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: Vision

Collograph inspired by vision
Phillip Hoyle

     While receiving a massage, I had a vision. I wasn’t asleep but, rather, I was well aware of my classmate Pam’s fingers working around my right shoulder blade. Her fingertips were seeking out and finding tiny irregularities in tissue there. I don’t know what she touched under my scapula, but when she pushed it, I had a vision of a woman standing beside a box. The image was similar to one in a dream, but more focused; rather than Polaroid-fuzzy, the picture was 35-millimeter clear. I carried away from that massage a memorable image of a woman adorned in beautiful Medieval robes, standing beside a colorful, three-foot-high box, similar to an enameled reliquary. I knew she would open the box, which made the image seem an invitation to self-discovery and mystery.


     I knew I was having a vision although I had never had one before. But where did it come from? In the past I had visualized places and people during guided imagery exercises. This time, by contrast, no leader was instructing, “Imagine a building..., enter it..., meet a person...,” etc. Did the aroma of incense and the flicker of candlelight in Pam’s therapy room help prepare me to see in this new way? Did her work stimulate some chemical response, touching some memory embedded in muscle?

     I was curious to know what the vision meant. Since the image came while a woman was working on me, perhaps it communicated my need to touch something feminine within myself. Maybe it was a message that my anima, my woman spirit, would lead me into more adventures of learning, relationship, and love. The image seemed religiously important. Conceivably massage would become a sacrament of holy visions for me or even a new religion. I wondered what mysteries this religion could reveal.

     I believe that something real, if not exactly religious, occurred in the vision and is unfolding in my life and practice. I am attuning more to my own feelings, becoming more alert to nuances of my needs, desires, and hopes. Certainly, I am more responsive to my body needs--pain, hydration, diet, exercise, and more. At the same time, and perhaps as a result of my own growing self-awareness, I am becoming more sensitive to the complex needs of my clients, to emotion-based proclamations from their mouths and from their muscles.

     My hopes are being realized. I moved to Denver wanting to learn how to live into my feelings, letting them more deeply influence my decision-making and experiencing them more fully instead of setting them aside in deference to the needs of others. I am more alert to the vivacious movement of the spirit and am listening to my anima.

     While I don’t expect to make a religion of massage, I certainly am interested in the relationship of massage experiences to my perception of the divine. I hope to gain insight into my religious tradition by an immersion into massage. Although I am not sure where this visionary, feminine line of thinking leads, I am sure I will follow it to some logical, creative, and emotional end or insight. Such a journey is the goal of my meditations on the body. I find this spirit voice of love more powerful than the voice of rules that fearfully guided my life in the past.

     No one else has touched the spot Pam found; if they did, their palpation failed to stimulate a vision. Perhaps I learned enough from the image and am no longer blocking the feminine love feelings; thus no new trigger points have developed there. My medieval lady has not reappeared except as an icon I collaged a few months ago. I think it is time to hang her image in my therapy room like a visual prayer, so her beautiful, wise countenance can influence my imagination and my work. Surely, new treasures will emanate from the box as she continues to open it for me. This is no Pandora’s box, but rather a repository of relics, people, feelings, and experiences of the past. It contains stories, artwork, friendship, and healing for my future. Perhaps, in addition to visions, I also will receive auditions, olfactions, and perhaps, some other extra sensory perceptions.