Table Talk: Healing Hands

     As a minister making hospital calls, I feared a patient might be healed miraculously when I prayed with them. I admitted this in a discussion group with laypersons. When asked why, I confessed that I assumed it would ruin my life as a plain and ordinary person and my career as a liberal minister. I’d hate to be a faith healer in a church of rationalists. One woman in the group, Shirley, said, “But, Phillip, you have Reiki hands. I knew that the moment I met you.”

     I wasn’t sure what Reiki hands were, but I did understand that she assumed I had some kind of healing gift. Shirley couldn’t imagine why I didn’t want to use it. The image of myself as a healer was almost overpowering, an assault on my pragmatic upbringing and liberal education. I thought it appropriate to leave healing to the medics and for me to support patients in related issues such as dealing with health care systems. I helped parishioners to confront their religious questions and, in general, to clarify their attitudes towards and acceptance of their medical therapy. I prayed with patients that God would enhance their natural ability to heal.

     Now, even as I do bodywork, I keep hoping people won’t assume their healing is a direct result of a special power I hold. I recall the phrase from some novel about a character who had hands with “palms as hot and sweaty as a faith healer’s.” My palms get hot during massage. Perhaps it was the heat that alerted Shirley to the possibility I could be a healer. But to me, my hands seem to be simply part of who I am. I don’t want to be a faith healer.

     “Those hands.” It’s the compliment I have most often received from teachers, friends, and clients. “Wonderful hands.” “Healing hands.” I gave up protesting and now simply thank people who remark about my hands. They are my main tools, and I am thankful that they are effective in my work. Certainly they are a gift since I did nothing to earn them. I felt like a client put me on the line over my reluctance to understand myself as a healer. She told me about a tumor she had discovered on her back, at the base of the neck near the spine, and asked me to put my hand on it. I did so, placing my hand over the spot she indicated. I could feel a slight protuberance, cupped my hand over it, and left my hand in place for several minutes. When I finally moved it, she asked, “Was it your hand or my skin that was so hot?” I reported that her skin had felt cool to my touch.

     Then she asked, “Did you feel malignancy in the tumor?” I didn’t have a clue what I was feeling, except my own discomfort at her assumption that I’d know anything. It seemed one thing for me to place my hand on someone’s body and quite another to imagine I could make a diagnosis from doing so. I told her I didn’t know what I was feeling there. I meekly excused myself on the basis of inexperience.

     While I do not have any inclination towards intuitive diagnosis and have received little training in healing energy work, people still want me to place my hands on them. I touch people in the healing context of massage. I am not a Hindu healer, but some of my clients see brilliant colors when I place my hands over their chakras. I am not trained in Japanese Reiki methods and thought, but when I am around such healers, they assume I am one of them. Certainly, I am some kind of healer, and bodywork modalities from other religious backgrounds are encouraging me to integrate my own healing tradition into massage.

     Being a Reiki healer herself, Shirley understands the complexities of healing. She knows how the laying on of hands may not take away a disease but simply bring perspective to one’s attitude toward it. Like any minister, she believes that emotional releases may pave the way for a deeper healing of the psyche or the body. Shirley knows the kinds of success and failure I have sought to sidestep through my objections to healing work and my reluctance to enter into it.

     I avoided this work as a minister, but I cannot avoid it now as a massage therapist. I may be impeded by my own attitudes of suspicion, doubt, and fear, but I am willing to lay my hands on someone’s body where they feel pain or suspect some other malady. If there is power, it will do its work. I doubt that it is my power, but if the heat from my hands does have an effect I do not understand, I am willing to let that energy heal. Expect something good to happen in the massage; I do. But please don’t expect a diagnosis or a miracle if you get a massage from me. 

Oh Divine healing, may we reject the temptation to turn your work into a moralized commodity that we deserve or not deserve but want anyway. May we steer clear of turning your great mystery into magic that we can control and use. We bow before your ultimately unknowable power with humility and awe, and sometimes are bold enough to ask you for a miracle. Amen.

    

Paintings by P. Hoyle Extension, Hand and Foot 7, Hand and Foot 19

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: Hold the Line

Starburst (mixed media) by Phillip Hoyle

Some images are just dazzlers getting your attention immediately. That's how I felt when I first saw this design carved in a rock near the top of the north escarpment of Shavano Valley. I worked with it a couple of times but my best try was this one in which I added color, the color I saw in this explosion. Some people have affected me in the same way.



     The expression “hold the line” is not always an allusion to war or football. Sometimes it serves as a child-rearing image: the parent draws a line at certain behaviors and holds the child to it. Many children stand right at or even on the line in a posture that may be taken as either a show of defiance or a need for the security that comes from knowing the parent will hold the line fast. These parent/child images have proved helpful to me in massage.

     Jeremy wanted to cross a line I was trying to draw. The line related to our signed agreements: no sexual advances or language are to be tolerated in massages at the clinic. But while I massaged his shoulders, he reached over and placed his hand on my calf. I moved out of range. He touched me again when I was working at his side. I took his hand off my leg and, patting it, told him he had to keep his hand and arm relaxed or the massage wouldn’t work. We made it through the massage just fine. The next month, in our second massage, I had to repeat the same line drawing. When the massage was completed, we talked. I reminded Jeremy we had both agreed “not to be bad.” He took well the mild discipline, which combined my accepting attitude toward him with my patient insistence that the line hold.

     The conflict had started right at the outset. That first day, as I opened the therapy room door to say good-bye to one client and to greet the next, there stood Jeremy. He was dressed in what Denverites sometimes refer to as the Boulder look. He sported a red tank top, lime green cutoff sweats, and brown Birkenstock sandals with wheat-colored socks. Tall, with wavy red hair and body-builder muscles, Jeremy introduced himself and said in a caricatured sexy voice that he had come for a “butch” massage. I was amused. While I’m not feminine in appearance or manner, I certainly am not butch! Perhaps the seeming absurdity of his request signaled play acting and cast me in a parental role. I listened to him with interest and carefully kept my laughter aimed at what he said, not at him. I read Jeremy as both sexually promiscuous and humorous. He appeared to have ill-defined personal boundaries. What a challenge.

     I would give him a massage to remember, butch or not. Images of strength, aggression, and even pain flitted through my imagination. I thought, “Too bad I don’t have on my hiking boots. He might like that.” I chose to supplement my regular Swedish massage technique with some dramatic stretches and deep glides I had learned in a sports massage workshop. At one point, I clambered up onto the table with Jeremy and planted my knees in his buttocks. I pushed my fists into the muscles alongside his spine and glided from his lower back to his shoulders. He loved it, and his muscles started to relax. I repeated the glide, this time with my elbows one at a time, and the muscles softened even more. While I felt tiny atop this tall, muscle-bound man, I knew I could deliver a helpful and memorable massage.

     Ethics, goals, and personal strength come into play in every massage. My training established standards and offered methods for dealing with difficult clients and tricky situations. It emphasized that I know what I am trying to achieve in massage and that I avoid situations that will detract from that goal. I was instructed, if I should not have enough strength to control a situation, to announce I was ending the session and walk away. One cannot always anticipate the needs and desires of a new client or even of a therapist’s own developing interests. I learned to recognize behaviors, phrases, and non-verbal clues in both the client and myself, and I was encouraged to be alert to their potential for small or large disasters.

     Superficially, there are similarities between massage and sex. Two people are alone together. One gets naked; the other rubs his or her hands all over the first one’s body. But the point is not to move the feelings engendered toward orgasmic relief, to communicate love through sexual contact, or to enjoy the other person’s body. Rather, the massage employs skilled touch to invite muscles into relaxation, the mind into rest, and the person into a caring relationship that will result in self-care. While there is physical intimacy and often a loving climate in both massage and sex, the outcomes sought in massage contrast clearly with those of sex.

     Jeremy was a strong, insistent person who seemed to want to have sex and to be worshipped. Perhaps I could note and praise some aspects of his body while I massaged his muscles, but I would keep to the conventions of common modesty and professional ethics. He didn’t need sex with me; he needed my skill to bring relief to his body. He needed massage to provide him new experiences of his body, not to repeat old ones.

     I believe I was prepared for this interaction with Jeremy years earlier by watching my wife Myrna, when she successfully took on the task of youth work in a congregation. She confided in me that her training and experience in preschool education prepared her to work well with teens. She was gentle, playful, accepting, and at the same time, firm. Her instructions were clearly enunciated, her expectations lovingly presented, and her acceptance of failure graciously offered. The teens responded to her with enthusiasm and trust. Under her direction, they achieved peer leadership and group success. She was especially helpful to kids who were the most wild. She gave them her unconditional love, encouraged their participation in socially constructive projects, and showed her genuine interest in their whole lives. I took my cue from her experience.

     Jeremy seemed to me like one of those wilder kids who would respond best to acceptance with a clearly marked line lovingly, humorously, and consistently enforced. I knew I wasn’t going to cross over the line with Jeremy. I was his massage therapist, not a buddy or a mate. When he persisted in touching me, I figured it was compulsive behavior on his part and so treated the behaviors in relationship to how they helped or detracted from the massage. For a year and a half of massages, Jeremy persisted in pushing at the line. He quit touching me but from time to time crossed the line verbally. He got great massages and, perhaps, some parent-like security from knowing that I would hold fast. He wanted the massage enough to keep his appointments, and while he may have lacked one kind of respect, he did praise me to myself and others as a massage therapist and a healer. Jeremy never did learn to keep consistently on his side of the line. Perhaps more time would have helped him grow into this, but his life ended before that happened. In response to his consistent pushing, I learned to hold dependably, with loving candor, laughter, and firmness. Now anytime someone pushes too much, I think of Jeremy and remember both the need to let massage be what it can be and how to hold the line for myself and my client.

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: Self Care

Shamanic Healer  Painting by Phillip Hoyle

     I wonder why I have so much trouble providing myself massage. Why do I put off going to others for massages I surely need or even doing the work myself? Why is setting aside time seemingly such a problem, dedicating energy so difficult, and appropriating money such a block?

     My lower back hurt. I awoke with the pain on the morning after Halloween. Dressing for a dinner party the previous evening, I had hurriedly selected a pair of slacks that were too tight. I tucked in my shirt to look nice, and I looked good. But I realized when I sat in Frank’s car on the way to the party, I could hardly breathe. Since the hostess was wearing her 40th Anniversary Barbie Doll dress and her husband a tux, since people who didn’t know me were in attendance, I didn’t feel free to get comfortable. Usually I would simply pull out my shirttails and unfasten my pants. But that night I sat in uncomfortable, rented chairs for way too many hours, and I paid for it when I tried to get up the next morning.

     Somehow, I don’t find the above explanation quite convincing to account for the amount and persistence of my pain. It reminds me of a client who suggested his awful shoulder pain was due to sleeping on a new pillow. I do like the humor of the scene--barely being able to breathe and enduring the too-tight pants for the sake of a public image--but I suspect there was more at play. Probably the constriction of the pants and belt activated a latent, painful spot or two that had bothered me some months back. I had suffered similar back pains from giving too many hours of massage, and years ago I had hurt my back in a snowmobile accident. Whatever the cause, I did hurt.

     That morning I could hardly move, but I had to get going since I was scheduled to give an early massage. A hot shower and all the movement of the massage left my back less painful and freer, but that afternoon, while drinking coffee with a friend, I felt a deep soreness settling in. The friend, a massage therapist, volunteered to work on me. His fifteen-minute massage helped, but it didn’t get rid of the pain. I asked another guy to work on it a couple of days later. The pain persisted. A third therapist worked on me two days later. He made other, related muscles hurt from his very deep work, but the back pain did not go away.

     A week later I awoke thinking, “I need to work my abdomen,” but I couldn’t make myself do the work. Many arguments and several hours later, I finally lay down on the floor and worked my abdomen. I approached the area using traditional Thai massage techniques. During this self-treatment, I further realized that to get rid of my week-old pain I would need to do more work on deeper muscles that pass through the pelvic girdle. Several hours later I also talked myself into doing that work.

     The massage that resulted in the release I needed so badly did not take much time, but apparently it did require a commitment to myself I haven’t yet found. I want to change myself in ways that encourage sufficient and regular self-caring. I wish I’d quit putting off work I can either do on myself or ask someone else to do for me. I would like to find the freedom to spend money and time for work that will give me pain relief and muscle releases. I want to feel vigorously healthy in my work and pain-free in my play. How else will I stay fit for the years to come? How else will I be able to encourage others to spend their time and money on massage?

I desire to find ways in which I can best live as an artist and a massage therapist: unleashing my creativity, caring for myself, loving myself in practical yet occasionally extravagant ways. In order to do so, I suspect I will need to overcome accusations of selfishness I sometimes aim at myself. I have work to do, growth to realize, and self-love to develop.

     My family was not very physical. Dad played tennis but didn’t encourage us children to do the same. We played neighborhood games, but none of us became sports players or even fans. We weren’t touched much. We watched Mom and Dad touch and kiss, but we were rarely folded close into our parents’ bodies, at least not to my recollection. I watched my sisters run from my father when he threatened to kiss them and scratch them with his whiskers, but I was never touched by either him or my mother. We rarely went to the doctor. Fortunately, I was healthy and seldom ill, but these things together--our family’s reluctance to touch, independence from health care, and general good health--may have become part of my distancing from myself, my own body, my own self-care. They may hold some key to my figuring out how to give better care to myself.

     My wife observed during the nearly thirty years of our marriage that I had become increasingly physical in my relations with people. I gave and sought more touch, a phenomenon that has contributed to my becoming a massage therapist. Still, I did not seek this touch from health care professionals or even hair stylists. I hated to spend money on such things. I did not provide for myself what I was happy to provide others. Luckily, I have been healthy; unfortunately, I have not learned to seek help for myself when I need it. I need it now.

     As I was writing this piece, I cut my finger with a knife intended to cut an onion. I evaluated the damage. If I were not trying to make a living doing massage, I’d probably put an adhesive bandage on the place, but I really did need stitches. Here was a blatant opportunity to provide self-care. I called my friend Tony for personal support and for a ride to a family practice clinic where the wound was properly stitched. I can consider this as being practice for further dimensions of self-caring. I am thankful for my friend who drove me to the clinic. Still, I need more assistance. To whom can I pray for help in making these changes? What holy figure showed such self-care? Jesus? Mary Magdalene? Another saint? I don’t know, but I suspect I will have to pray to myself. I will have to ask my own self-neglecting hermit saint to open himself to the divine communication that will take place only when I love myself and care for myself. Amen.

Table Talk: Witness

     A few observations and a short conversation often disclose a lot about a person. Since most of our guests at the spa are women, and many of the men who schedule ask for a woman therapist, I was pleased to find a male client on my schedule a few Saturdays ago. I met the man who looked to be about thirty-five, healthy, and friendly. Watching a brief interaction between him and his wife, I judged his manner rather fawning but not insincere. As a couple they seemed too emotionally connected, like a pair with no offspring, who treat one another as if each were the child of the union.

     Our conversation during the massage revealed my client to be a salesman by occupation. He must have been successful, as he was able to afford monthly trips with his spouse to expensive hotels and fancy spas. He had played football in high school and was still in good shape due to working out regularly at a gym. As a young adult, he had studied art, hoping for a career as an artist, but had not pursued his dreams for some undisclosed reason. I listened and looked. Details of his Colorado Springs origin and abode, his clean cut good looks, his too-precious manner with his wife seemed to speak clearly to me. “Help,” I thought. “I have an evangelical on my table, and I’m about to be witnessed to.”

     My assumption seemed accurate. His approach was subtle as he sought to make an opening in the conversation for his testimony. The first assay related to his assertion that one has to experience inner change in order to change one’s body, its health and muscles. I didn’t take the bait. The other was his statement that God surely made the body amazing. I simply agreed but didn’t encourage a conversation. For a salesman, he seemed a bit unsure in his witness, or perhaps he was the consummate salesman who knows whether he really has any chance of closing a deal.

     I had successfully deflected his attempt to lasso me. In so doing, I may have missed having a significant conversation about the body, but I didn’t want to hear about the personal change that comes when one takes the five steps to salvation, inviting Jesus into one’s heart. While I am Christian, I really have tired of the earnest witnessing I have often been subjected to over the years. I didn’t want to explain my complicated theology to someone who seemed content with his own formulaic certainty. I just was not ready to be assaulted by a true believer, not even by a nice one.

     To give my client a break, he seemed to be a decent guy and has a beautiful body that he continues to keep fit. I suspect an important inner change did alter his life, and that the divine may have rescued him from some destructive future. These would be fine things to share, but I didn’t invite him to do so.

     Instead, I insisted on sharing my own witness, a silent testimony I proclaim through massage. In making it, I am not trying to convince people to accept a particular belief. Rather, I exalt the body as it is--regenerated or not, appealing or repulsive, healthy or ill, thriving or dying. While I am not a creationist and some days barely a theist, I still marvel at the truth of the divine communication in human form. Divinity loves through persons, presents itself in community, and encourages creative living. These divine touches are the most meaningful aspects of my witness.

     This is my witness: to my clients, to the beauty of their bodies, to what and to all that they are. I testify silently with hands, body weight, sweat, and the techniques of massage. My message avoids words; massage speaks its own language. The divine is not separate from the body but, rather, is a continuous revelation of love in any particular body. It seems ironic to me, but I have become a massage evangelical, making my silent witness to everyone who comes to my table.

God, help me keep my witness silent and subtle. Amen.

Peace Rose from the Garden  Photo by Phillip Hoyle

Same rose as above from a different angle