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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