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.