An Artist's Prayer

Open me to the world:

      That which I see so I can see it
      creatively and fully;

      That which I feel so I can interpret it
      in word and shape and color;

      That which I imagine so I can grow
      into a larger human being and
      more into your own creative image.

Judaculla Runner, mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

Revelation

What IS this walking figure from
Shavano Valley? Mixed media
painting by Phillip Hoyle

Some biblical and artistic revelations combined for me in a most important way, one that helped me realize the ultimate revelation of God’s love. I begin with the image of a boy drawing illustrations of the visionary creatures in the Bible. These word monsters had origins in the apocalyptic literature of the Hebrew prophets, especially Daniel and several others whose writings were deemed aprocryphal or became part of the extra-biblical collection known as the Pseudoapigrapha. Jesus as a prophet was credited with some such images related to the destruction of Jerusalem, and due to a fourth century decision, the New Testament ends with the memorable book, The Revelation to John. 

We didn’t hear much about these writings in our church until Stan Lecher preached a meeting one spring. He specialized in prophetic speculation in order to raise a crowd. The magical world of knowing the future held great appeal and Lecher knew how to use it. Although in my childhood I was too scared to be interested in monster movies, I did find these images in the Bible quite intriguing, not so much for their meanings about the future but simply for their inclusion in the sacred book. For me, the phenomenon seemed much the same as when I later discovered the Goodspeed translation of the Bible that used such clear words as ‘rape’ or the erotic images in the Song of Solomon, or the image of God’s love for Israel compared with the hopeless commitment of the prophet Hosea for his prostituting wife. I was fascinated by the unacceptable being found within the content of the holy. I still am.

So when sermons got boring I paged through the Revelation and entertained myself by drawing these wild monsters: for instance, in Revelation 12 a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and ten crowns on his heads and a tail that swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them on the earth and whom Michael and his angels fought; or in Revelation 13 a creature that looked like a leopard with feet like a bear’s and a mouth like a lion’s and with horns and ten crowns arising from the sea; or in the same chapter another beast that rose out of the earth and featured two horns like a lamb and a voice of a dragon. I knew nothing of metaphor and symbol for I was a child as literal as he could be. I didn’t know what else to do with these visions except to draw them.

Mom was interested in my drawings, at least enough to put them in her purse. I don’t know what became of those scratchings, but I do remember not knowing how to distribute horns and crowns among the various heads of the angry monsters. Such is the life of even the most literal of illustrators. Too many decisions, too much specificity, and the revelations became a problem of literality and meaning. But my memory of the experience is one of artistic decision making not unlike what I face now when I am making paintings of centuries-old visions of the Ute artists in Shavano Valley in western Colorado or of Cherokee interpretations at Judaculla Rock on the Tennessee River in western North Carolina. I was making such artistic decisions as a youngster. All those years ago I was an artist and, of course, a frustrated one just like my son Michael years later when in disgust he threw away some of this drawings because he couldn’t get them perfect. I told him then what I wish someone had told the young me, that the art arises from incorporating your mistakes, trusting that they may be as important to your work as what you deem ideal. And to imagine that I was thinking somewhat that way even as a youngster trying to fathom the images and truths of the wildest symbols in the Bible.

The art is in the process. For me, the art of living religiously grew to mean being able to incorporate the common with the holy not to accommodate the sins of my own life within a vision of the perfect God but rather because the authoritative book of my religious upbringing declares that the murdering King David was in fact a man after God’s own heart. My deeply artistic and deeply gay heart knew life must recognize the good in all, in me. What a revelation!

As I mentioned before, I still feel that way.

Denver, 2014

This assortment of figures from Judaculla Rock was both
challenging and rewarding, but someone will surely wonder
what it means. Mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

Table Talk: Jesus Massage

Shaman's Quest, mixed media painting by Phillip Hoyle

     One day, Jesus showed up at John the baptizer’s spa down by the river and asked for the special water treatment. He followed John into the water and yielded himself to the immersion therapy. Following the treatment, Jesus experienced a further baptism of holy spirit. He was moved by a compelling sense of God’s transformative love. In these twin baptisms, Jesus celebrated his calling into a ministry of teaching and healing, and he understood baptism as a cleansing that prepared him for his new work.

     In the water treatment Jesus was born in a new way. The sparkling liquid was somehow eternal, springing from a live source--a spring that provided water to drink in a dry and thirsty land. Symbolically, rivers of living water could then flow out of Jesus’ heart and those of his disciples. Many people would be cleansed, have their thirst quenched, and likewise enter into lives of service to others.

     Jesus ministered to crowds of people and healed many of them. He didn’t hide his gifts but, rather, worked freely among the crowds of people as well as with his select few. He taught them that they were ultimately valued, illustrating his point by saying that God knew the number of hairs on their heads. With his own hands, he reached out and manipulated the hands of others. He consoled his closest disciples by holding them, as well as by speaking words of assurance. He affected people, put his hands over their eyes, gave them water and food. He took a woman by her hand and lifted her up; he stretched out his hand and touched a crippled man; he put his fingers into another man’s ears; he rubbed ointment on a man’s eyes and laid his hands on him. Jesus helped children onto his lap, held them in his arms, and laid his hands on them, blessing them.

     Jesus’ touch was powerful. Not only did his teachings intrigue, challenge, and help others, but also his body emanated healing energy. In fact, so much power radiated from Jesus that people in crowds tried to touch him so they could be healed. He understood that the amazing energy was not his alone. Jesus always pointed to a divine source for the power that made it possible.

     At least one woman anointed his feet with oil, tears, and kisses. Following her example, Jesus washed his own disciples’ feet. John’s gospel describes the event at what later generations called the Last Supper. Jesus washed their feet and then joined them as they, in the custom of the day, reclined on couches and were served the feast. He lay at table with his closest followers in intimate, though common, poses. They knew him. They knew his body, his hands in healing service, and the presence of his power.

     Another man named John, not “the baptizer,” became Jesus’ disciple and was known as “the beloved.” When Jesus touched John, his touch may have been felt as healing, sexual, friendly, or ordinary. We don’t know, but we do imagine it was somehow exceptional. In the words of orthodoxy, Jesus’ touch was sacramental, communicating that people were being accepted by the divine. But Jesus himself taught more about this touch. For him, it was his own contacting of the divine in the bodies, personalities, and faith of the persons he touched.

     Jesus was a practitioner of love and touch. He taught his disciples to live extraordinary lives as well, sharing a sparkling, transforming generosity with those around them. They entered his reconciling work, characterized by their encounter with the divine in the bodies of the poor, the ill, the destitute, the powerless, and others in need. Massage, like Jesus’ touch, has the potential to communicate power and many of the feelings his closest friends may have perceived. It is a dance of eternal peace, a ritual of love, a show of friendship, and always a transformation of the ordinary. For the client, it may seem healing, sexual, friendly, or ordinary. They may be confused, or they may find in it a divine power. For the therapist, such discoveries may also surprise. If it is to be a Jesus massage, it will reveal the divine in the body of the massaged one and will begin anew the flow of living water from heart to heart.

Table Talk: Contrasting Sorrows

Mixed media, acrylic washes and graphite, Phillip Hoyle

     In the years when I served churches as a minister, I visited in the homes of grieving families. I talked with them, held them, listened to stories of the deceased, and helped them plan funeral or memorial services. I led the services and often, as a part of my comments, encouraged people to recount their own recollections of the person who had died so together they could smile, laugh, and weep in telling and hearing them. I became used to death in congregational life--its occurrence, its ritualization, its attendant emotions and actions in the grieving.

     Of course, not all of the deaths were the same or had the same affect on the congregation or me. Some of the deceased were so distant from congregational life that they were barely known, if at all. Their deaths seemed to generate little feeling except within the family and friendships. Some deaths affected the congregation deeply because the deceased was so well-known and appreciated. Other deaths seemed tragic in that they came to younger people. By contrast, and because of old age or the nature of the disease involved, a few deaths seemed a great relief to the dying persons and their loved ones. Always there was grief, but usually it was not my own.

     In the past dozen years I have lost five very close friends and relatives, including my parents. If before experiencing these deaths, I was helping other people to mourn, since then I have become one of the grieving.

     Deaths of my clients from the AIDS clinic have deeply affected me. I was a bit surprised by this since I had been professionally related to death for so long. These deaths seem more like those of family and friends. I suspect the personal feelings arise from the fact that I have massaged these people. The direct physical contact creates an intense bond, at least for me. Perhaps I pour more of my energy into massaging them than I ever did into praying and visiting with parishioners. In trying to understand this phenomenon, I find helpful the Cartesian observation that emotions arise from the body. Whatever the contributing causes, the deaths of my massage clients seem more personal, very close to my life.

     Sometimes my massage-related grief brings with it a sense of responsibility. From our conversations during massage, I know that some of my clients appear to be living in great isolation. Following their death, I believe not many other people may be grieving for the deceased. One client had only one woman friend and no relationship with his family. I felt a tragic sense in his aloneness, perhaps more than he did himself. My former congregational connection had always provided a mourning community to remember the one who died, even if they didn’t know him or her well. Now I sometimes feel I mourn alone.

     That usually is what happens to me. I don’t hear of the death until weeks after its occurrence. I don’t attend a funeral or memorial service; I never visit a gravesite. I mourn by telling another volunteer massage therapist about the death, by remembering the few things I know about the deceased, and by writing my memories and feelings. I recall images of their bodies, a few details about their lives and illness, an interesting thing we talked about, and some of the emotions I experienced while working with them. These few, simple actions and memories do not seem like much, but they always seem intense because I have touched my clients and they me. I am sometimes moved to tears and sadness upon learning of their deaths and to even more emotions in recalling the few things I know about them. Am I now called to mourn? Is this a feature of some on-going ministerial vocation? I mourn. I thank God for the lives of these people, my new congregation, my current experience of the body of the living Christ. While I miss their skin and muscles under my fingers, I continue to cherish their memories.

Table Talk: Anointing

Collage of petroglyph rubbing on mat.

I sometimes wish I could ride to the rescue in my work as a massage therapist. I'd like to have a strong horse or group of horses to assist me in arriving at just the right time with just the perfect touch and just the proper measure of wisdom to share, but that rarely happens. I like this image of something--I think of a rider on a horse that is moving so fast as to appear to have many legs. 
I wish I could be so able.




     Michael died on Sunday. He wasn’t my first loss to HIV and AIDS, but this was different. I was present, and I loved this guy unlike any man I had ever loved. He was comatose when he died, had been for several hours. His RN sister and I gave him medications every fifteen minutes or so for pain control, and then he just stopped breathing. His heart quit beating. He died quietly.

     Over several months I had watched his body turn on itself, nourish itself with its own mass as the disease started overpowering the immune system. Michael lost his appetite. I observed his weight loss and saw him hike up his pants with ever-tighter belts. He became unsure on his feet, had little strength, and needed to sleep long hours each day.

     I studied his body after his last breath, its continuing losses of color, movement, and shape. The little bit of muscle and fat left seemed to deflate. His all-too-prominent skull became more pronounced. I observed his dog, Willie, regard Michael after the death. He, too, noticed the difference. Ozzie, his other dog, wouldn’t look at him, but through his nervous behavior, communicated his awareness that Michael was dead.

     I have lost a friend and lover in this death. Tears well up in my eyes and my throat clutches when I think or talk about Michael. I feel alone. While I have some of Michael’s friends as new friends of mine, I don’t have Michael to visit, to eat with, to lie next to, to laugh with, to hold close to me. I am sad at the loss of one I loved, one who loved me.

     I felt like Mary Magdalene when I massaged Michael, understanding that I was helping prepare him for his death. As I kept watch at his death I felt like her again, she who had stood at Jesus’ cross and watched him die. I helped lower the bed and re-arrange Michael’s body after death, as Mary helped receive Jesus’ body when it was removed from the cross. And like Mary, who rushed to Jesus’ grave after Sabbath in order to anoint him, I wanted to apply oil to Michael’s body.

     I stood in Michael’s bedroom remembering what a Greek Orthodox priest had told me: how a dead priest is anointed by other priests. I wanted to do something similar with Michael. But because I was afraid it might freak out his sister or the hospice nurse who came to the house quickly after his death, I contented myself with anointing his forehead. Searching the room, I found some lotion. I rubbed it on his face, following its contours and, finally, I made signs of a circle and a cross as a kind of prayer, a final touching. It was my own good-bye to Michael.

     Following the advice of a book I had been reading, I decided not to ask why, but rather, what now? What next? Two days later I went to my volunteer work at the AIDS clinic. My first client that day was even skinnier than Michael. I traced his ribs and sought ways to rub my hands comfortably over his bony shoulders. Tears fell from my eyes. I worked to channel all the love I had for Michael into my client’s body. By contrast, my last client of the day had a well-developed and ample body. I told him how pleased I was to massage a body that appeared so healthy. Still I cried and touched and loved. My work has aided me with my grief process, providing me reminders rather than rejection of loss. At the same time, it keeps me focused on a future of staying connected to a community where I encounter others’ needs and an opportunity to care for them.

     In a world where many people live with AIDS, I can expect to encounter many losses of friends and acquaintances. I want to mourn them properly and lovingly. I am prepared to help them live with the comfort of massage right up to the time of their deaths. I feel sure I will be able to offer my services to them as a living memorial to Michael.

Table Talk: Power

Colorado Cave Bear painting by Phillip Hoyle

     As I entered Alfredo’s massage office, my attention was drawn to a Navajo saddle blanket woven of wool yarn in several shades of brown. Though clearly the centerpiece of the room, the blanket was in sorry shape. Someone had tried to repair its fraying edges to keep it useful or, at least, intact. But the design itself had not been damaged. Its saw-toothed mountain pattern dominated the space, creating a sense of movement. I liked the design, but the blanket’s greatest appeal for me was knowing that it had been used for many years. I ran my hands over its surface, surprised and pleased by the softness of the wool. Touching it, I got goose bumps on my neck and head.

     “What do you feel from it?” Alfredo asked. I had recalled the red monoliths of Monument Valley, and imagined horses resting after a day of riding across mesas and mountains. I could almost smell burning piñon from an evening campfire where an old-timer told Navajo tales of sheep, snakes, and sex on the Rez. I pictured stacks of weavings in a trading post, but none of them were quite so attractive as this beat up blanket. But I explained to Alfredo only about having the goose bumps. They continued for about a minute, reaching down my backbone to its base.

     “When I felt it,” Alfredo continued, “I had images of a shaman. I think he used the blanket in healing ceremonies. It’s a very strong feeling. There’s lots of energy there.” My friend was sure that the blanket still had in it power for healing.

     Alfredo discovered the blanket in a pawn shop along with a bear skin. He purchased both: this healer’s blanket and the skin of an animal widely regarded for its healing properties and, in spirit form, for its aid in healing ceremonies. The blanket hangs on the wall over his massage table. I suspect the bear skin may be in the room as well, although I didn’t see it. Perhaps he placed it beneath the pad on his massage table.

     My friend reminds me of the Navajo bear priest in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony. The old man was called to help save a child from the bear people into whose territory the youngster had wandered. In one scene, the priest runs towards the bear canyon, strapping onto his wrists sprigs of spruce, readying himself for the ceremony that would call the boy away from the beasts. I picture Alfredo bedecking his massage table’s legs with spruce branches in anticipation of the arrival of a client he wants to help. Certainly Alfredo is a kind of priest, a healer.

     I once helped organize a seminar that sought to create a New Mexico definition of health. The event brought together medics, lawyers, judges, philosophers, theologians, social workers, psychologists, Hispanic curanderas, and Native healers. We talked. We laughed. We prayed. Together. We created a statement that we hoped would assist the New Mexico legislature as it tried to create health laws to benefit all the citizens of the state.

     Green-eyed, Mexican-American Alfredo manifests a similar inter-cultural, multi-lingual, broad-perspective definition of health. While he gives Swedish massage, he is always alert to his intuition, informed by the traditions of the curandera. He uses Native symbols and techniques in his work. My buddy believes in his intuitive insight, finding it both meaningful and helpful.

     If Alfredo hadn’t asked me what I felt when I touched the blanket, I believe I would not have noticed my goose bumps, or if I had, I would have registered them as only a response to touching the very soft and worn wool. Still, my mind was working in response to the touch. Did I, too, sense a lingering energy in the rug? While I was pleased to have seen and touched it, my rationalist education regarding common and holy things stood in the way of my perceiving the item as being imbued with power.

     An old woolen rug. Is it more than a common object? The designs worked into it do have some kind of religious meaning. I can easily accept that the weaving does have symbolic power such as theologian Paul Tillich described--the existential power of true symbols. Perhaps the blanket does “partake” of the power to which it points. I wonder, though, at the notion that the rug itself may contain some of the strength of mountains or the capacity to heal. I feel I cannot begin to answer my questions, but I do connect the rug with the bear skin and see their potent symbolism for healing.

     My own experience alerts me to some possibilities. Perhaps my goose bumps relate only to my imagination of Native American life, but such images may provide actual connections with a past and a present reality. They could communicate an invitation for me to accept and use healing energy. I do not want to project an image of myself as some kind of psychic or magical healer. But while I usually want to limit myself to ordinary experience, at the same time, I would like to open myself to any potentials that may reside within me. My thoughts want to be more than thoughts, definitions more than words for someone else’s use, scenes from books more than simply literature. Perhaps the power of blankets and bear skins can become as plain and ordinary a power for me as they are for Alfredo.

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.