagination. I like to picture the scene at the temple gate of the lame man, newly-healed by Jesus’ apostles, running and leaping and praising God. I take to heart the words of the blind man who, when questioned, said of Jesus’ miracle, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” This ancient story from John’s gospel intrigues me. And I am moved by the sight of a modern minister solemnly anointing a dying person as she refers to the ultimate healing of being gathered into the arms of the divine. The apostles had spoken powerful words; the lame walked. Jesus made a mud plaster and placed it in the man’s eyes; the blind could see. The minister touched the body of the terminally ill person; the patient found healing relief.

     Most of these images and traditions find a similar kind of expression in current massage practice. Massage creates a particular relationship between therapist and client, not unlike that of religious leader and follower. One approaches a massage with trusting faith that the practitioner will be prepared and the work will be effective. Entering a massage room may feel somewhat like entering a church for a religious ritual. The skilled touch takes a variety of forms, often anointing the skin with oil, an act akin to the sacrament of unction. The therapist’s words may appeal positively to a person’s faith and may further instruct the client in self-treatment and care. For me, the correlation is strong, at least in its movement and its faith content. And besides, I now want to imagine myself as somehow continuing a healing ministry in the tradition of Jesus. The difficulty comes in the recognition that, in addition to being a teacher, Jesus was known as a miracle worker.

     While I incorporate these healing images into my work, I still have no expectation to perform miracles. Rather, I tend to think of my massage as an art, and list it alongside my writing and painting. I sometimes worry about designating massage as artifice. Is art adequate to healing? Can assuming a dramatic role be authentic? Will it heal? The ancient Greeks thought so. Surely some of their traditions have survived in Eastern Orthodox churches although many practices have been lost. Perhaps the older way of mixing drama, music, incense, and ointments in relationship with healing holds the key to my own growing understanding of my healer self.

Rio Grande mixed media with collage
by Phillip Hoyle

     I, an artist, may teach, but I hope never to work a miracle. I will lay my hands on person after person in order to touch their pain and release their muscles. I hope at least some clients will realize the beauty of their own lives, and I suppose that might be considered a miracle.




Life symbols in my mixed media paintings speak of natural processes that sustain life. I have always been amazed to find sunflowers adorning the driest landscapes and have long been amazed at the long, life-sustaining course of the Rio Grande River from southern Colorado, through the center of New Mexico, along the southwestern border of Texas and Mexico, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Our lives likewise have great resources for both sustenance and meaning, even in life's most challenging moments.