Table Talk: Failing Bodies

     I became domesticated. Already I was doing more things at his house than I ever imagined: cleaning up after the dogs, mowing the lawn, pulling weeds, even cooking. These were helpful to Michael, of course, but I wanted to do more, something to help him feel better.

     Michael’s illness was advancing too rapidly. I remember when I started to feel my time with him was really limited. I realized I might not have many more chances to express my love or to do nice things for him. I had met Michael when he came to me for a massage. The connection between us was instant and mutual. Before long we were meeting for coffee, talking and laughing together. Then there were small gifts: a magazine from him, a candle from me. I prepared him some artwork; he fixed me a wonderful meal. I still hoped for new and enjoyable experiences with Michael. I wanted him to feel my love, concern, and humor. I wasn’t ready for him to leave me and decided I would do what I could to make our remaining time together enjoyable--even with the pain, grief, and fear. Nearly every day I rubbed lotion on Michael’s dry back and arms and often massaged some sore spot on his body. He loved my touch. Finally, I realized that my most distinctive and comforting gift was the same gift I had first given him. “Maybe I can give Michael a massage tomorrow morning,” I thought.

     Recalling this, I think of other clients of mine. Kevin is having a harder time. Pat‘s liver is failing. Judy has cancer. Connie feels confused. Still others are experiencing decreases of energy, increases of motor problems related to peripheral neuropathy, memory loss. I hope to help them deal with their difficulties by the massages I give. More than one client has told me, “Phillip, you’re the only person who touches me.”

     These failing bodies prompted me to choose Saint Mary Magdalene as the patron of massage therapy. I find especially helpful the story of her anointing Jesus. A woman often identified as Mary comes into the banquet room and anoints Jesus’ feet with an expensive ointment. There is criticism: “The oil could have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor.” There is innuendo: “Don’t you know the reputation of this woman?” Jesus counters the arguments. “She has done a beautiful thing. She is anointing me for my burial.” His death was still weeks or months off in the account. The story seems all too apt. No one else was preparing Jesus’ body for his death. Perhaps the others were focused on trying to prevent his death or in denial of its inevitability and approach. Whatever else may have been happening, Mary was the one who touched Jesus’ body. The Gospel paints a picture of intimacy, caring, love, extravagance, and much more. Mary stooped over Jesus’ feet, applied oil, massaged it in, wiped off the excess. I imagine Jesus’ relief, thankfulness, and pleasure.

     Something similar occurs in my massages at the AIDS clinic. I anoint failing bodies. My work values them with touch. While the client may have to deal with the ongoing failure of systems within his or her body, I have the luxury and the task of working with what medical people call the presenting problem. I don’t carry into the massage the memory of a healthy body. I simply greet the person and start my work with questions like: “Do you have any particular aches or pains you want me to address?” “Do you prefer a light or heavy touch?” Where I sense pain, I ask how much it hurts, and, following my work, I ask if the client is feeling better. I value the present person through the quality of my touch, hoping to communicate love and my own valuing of their body.

     The body’s breakdown often leaves persons with remembered images and an elevated sense of loss. Some of my clients have lost their stamina and with it their jobs. Some have had to quit working out. Others can barely make it to their many medical appointments. Such losses erode self-confidence, self-image, self-reliance. Not only have they lost the ability to do what they used to do when they had better health and stronger bodies, but they also realize they will never be able to accomplish all their hoped-for activities. Their bodies are failing them; their lives may end soon. They have difficulty valuing the body that is betraying them.

     I knew Michael less than nine months. He had been HIV infected for several years and was already on disability when we met. He was pretty skinny, living with some unlovely side effects from his medications, but still able to enjoy eating out, to take short trips in the area, to tend flowers and vegetables in his garden. I saw a spare, even gaunt beauty in his face and frame. I appreciated, touched, and enjoyed every part of his body. I was unwilling to give up any part of it even as I watched it betray him. I saw him lose more weight, heard his roars of anguish at his pain, and steadied his shaking body. I realized I was watching him die, but still I loved him, all of him, even those parts that weren’t working well.

     Michael readily agreed to my suggestion of a massage. We drove to my apartment. I helped him climb the stairs. In the massage room he undressed and got onto the table. I covered him with a blanket. As Michael relaxed, I loved him with my hands. I stooped over his failing body, rubbed in the oil, removed the excess. I anointed him in his life and in preparation for his death.

Mixed media art by Phillip Hoyle

Table Talk: Full of Feeling

     Troy is on my mind. I remember feeling so good, so concerned, so bad in connection with him. I met him at the AIDS clinic, but Troy wanted more than the one allotted massage per month. That pleased me. He came for work at my studio with some regularity and always set the next appointment at the end of a session. Then he missed an appointment. I figured with his occasional dementia he had simply forgot. A couple of days later, though, I grew concerned when I didn’t see Troy in the neighborhood. I was afraid that perhaps debt was keeping him away since he owed me money for a massage. A few weeks later as I was walking past Troy’s apartment, he tapped on his window to get my attention. I was so relieved to see him again even though this relief was still tinged with concern. He told me he had been ill and in the hospital, but now he was back home and ready for a massage. Working with him again was a delight. He was full of humor. We laughed together at the funny things he said although I nearly cried when he told me I was the only person who touched him.

     Then I didn’t see him again. Troy seemed to be gone. Not a word, no answer of his phone, no sign of life at his apartment. I recall the insuppressible joy when I saw the light in his window, and I can still feel the drooping disappointment when, looking in, I noticed that his furniture and other things were gone. Was he in the hospital or a hospice? Was he dead? I tried to find out from his case manager but only felt frustrated by the bureaucratic barriers that kept his information from me.

     I am full of feeling. I suppose some of it is residual, related to my friend Ted’s death by AIDS and my being unable to help him at the end. Then I was working more than full-time, and he lived halfway across the country. Now I have the time and am living in the right neighborhood. I want to help Troy like I wanted to help Ted. I prize the massages I have given this man. Where is Troy with his sad body, humorous imagination, and occasional bitchiness? I treasure my memories of sliding my hands over his body, of pulling, beating, pushing, and soothing. I have held his head, mussed and straightened his hair, put oil between his toes, rubbed lotion into his dry skin.

     I feel how Mary Magdalene may have felt when she anointed Jesus--intrigued with his life and anticipating his death. Life is good. I affirm that every day in my writing. I pray that death also may be beautiful. Has Troy died? If so, “Go, Troy. Show the holy oil on your dry skin to the creator of the universe and of the human body. Let the divine light reflect from your own glistening and softening skin. I love you and thank you for presenting yourself to me for anointing.”

     Where is Troy? I need to know. Perhaps this feeling, too, is related to my past. Having worked many years in church ministry, I knew about the deaths of persons I had served or met. I planned and led their funeral services or at least attended them. Perhaps I will have to learn to massage without such a personal connection, but it doesn’t feel good. I have laid my hands on Troy in therapeutic love and want to know his situation. Surely his case manager will find a way to tell me about Troy. I simply want to know whether he is dead or alive.

     If he is dead, I need to mourn him.

     If he is alive, I need to give him a massage.

Urban Power Shileds, mixed media art by Phillip Hoyle

Table Talk: Healing Hands

     As a minister making hospital calls, I feared a patient might be healed miraculously when I prayed with them. I admitted this in a discussion group with laypersons. When asked why, I confessed that I assumed it would ruin my life as a plain and ordinary person and my career as a liberal minister. I’d hate to be a faith healer in a church of rationalists. One woman in the group, Shirley, said, “But, Phillip, you have Reiki hands. I knew that the moment I met you.”

     I wasn’t sure what Reiki hands were, but I did understand that she assumed I had some kind of healing gift. Shirley couldn’t imagine why I didn’t want to use it. The image of myself as a healer was almost overpowering, an assault on my pragmatic upbringing and liberal education. I thought it appropriate to leave healing to the medics and for me to support patients in related issues such as dealing with health care systems. I helped parishioners to confront their religious questions and, in general, to clarify their attitudes towards and acceptance of their medical therapy. I prayed with patients that God would enhance their natural ability to heal.

     Now, even as I do bodywork, I keep hoping people won’t assume their healing is a direct result of a special power I hold. I recall the phrase from some novel about a character who had hands with “palms as hot and sweaty as a faith healer’s.” My palms get hot during massage. Perhaps it was the heat that alerted Shirley to the possibility I could be a healer. But to me, my hands seem to be simply part of who I am. I don’t want to be a faith healer.

     “Those hands.” It’s the compliment I have most often received from teachers, friends, and clients. “Wonderful hands.” “Healing hands.” I gave up protesting and now simply thank people who remark about my hands. They are my main tools, and I am thankful that they are effective in my work. Certainly they are a gift since I did nothing to earn them. I felt like a client put me on the line over my reluctance to understand myself as a healer. She told me about a tumor she had discovered on her back, at the base of the neck near the spine, and asked me to put my hand on it. I did so, placing my hand over the spot she indicated. I could feel a slight protuberance, cupped my hand over it, and left my hand in place for several minutes. When I finally moved it, she asked, “Was it your hand or my skin that was so hot?” I reported that her skin had felt cool to my touch.

     Then she asked, “Did you feel malignancy in the tumor?” I didn’t have a clue what I was feeling, except my own discomfort at her assumption that I’d know anything. It seemed one thing for me to place my hand on someone’s body and quite another to imagine I could make a diagnosis from doing so. I told her I didn’t know what I was feeling there. I meekly excused myself on the basis of inexperience.

     While I do not have any inclination towards intuitive diagnosis and have received little training in healing energy work, people still want me to place my hands on them. I touch people in the healing context of massage. I am not a Hindu healer, but some of my clients see brilliant colors when I place my hands over their chakras. I am not trained in Japanese Reiki methods and thought, but when I am around such healers, they assume I am one of them. Certainly, I am some kind of healer, and bodywork modalities from other religious backgrounds are encouraging me to integrate my own healing tradition into massage.

     Being a Reiki healer herself, Shirley understands the complexities of healing. She knows how the laying on of hands may not take away a disease but simply bring perspective to one’s attitude toward it. Like any minister, she believes that emotional releases may pave the way for a deeper healing of the psyche or the body. Shirley knows the kinds of success and failure I have sought to sidestep through my objections to healing work and my reluctance to enter into it.

     I avoided this work as a minister, but I cannot avoid it now as a massage therapist. I may be impeded by my own attitudes of suspicion, doubt, and fear, but I am willing to lay my hands on someone’s body where they feel pain or suspect some other malady. If there is power, it will do its work. I doubt that it is my power, but if the heat from my hands does have an effect I do not understand, I am willing to let that energy heal. Expect something good to happen in the massage; I do. But please don’t expect a diagnosis or a miracle if you get a massage from me. 

Oh Divine healing, may we reject the temptation to turn your work into a moralized commodity that we deserve or not deserve but want anyway. May we steer clear of turning your great mystery into magic that we can control and use. We bow before your ultimately unknowable power with humility and awe, and sometimes are bold enough to ask you for a miracle. Amen.

    

Paintings by P. Hoyle Extension, Hand and Foot 7, Hand and Foot 19

Table Talk: Holy Bodies

Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body,

or any part of it!

Leaves of Grass, W. Whitman

     When I am working with clients, I sometimes become aware that their bodies are holy. I feel a sense of privilege, an awareness that a gift is being given me by the persons who present themselves for massage. The vision of holy bodies helps me to work with greater intent and to remember that I am treating whole persons. I realize that while these feelings are subjective, they are related to an objective reality. I ponder the nature of the body lying on the table before me. It is a body, but more than that, this is a person with intrinsic, sacred value.

     Theologians reflect on the nature of the human, weighing the evidence and reaching conclusions in line with their beginning premises, optimistic or pessimistic. They emphasize a vision that arises from a compatible set of images from the Bible and theology. So some Christian leaders preach from the prophet Isaiah: “All flesh is grass.” They stress human moral weakness and the transitory nature of life in order to build a case for a better, eternal life in God’s future. They may wax so eloquently about the sinful and the temporal, that they never think to mention the words of divine pleasure at creation: “It is good.” They are so excited to speak of salvation that they forget the ancient teaching that God made the world. Certainly life is as precious as it is fleeting and contains as much potential for good as for ill.

     I am not naive about the biblical teachings or about the history of Christian theology. The conceptual settlements which resulted from discussion and reflection over many centuries continue to be important. But now I am searching for ways to talk about the body for massage, in order to understand it as God’s creation and to love it as it is.

     My reading of the Oxford Dictionary of Saints encouraged me to continue my search for body-positive images within Christian tradition. In the volume, some saints were remembered for their bodies. The idea of being known for your body in a body-rejecting society intrigued me. I found significant the tension between ideas of holiness that reject the physical as sinful and accounts of saints that consider at least some bodies themselves as holy.

     A bit of background information may illuminate my interest. New Testament writers considered all Christians to be saints, called out of the world into a special, ministering relationship with both God and the world. The later cult of saints originated in the veneration and respect afforded those persons who were martyred for their faith. Their lives and even their bodies were considered to be different. Thus “Saint” came to describe a special class of the extra-holy.

     Several articles in the Dictionary indicate particulars about the bodies of these saints. For example, St. Oswin, was described by his hagiographer as handsome and large. Similarly, one source stresses St. Oswald’s fine physique and his attractive and accessible character. John of Capistrano was a small man, we are told, withered and emaciated, but cheerful, strong, and strenuous. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi was strikingly beautiful. St. Radegund, too, united comeliness with piety. Some saints were revered because they gave up the power related to physical attractiveness for the disadvantages of following the religious way, but others were just good looking or had fine physiques.

     The veneration of relics preserved remnants of bodies for holy purposes. Relics of saints, especially those reputed to be powerful for healing, were moved to Christian sanctuaries in some cities to compete with the revered presence of idols in older temples. Some saints’ bodies, which were discovered not to have disintegrated in their tombs, were afforded particularly intense devotion. Apparently not everyone in Christian tradition thought the body awful or an irresolvable problem.

     If I have any wisdom about holy bodies, it arises from the experience of touching the people who present themselves to me. Here on the table, I see people, whole people. Fragile, strong, hurting, determined, unsure, hopeful, and more. I see physically strong people who need reassurance and physically weak people carrying on with the greatest determination. I work with healthy people who don’t feel healthy and dying people who are determined to survive. The variety seems endless, and the lessons difficult to grasp.

     Why people come for massage provides some insight. Many seek pain relief. Others wish to affirm their own bodies, to be touched, or to enjoy the total environment of therapist, space, music, etc. Some folk want to feel they are taking care of themselves, even pampering themselves, or simply desire to use a gift certificate they have received. These massage-related needs are both individual and social, prizing and honoring the body.

     Significant words present themselves for my contemplation: difference, variety, diversity, amazement, infinite experiences, and evolution. They represent ideas as diverse as the people to whom I give massage. The concept of “infinity” leads me into more theological reflection. “Evolution” I examine without assuming the changes implied by the word lead toward perfection. Rather, I consider the concept with an appreciation for tenacity and surprise at what changes and what endures.

     In my massage-oriented cult of the human body, I don’t want to discover a perfect body, incorruptible and powerful to cure. I see only ordinary bodies but am utterly amazed at how durable, powerful, and at the same time, vulnerable they are. Most importantly, I see persons’ spirituality within their physicality, their enduring quality within their total experience. And I discover these things in all bodies, not just special ones.

     In these reflections I feel somewhat insecure, like I imagine the earliest believers felt as they tried to understand eternal values in the vulnerable body of Jesus. My concepts seem as fragile as those of early Christian belief, before it was bolstered by the stability of conciliar agreement, the seeming impermeability of orthodoxy, and the temporal power of an empire and church alliance. At the same time, the primitive, unstable truth seems more akin to what I observe in massage therapy.

     For example, I wonder how ancient categories contrasting finite and infinite can be meaningful after the discovery of the infinite differences in cellular functions in the human body. The accumulation of any single human’s experience makes the old distinction almost meaningless to me. The orthodox language tried to express that God, unlike humans, was not subject to the limitations of time and space. But surely newer understandings of the infinite variety of human or cosmic experience have the capacity to sufficiently express the limitlessness of the divine. One may want to retain an idea that God is still more than all this experience, or one may be pleasantly overwhelmed that we don’t even begin to understand our own “finite” experience. At least, in this way God is still more, and still “beyond human understanding.”
So I touch a person who is lying on my table, unclad except for the thin covering of a cotton sheet. I touch the skin, palpate the muscles, and begin a communication of my amazement at the great wonder this person is. I massage this holy body knowing that here I meet God.

Big Brother, mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

When artists in primal cultures show animals standing like humans, they often are pointing toward a holy figure, some anthropomorphic characterization of a god. So among Utes big brother, Mountain Lion, shows up this way in a western Colorado petroglyph site. To me, this character seems powerful and somewhat boastful. He also appears that way in traditional Ute stories.

Table Talk: Prayer to Jeremy

Walking About, mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

     Why am I praying to you, Jeremy? What could I possibly want from you? Certainly you are no conventional saint. There was no hint of a halo except when the sun shone behind your blazing red hair. You were not known either for the denial of your body or for outstanding works of self-sacrifice that characterize the lives of other saints. I’m praying, but I don’t want a favor from you. I don’t need help from you in massage technique; I appeal elsewhere for that. I’m not asking for stamina although I might gain something by following your body-builder self into a regular exercise routine. Do I want your intercession? How un-Protestant of me.

     I guess I do want you to grant me one thing: insight into if and how I was helpful to you. I want to know if you found my massages really beneficial, not just in the sense of whether they helped you relax. Were the massages healing as you claimed and, if so, just how? I know you called me a healer. You said you bragged to doctors, nurses, and others about the healing quality of my work. But I wonder if you were only putting me on in your extraordinarily dramatic way. I want to trust you, to believe in what you said. Mostly, though, I want to be able to believe in myself as a healer of sorts, of any sort.

     I want to know just what I was able to give you besides a massage. I want to know if my gentle separation of massage from sex helped you understand your worth beyond your sexual capacity, if my acceptance of you helped you heal in some large or small way. Tell me what pleasures, calm, relaxation, restoration, or hope the massages brought. How, Jeremy, were you healed?

     Hear my prayer and answer me. Let me know myself through our embodied memories and un-bodied continuing relationship. Be for me the communication of the Divine, the kiss of the holy, the baptism of spirit.

     Thank you for your singular gifts to my life and practice.

     Amen.


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