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: 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: 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.


Note: If you did not read last week's post, do so to get more out of what you have just read.

Table Talk: Trust

     Parker smiled when I lowered him from a modified bridge pose stretch in Thai massage. He smiled when he realized the top of his head was pushed right up against my genitals. I went on with my work, moving him into a seated position in which I fitted my body behind his and, reaching around his chest and over his folded arms, pulled him back onto my body in another stretch. Time and time again in the massage our bodies were in strange and intimate connection. At the end of the massage, which is done fully clothed and on a mat on the floor, Parker said, “I must really trust you.” I asked if that was because of the intimacy of the massage or the stretches that occasionally feel like they are going to disconnect some limb from the rest of your body. He said, “Both, I guess.” Also, Parker told me, he let me rub and work his abdomen, a part of his body he has rarely allowed anyone to touch.

     I had given Parker conventional, western massage several times prior to our switch to the Thai style. During what turned out to be our last Swedish massage, he asked if energy enters the body through the feet. I told him about Thai massage in which such a belief is expressed through a technique that opens channels on the soles of the feet and asked him if he would like to try it. I was looking for more people to receive this kind of work. After experiencing it once, Parker decided he never wanted to go back to the Swedish-based work with which he was familiar.

     Parker’s comment about trust came after we had been doing Thai massage on a monthly basis for nearly a year. It is intimate. I commented on this to my teacher when I was studying her advanced course. To me, Thai massage felt much more intimate than Swedish, in which clients remove their clothes and the therapist rubs oil all over their bodies. The practitioner’s hands, and occasionally an arm or elbow, touch the client. But in Thai massage, Yoga-based poses bring the client’s body into contact with the therapist’s body in often unfamiliar, intimate relationship. The poses are held from five seconds to several minutes while the client relaxes into them to receive the greatest benefit from the stretch. Often the therapist adds compressions or traction to the Yoga poses to provide more stretch and stimulate the movement of energy in the area.

     It seems to me that intimacy in massage is based not only on its physicality and the proximity of the partners, but even more, on the fact that two people are working together with great intensity to stretch the body, to increase circulation and energy, and to bring muscular and psychic relief. This is basic to all massage and contrasts vividly with the ways in which good usually is imparted in our society. Typically, we receive discipline, badgering, power plays, bitter medicine, stress, sermons, assignments, observation, criticism, and finally the message, “You’re on your own, and it’s a game of the survival of the fittest.” By contrast, massage makes a community of two persons intent on change with necessary, loving, and continuing support. Thai massage goes further by fostering a community of paired meditation that benefits the practitioner as well as the client. Trust and compassion are at its root.

     The meditation goes far beyond saying a prayer or mantra as is the common practice when beginning Thai massage. It involves more than the shared greeting of the divine in the bodies of receiver and practitioner at the end of the work. It is characterized by a growing awareness of the increase and movement of energy as the therapist stimulates energy channels over the surface of the client’s body and by a commitment to healing that is expected to result from the free flow of life energy. The meditation focuses on the connection of the whole body to the abdomen. It concentrates on the ability of joints to move, muscles to empower, and breath to cleanse.

     Parker trusts me. He trusts me not to move my work from an act of massage into an act of sex. He trusts me not to take advantage of his feelings. He also must trust himself to feel whatever he is experiencing. He has to let me touch him in a way that may seem implicitly, though not explicitly, sexual. He has to trust in order to experience his and another person’s bodies working together in loving, therapeutic, and meditative interactions characterized, not by sex, but rather, by mutual compassion. Surely that’s enough to make anyone smile. 

     I feel like I ought to pray something to the smiling Buddha or to his physician Father Doctor Shivago. I’ll settle to say, 

“Divine love, teach us compassion and the trust that can arise from it as together we meditate through massage. 

Amen.”

Mantra, mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

In learning Traditional Thai Massage I was introduced to Father, Doctor Shivago, the Budda's physician. I was taught to chant a rather long mantra as part of the preparation for this meditative work. Body work in Traditional Thai medicine comes from the part of the practice that emphasizes meditation and magic. I seemed a strange candidate for such work. My teacher taught us Yoga that we needed to practice daily in order to understand the poses be able to sustain them in the work. She also encouraged us that if we don't feel the energy, we trust the practice. So I practiced Thai massage until all my clients who wanted it left town. Also I stopped at one point because my old knees began to ache too much! Guess then I needed a healer to work on me. The memory of the ancient healer helps prepare the practitioner for the work which is always a holy interaction.

Table Talk: Headache

     Last year I read The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, in search of interesting characters to use in conversations, collage icons, and written meditations. I read the book two ways simultaneously, from front to end keeping track of my place with a bus transfer slip, and by consulting an appendix that listed the calendar of feasts for the saints of the particular day I was reading. I found characters to discuss with a friend and ideas to enrich the visual detail of my collages. Also, I found my attention captured by various ills related to massage, especially headaches and the saints appealed to for their cure.

     The lives and experiences of several saints seemed connected to particular kinds of headaches. For example, St. Stephen, a deacon in Jerusalem in the earliest years of the church and one of the first martyrs, was killed by stoning. In the later Middle Ages he was invoked against headaches. The headache connection was not immediately clear to me. Perhaps it was related to the saint’s social-work responsibility as a deacon in the church. He was assigned distribution of food to indigent church members and dealt with the conflicts that arose when one faction thought their widows were being shorted in the daily dole when compared with the handouts to others. I’ve always thought being yelled at by people for doing nice things to help them would give me a stress headache. Of course, the saint may have been prayed to because of the image of having a rock strike one’s head, for he was martyred by stones thrown by an angry crowd. What a headache that would surely cause.

     I read with fascination about St. Gereon, a Fourth Century martyr of Cologne and one of fifty soldiers of the Theban Legion who were put to death for the name of Christ. Like other saints who were beheaded, he was invoked against headaches and migraine. Surely, prayers to Gereon and the others were for help with headaches of the sharpest variety, the ones that feel like they are going to take your head right off your shoulders.

     Then there was St. Armel, a martyr of the Sixth century from South Wales. He was invoked to cure headaches, fever, colic, gout, and rheumatism. Hospitals sometimes made him their patron. One could pray to St. Armel for relief from a headache that accompanies some other malady.

     The accounts and traditions of these saints and others suggest some ideas and images. A clinic in my neighborhood advertises massage for “Headache Relief.” I imagine the main hallway there as being lined with icons of headache saints. These bruised and beheaded patron saints receive the requests of the hurting clients as they make their way back to the therapy rooms. The saints also may remind the therapists of a variety of ways they can treat their patients.

     At school I learned that the trapezius muscles--upper, middle, and lower--are sometimes called the headache triangle. Perhaps someone could invoke the three persons of the Trinity (were they Trinitarian) as they work these three muscles. Another therapist may wish to invoke the trio of Saints Stephen, Gereon, and Armel. Such a massage could serve nicely as a meditation, but one must watch out and not get so enthusiastic in the work as to increase the pain. Headaches are tricky things to heal.

     Most headaches respond to massage therapy. The palpation of muscles changes what happens chemically within the muscles. The stress is reduced both by muscles coming out of spasm and by the effect of having one’s body touched. The communication calms the whole person and stimulates the release of hormones or other chemicals that make one feel better. Of course, there are headaches related to serious underlying pathology. In such cases, massage may not be helpful. A doctor should be called for and many prayers made to the headache saints.

Table Talk: Contemplation

Cross mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

     Historically, we are not sure when Mary Magdalene became a mystic. We are not at all sure that she traveled to Provence to evangelize and stayed on to the end of her life, meditating and living as a hermit. But we can assert that she began her contemplation when she wouldn’t give up Jesus’s body, even though he had died.

     In an effort to understand her preoccupation, we recall that she rushed to his tomb to anoint his body as soon as the sun came up after Sabbath. We may wonder if she really was the appropriate one for this task. Wasn’t it his mother’s responsibility? Did Mary Magdalene volunteer on behalf of a grief-stricken mother who couldn’t pull herself out of her deep depression? Did she go to the tomb as a sister of Jesus, or as some interpreters read, his wife? We don’t know, but she hurried there, full of curiosity, grief, and need. She discovered the empty tomb.

     When she asked a man nearby where they had taken Jesus’ body, he called her by name. Recognizing Jesus’ voice, she reached out and embraced him. But Jesus said, “No. Don’t cling to me.” Never before had he rejected her anointments of oil and tears or her rapt attention to his teaching. He had praised her willingness to leave all and follow. But now the relationship was changing. He was going away. She would have to rely on her memories. Thus Mary Magdalene began to contemplate the body of Christ, a practice she continued for many years and that earned her the distinction of becoming patron saint to religious contemplatives.

     The word “contemplation” comes from an ancient Latin word that described the work of a class of Roman priests who, through observation and study of signs and portents, foretold events. The word connotes both great intensity of observation and a space dedicated to that work. Mary’s strength of observation and feeling seems matched only by that of two or three other disciples of Jesus, but unlike them, she didn’t wait for Jesus to wash her feet. No, she washed his and dedicated herself to his ministry in unparalleled fashion. Although she reputedly retired to a hermitage late in her life, her earlier contemplation focused on the space of Jesus’ body as the temple of the Holy Spirit of God. What did she see there? What revelations came her way? What indications of the future?

     I imagine that Mary, in her contemplation, regarded the body of Christ: its beauty, its calluses, its tired muscles, its responsiveness to touch, its desire to be washed, its need for anointing. From her vantage point in the maritime Alps of southern France, she recalled his rather normal body and saw there visions of loving service to all kinds of people. She reflected on Jesus’ skilled healing touch, and considered the meaning of his holy acceptance of the body even when it was diseased, despised, and rejected. She pondered experiences of his love communicated through unusual relationships with ordinary folk. Perhaps she augured the power of Jesus’ acceptance and love as a model for bodyworkers and other lovers of humanity.

     She had seen his resurrected body fixing food and sharing meals with his followers as well as teaching them, and she realized his intention was to teach them to do what he had done. Jesus made clear that his ministry would be continued by his followers, who were to do even greater things than he. Mary contemplated the body of Christ within the space of her own body. Surely she accepted that her love for him was a beautiful thing, a monument to his power, and a glorification of the human body that foresaw and experienced resurrection. The continuing work of Christ would be caught up by hands that, like hers, reached out, touched, ministered, fed, and loved in an amazing variety of ways among an even more amazing variety of people.

     Christians too often try to bypass the body in the quest for spiritual growth and maturity. We risk missing Mary’s insight. We forget the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth, his daily interactions with disciples, his hands of healing love, his great compassion for individuals and crowds who thirsted after the kind of life he exemplified and taught. We eagerly hear St. Paul’s words of resurrection as a spiritualization and conveniently forget his other difficult teachings of the resurrected body. We want to resurrect a spirit ministry but forget the hands-on nature of Jesus’ and Mary’s love. The risen Christ taught, yes, but he also fixed fish over a fire, broke bread, and otherwise entered the daily lives of his faithful followers. He taught them to feed hungry people, give clothes to the naked, heal the ill, and wash one another’s feet. Mary’s contemplation valued these acts as the greater things Jesus’ disciples would accomplish in the divine name.

Mary, Saint and patron of contemplatives, 

bless us as we join you in humble service, anointing the body’s hurts and communicating divine love. May we too contemplate the body of the living, dying, deceased, and risen Christ and come to see his and our bodies 

as the temples of the Holy Spirit of the Divine. 

Amen.

Fee photos by P Hoyle.
Can you think of them as somehow communicators of divinity?

Table Talk: Time to Heal

     A very tired woman came for a massage at the spa. She had traveled for four weeks on business to China, Japan, and England and back to the US twice. Her muscles were tight, both from hours sitting on a jet plane and from having run on the treadmill just prior to coming to the spa. Given the development and shape of her muscles, I was working deeply. As I approached her lower leg, she told me she had a broken bone that wouldn’t heal. A hairline fracture on the inside of her fibula, near the ankle, kept giving her terrible pain when she ran--her nearly daily exercise. “Would you be careful there?” she asked.

     Carefully working the ankle and listening to her talk, I finished up the leg with some long strokes and moved to her other side. As I massaged her right leg, I tactfully suggested she could swim for exercise to let the bone heal. “Yes, I could,” she said, but went on to explain how running gave her a good workout and a high release of endorphins. “I like the way running makes me feel.” She had been a triathelon contender and, having swum a lot, knew she couldn’t get the same benefits from swimming. Since it didn’t sound like she was going to quit running, I let my comments rest a few minutes. She talked more and admitted to working twelve to eighteen hours a day on some international project, rarely taking time off for herself or her family. Later, when we were laughing about something else, I suggested she take off a month for a vacation to let her bone heal. She agreed that she had the month coming, but if she took it, she’d want to have a tummy tuck. She was thirty years old, in great shape, and quite attractive.

     A tummy tuck. Running on a broken leg. I didn’t get it. Was she a victim of Madison Avenue advertising, thinking she had to look like a model? Did she have some compulsive disorder that caused her to imagine herself as a fifty-year-old movie star? Had a parent harped at her for being an out-of-shape teenager? Perhaps she was an over-enthusiastic disciple of the apostle Paul, daily pummeling her body both physically and mentally. Her wound seemed more than a broken bone. Her body may have become her enemy.

     St. Paul presented images of runners and boxers as he explained how he made decisions about his ministry. He pictured himself as a runner who, throwing off every encumbrance, dedicated himself to winning the race. Like a runner, he didn’t run aimlessly. Like a boxer, he didn’t just jab at shadows. He was fixed on a goal, and he disciplined himself to reach it. He claimed to punish his body and encouraged his readers to do so likewise as they tried to live successfully in the light of the Good News. Over intervening centuries the Apostle’s words often have been isolated from their context of advice on how to balance one’s sense of freedom in Christ with the need to live together in society. They have been moralized into a kind of rule of discipline and spiritualized into a concept of body rejection and sometimes even body hate. Was my client hurting herself daily in some unholy allegiance to a holy image? Was she loving the running while hating her body, its breakdowns, its aging?

     The encouragement of a beloved coach or of a holy apostle can be heeded with healthy or unhealthy results. Pushing oneself to excellence, even with an appeal to the sports adage “No pain, no gain,” may help one build muscle, strength, and stamina. But to go too far, to pay no attention to what is happening to the whole body, is to invite accident and injury. The freedom-loving and daily-disciplining Paul regulated his behaviors and, perhaps, his body with what he called “the law of love.”

     He learned the law from Jesus’ words: “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” If the idea is simple, its practice is not. It assumes that one loves oneself. In principle it says the best social behavior requires self-consideration. Jesus and Paul assumed their readers loved themselves. Such self-love can serve as a helpful monitor for reading the ancient words of the apostle and for following his advice, even in sports and exercise. Love yourself; love your body. Make your body your friend. Take your vocation seriously, your relationships realistically, and your workouts religiously. But in so doing, take a vacation, pay heed to the needs of your family and friends, and give yourself time to recover. It may mean that you must take yourself lightly and lovingly. It certainly means you will accept and love yourself--your body, your strength, your aging.

     My tired, over-worked client was getting a massage. I saw that as hopeful. Would she take time to rest, to be restored, or would she make massage another quick fix-up of a stressed self? I hoped for the best: that she would love herself, love her body. Perhaps she would even come to love her body as herself.

Open our imaginations, Divine Creator, so we can recognize opportunities for healing and love. Amen.

Abstract painting by Phillip Hoyle

Table Talk: Saints Rescue

This group of Artist Trading Cards are inspired by the shape of a bird's egg, one of the symbols associated with Saint Mary Magdalene who figures into this week's meditation on the body. Artistically the set was part of a larger group that comprised a study in contrast rather than making an illustration for Easter or an interpretation of a saint. I think I need to buy a better camera!

Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main

concern, and includes and is the soul;

Leaves of Grass, W. Whitman

     Growing up, I had never known saints religiously. I had never knelt at one’s shrine or addressed a saint to pray on my behalf. I had only known them as names of churches and towns: Saint “X” Catholic church and school in our city, the village St. Mary on the road to Topeka, and St. Paul’s Lutheran Church where our neighbors attended. Of course, I ran into more saints as I matured. In mid-life, I even told a few saint stories to children and used saint images in collages. I came to see the saints as icons of holiness. As such, the saints intrigued me.

     I started reading more about saints, wondering what perspectives they could lend my life and interests. I wanted saints to make statements that could bring together spirit and flesh, sacred and secular, and other pairs of contrasting values and experiences related to the human body and sexuality. I used (or misused, as one friend accused) saints in collage icons, showing advertising models as holy figures. I wanted to rescue saints from what, to my liberal Protestant self, seemed to be superstitious practices, and at the same time, to make symbolic statements that would communicate my own values.

     But I discovered saints don’t need rescuing. To my surprise, I found out that their lives, works, and legends could support life and work in the opening decades of a new millennium. Perhaps that’s too grandiose. What I needed to figure out was how they could guide, enrich, and, somehow, rescue me.

     For a while I had the notion that I might rescue Mary Magdalene by making her the patron saint of massage therapy. She got a bum rap over the course of both Catholic and Protestant centuries. She symbolized repentant sinners, not a bad thing in itself, but surely her patronage of them reflects the questionable assumption that she reformed after years of demon possession and prostitution, that her conversion into a follower of Jesus transformed her from a sex-focused individual to a spirit-filled person who didn’t need or want sex. The selling of sexual services has long been perceived, in Christian parlance, as one of the worst of sins, and Mary was saved from this awful life.

     I was surprised to discover that another long-standing tradition declared her to be patron of contemplatives. She supposedly became a mystic and a hermit, and if she did not really do so as a person, she did it as a saint, perhaps fulfilling some kind of Third or Fourth Century penance for having focused so much on the body in a prior lifestyle. To make her patron of massage therapists, I reasoned, might somehow rescue her by giving a positive slant on her body-centered activities and make a helpful statement about her continuing and important interest in Jesus’ body. The new assignment could honor Jesus’ words about this anointing female who for eons would be remembered for doing a beautiful thing.

     Whether or not Mary Magdalene was the anointer of this particular story, John’s gospel did picture her hurrying to the tomb to reverence Jesus’ dead body by anointing it. Neat switch. She, the corrupt turned clean, was to anoint the clean tragically turned corrupt. Mary was amazed to find that God had already rescued the corrupt body with the anointing of a new physical spiritual life. Still, her own work did not go unrecognized, and in John’s gospel, Mary became not only a rescued individual and an anointer of bodies, but also the first announcer of the good news of Christ’s resurrection.

     Since Mary was who she was and has come to symbolize both repentant sinners and contemplatives, my efforts really ought to aim at rescuing massage therapy and therapists, including myself. The saints represent holy values and have often rescued under-valued human experience. They show us how house cleaning, printing, hair dressing, carpentry, studying, and basket making are, in fact, sacred. Surely this is my present task. I want to help rescue massage therapy from its being equated by some with hired sex. I want to encourage people to see this work as communicating love, hope, and enthusiasm for life. I want to interpret massage therapists as caregivers to the holiness of the human body. 

Mary, dear Mary, as we give massages, may we honor you and ourselves with the same love Jesus showed you. In so doing, may we become bearers of the glad tidings of the body’s beauty, worth, and healing. Teach us not to fear touching the profane and the sacred in the human body. Help us anoint the lively and the dying with equal love and concern. Rescue us by becoming our symbol of acceptance, wholeness, and love. 

In the name of the lover of all humankind. 

Amen.

Table Talk: Zoo

One panel from triptych of big horn sheep painting
by Phillip Hoyle

     Dianne, a classmate in massage school, asked if I would go with her to the zoo. She had an invitation to give massage there at the Hep-Fest, an educational outreach for people who may have been exposed to or are living with Hepatitis C. She needed one other massage therapist. I agreed to accompany her.

     We unloaded our equipment and lugged it to the designated area near the pachyderm house. We set up our tables under a big tent. Since people were already waiting for massage, we began work immediately. Between clients we met our therapist neighbors. An acupuncturist, who worked next to me, was sticking willing people with needles. Some of the needles had clumps of moss on the end, which she set on fire. They smoked, adding heat to the treatment as well as an air of the exotic to the scene. On the other side of Dianne was a good-looking Asian-American jock at a booth promoting physical fitness through exercise. Dianne, bright and beautiful, worked in Swedish style, rubbing oil on people’s legs, backs, and arms. I worked in Thai style, compressing points along meridians and stretching joints. The regal trumpeting of elephants contrasted with the pitiful cries of peacocks. Ducks waddled past with their ducklings in queue. And people, lots of people, mingled in the mix, watching a magician, a storyteller, and a caricature artist. They visited information booths. Some got massage.

     My main massage teacher spoke of his therapy room as a sacred space. In it he provides symbols, ceremony, and an atmosphere of healing. Emulating him, I made my therapy room a kind of sanctuary, a space dedicated to the practice of massage. My clients climb the stairs and enter, discovering artwork, candles, a water fountain, incense, and plants. The subdued atmosphere assists in relaxation. Overseeing the sessions are patron saints Mary Magdalene and the wise woman of my massage vision. They bring holiness to the space and to the work.

     I imagine there may be saints who bless each place I work. At the zoo, surely one can sense the presence of St. Francis of Assisi; the animals have called him there. St. John the Baptist seems to hover over the spa, where people come for pain relief, image remakes, and water treatments. I’m sure I saw St. Martha, patron of servers, when I was giving a massage at the coffee shop. St. Hillary, patron of attorneys, walked down the hallway when I worked at the lawyer’s office. Presumably, scholar Saints Jerome and Bede oversaw the learning of techniques and traditions in the massage school classrooms and clinic.

     While massage does not depend upon the presence of holy figures, it seems always to be a holy undertaking that may be enhanced by visualization. Massage serves as an invitation into a sanctuary, a safe place for relaxation and perhaps reflection. The external setting may be important, but whatever the outward conditions, massage discovers and exalts the sacred space of the body and always recognizes the holy one who is receiving the work. At a conference, massage relieves tired muscles caused by too many hours sitting and concentrating. In a business office, it creates a calm place within the body. In a coffee shop, the client already has come aside for refreshment. Privacy is afforded by the face cradle and sanctity by the experience of the massage itself.

     Zoo, workplace, spa, clinic, or studio, all can be significant places for massage. Each space, whether everyday or extraordinary, teaches some new aspect of holiness and invites a novel reflection on the body itself. One’s body is the necessary space for any massage. Even so, I am still looking for new places and people to massage. Perhaps I could work on you in the Botanical Gardens. Will we discover the gardeners’ patron St. Fiacre there tending flower beds? Perhaps St. Francis surrounded by his bird friends? It doesn’t matter, but they may lend a sense of the sacredness of your own self, your body, your life.

Herd Leader painting by Phillip Hoyle
Native American petroglyphs across North America often
portray animals. Animal spirits were sought as power totems
and the animals themselves as a major food source. In Euro-
American tradition saints often have animal symbols
attached to their portrayals. I came to realize that the connection
may be as old as humanity itself. If saints are sensitive to
animals, why not the rest of uss? Well it's an idea.