*The Touch, Stephano Corso, Flickr
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God has no religion.
*Mahatma Gandhi
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That’s what it feels like when you touch me. Like millions of tiny universes being born and then dying in the space between your finger and my skin. Sometimes I forget.
*Ian Thomas. I Wrote This For You.
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*Touch, Mattia Notari Foto, Flickr
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37 In that town was a woman who lived a sinful life. She heard that Jesus was eating in the Pharisee's house, so she brought an alabaster jar full of perfume 38 and stood behind Jesus, by his feet, crying and wetting his feet with her tears. Then she dried his feet with her hair, kissed them, and poured the perfume on them. 39 When the Pharisee saw this, he said to himself, "If this man really were a prophet, he would know who this woman is who is touching him; he would know what kind of sinful life she lives!"
*Luke 7.37-39 (GNB)
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Yesterday, I wrote of touching Mystery. Today, I reflect on, "Where does that take place, for you, for me?" I share a place that takes place for me, without intending to say this is the place for everyone. Based on our styles of being-with others, as well as culture and socialization, we will manifest diverse means of touching Mystery, and touching the other - whether literally, as physical touch, or in another way (for example, some of my colleagues touch patients through singing, but that is not my gift, and I think it would not be wise for me to try that way of touching).
Touching the other, to me, is my touching Mystery. And, in that touching, I am touched. There is Otherness (you could call This "Holiness"), something transcending the touching, something other than a person with a person. In that person-with-person, Otherness arises, in some sense Otherness within each, in some sense Otherness as the One in Which, or Whom, the touch appears as Loving. This Otherness, we could say, is the Place, the Space, in which all touching is born, even as all creation arises in and through God, and resolves back into that Beginning. So, in touching, creation is happening, which is to say that God-is-happening. This is like to the Christian Scripture speaking of Christ as Emmanuel: "God with us."
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In my offering Presence as a Chaplain, the physical touch is a place I go to often, to allow Love to Love, Mystery to give and receive. In that touching I am as fully there as Mystery is there, or I am a full participant in Being-There. This Being-There as someone not other than my being there and the other being there. Why? For Otherness creating means what Otherness creates is One with the One that creates. How could it be, logically, not one, if One creates from Itself? We are co-creators, through touch. And we are the touch.
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In my spiritual tradition, Christianity, I find caregiving possibly often to be too "god-ed," so, lacking the Incarnational quality that the very word "Christ" demands of us: "God-with-us." I find clergypersons may not be fully present, by resort too often, too quickly to a reliance on their "god" and their "Bible" and, yes, prayer as words spoken over someone. If prayer becomes another magic wand, is that Prayer? The magic-wand prayer can be an attempted communication with the "other world," to a "god" we say is here but really not here. This can easily be an escape from God-with-us, Who needs no prayer already to be present and answering, even as finally God is the answer we deeply need. This majic-wand prayer, also, shows identification of prayer as something we speak as subject to an object, oddly making God into an object (all the while we would speak against any objectifying of God). Yes, ironic that we may act as though God has ears?
That is, we may easily fail to see that God is praying in God and through God, even as we and the other are one with God - neither of us being subject or object - and are who we are for being in God one. Then, our decision to touch another, even if only in sharing a common space with nothing said, is touching the Mystery we are in God, for God simply is.
I know that rarely do I sense as deep a connection with another through a wording of Prayer, as when touching and allowing Prayer to be quiet openness to the other and myself in a common Space. In that openness words may arise and be spoken out, or not. Usually, images and words and energies arise. Again, however, I may be only speaking of my style. I do sense, though, Silence is not often utilized, for we have been taught that words are more important than silence, or that praying is saying a prayer. And we shun Silence, for it strips us of the defense of words against ourselves being touched by the Mystery. There is a certain death that happens in the Silence, and I may prefer a safe distance and life-less-than-real in my worded world.
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Therefore, being present, not escaping into a pious mode of religiousness is where the intuitions of religion are - or, is - already taking place. We can miss this by taking into loving another this compartmentalization of subject-and-object, by which we seek to escape into a false otherness, rather than the Otherness that transcends by fully being without any addition, religious or spiritual, or anything. I say this, for another escape is to impose on a living situation a schema of psychological understanding, and as easily miss the presence of Mystery and sharing Mystery, as a religious escape. I sense, too, this has often crept slyly into the understanding of pastoral caregiving, as it marks much of life generally - caregiving and living being something we do well, and may miss the intangible Grace that demands our risking ourselves in a surrender of the very sense-of-self that separates us from Loving un-personally.
So, possibly, we could ask, "How do I remain fully here, feel what I am feeling, see thoughts come and go, and, still touch the Mystery? Touch and be touched?" Again, one aspect of my style is to allow physical touch to be Prayer. Of course, this has to be appropriate and not used, as any mode of caring for others, indiscriminately. There is a time not to touch. Yet, psychology reminds us of how much touch is needed for humanness to be expressed and received. And I am finding the union of God and humanness the meeting place of touch physically, and in other ways, whether it be through song, dance, art, poetry, Scripture, religious ritual, a hug, a simply seeing of someone, a letter, a well-wishing card ....
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I find it Prayerful physically to touch another person. This can be a shake of the hand. Praying for someone with permission to place the hand on the forehead. Listening to someone and holding his or her hand. Hugging. Even placing a hand on a deceased loved ones body, in prayer and presence with family. Embodied in this is a meeting of the Totally Other and the Totally Not-Other, in which I find God is always here-and-now. And, in this Mystery, I find that I am found, and that my seeking myself could only come to a realization of being-found in the bringing together of apparent otherness in the Otherness making-one everything in Christ. So, how can I know Christ without the other? without you?
This to me is the Mystery of religion, for this is the Mystery that is non-dependent on any need for fulfillment. And, so, the holy Spirit acts to create out of Itself, for Itself, and without needing any claim on what is created as owned by Itself. The touch, physical or otherwise, speaks deeply of a Prior-Oneness re-touching to bring to awareness that Love-as-Union is the Truth, separation the illusion - and Grace is Emmanuel, but as much in a non-religious as religious sense, or in neither really.
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*Meditation at the Lake, Hartwig HKD, Flickr
* * * CLOSING BLESSING * * *
Grace and Peace to All
The Sacred in Me bows to the Sacred in You
*You are welcome to contact Brian at briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
The presentations at this site cover a long time period. Each one represents part of an on-going Pilgrimage, and the writer's ideas, practices, and experience have changed over time. This change is the quality of any living Journey. Please read with this in mind, allowing the inner Teacher to speak to you as you need at this particular time in your own living Journey. Thanks!
