Uncovering Joy: Tales of Everyday Urban Spirituality (18 of 25)

Uncovering Joy – A Touch 

“Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is the commandment that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.” 1 John 3:18-24 

When God‟s Reign spills over into our day, it may not be within a grand avalanche of experiences that simply overwhelms us. One of the reasons some people venture out of the ordinary flow of the day – a flow that can appear and feel quite hectic and filled to the point of boiling over – is the need for space. This space and the quiet gives us time to settle in and reacquaint ourselves with ourselves. 

A walk in the woods can help our eyes heal. We begin to see the trees with all their diversity...the leaves and how they shout out with distinct faces...the ground and how it is firm under foot as we go along the path but soft and spring-like as we move away from the path. That same walk – out away from the movement of the ordinary and common – reminds us of how our world blossoms with textures that so often go unnoticed and are often unrecognizable. Out there, away from the pavement and that building and the other people, it is like we begin to appreciate the smell of nothing-at-all. Then again, we are realizing that there is a smell to this nothing-at- all. It can change from one turn in the path to another. It can be sweet to our senses and then downright repulsive. The smells are simply not what embrace us as we move through the spaces we already know so well. 

I’m not an outdoors person at all. I love being outside but I’m not a great camper. Having said that, one of my most sensuous experiences in my life came on a camping trip I took with a handful of students back in college. There was a small river, canoes, and no pressure to be anywhere. At one point of our weekend, I laid down in the water. It was just barely deep enough and moving enough to keep me afloat as floated down stream. I was lost. Lost is really, really, good sometimes. I was lost in the soundlessness of having my ears under the water and the fullness of the sky as clouds went by and branches were reaching across the water from both sides of the river. 

When I need to relax and want to find a way to pick myself up and be put down into another place and time that might help me to that, I go back to the river – I float. And yet, as I think back to that time of being a floatation device along that small river, it is a time spilling over with stimulation. On so many fronts of that contemplative moment, stuff is going on and on and on. It could be that the stimulation was so intense and varied that for a short time I was knocked senseless. For a moment in time there was no time and there was no need and there was no urgent work that was attempting to pull me back to the real world and there was nothing that I judged as being out of place. I know my wife, Karen, wonders how I can fall asleep so quickly. Sometimes...I‟m just floating. 

I don’t often have experiences of floating along a stream...really floating – wet, chilled, and weightless. Most often, I am moving within a stream of life within the city. There are rapids and bends and straight sections – but I’m moving...always moving. From one task within the day to the next, there is purpose to the movements and a need to be deliberate about where I go, how long I stop, and what will take place when I do stop. Out in the woods and back in that river I was being touched again and again by a life giving movement that would not let me go. It was like many newborn children who never have to worry about whether or not someone is nearby within arm’s reach. There is touch after precious touch, ready to be given and always ready to be received. 

In a society that is very worried about touch, it can be difficult to be drenched in touch that helps to bring a sense of security and warmth and peace. There are plenty of handshakes. That is part of a ritual. Most often touch like that is almost as though there is no touch. It is mandated. It is such a commonplace action that it often is more of an expectation than an act of bringing people together for a time of conversation and fellowship. Even the “passing of the peace” in worship is often less than the kind of touch that is able to help us re-create and re-image. Sometimes it seems as though the most hand-shaking congregations share more of an agenda of what must be done than a simple, wide-open, greeting of peace. 

As an adult I have not had to stay in the hospital for any extended time. For a number of years, I would go to the emergency room for what seemed to be heart problems. Over three years, we discovered it was something completely unrelated to my heart. At most I would spend a night in a holding area of the emergency room. Even when each of my Achilles tendons ruptured over a nine year span of time, I was in and out. Like the linens and the folded back- less garb that we are handed as patients, everything is usually quite crisp and hygienic. Touch takes place with purpose behind it. This needle must be put in that arm. The nurse’s hand on the wrist is to catch a pulse. This is not meant to be critical of hospital procedures. I actually find it quite comforting to know that things are being done and someone is keeping watch. This, I guess, is institutional care that seeks to heal and make whole. 

In the mix of hospital protocol where curtains are pulled open and pulled closed and staff is darting from here to there to make sure that everyone is receiving appropriate care, I try to go back to that stream of water – retreating away from all the hospital movement. That simple retreat can really work to calm some of my anxieties and thus some of the physical aspects produced by being in the hospital as a patient. During one of my brief hospital stays I found something quite available and powerful. As I was on the bed waiting for whatever was to come next, the nurse who was there to follow through on one of the tasks of her day put her hand on my shoulder, rested it there for a moment, and told me that “everything is going to be alright.” I went limp. I was in the river. I was floating. A simple touch and a word of promise were delivered by the stream of life that was moving by me. I did not remember who she was. There was no name that I could recall. There was that touch – a touch without a hospital agenda or a liturgical rite – a touch that is able to wash away the cares of the world...my world. 

This can happen here - joy uncovered and utterly present. Spilling over into our lives come the opportunities in which we are soothed by the touch of other and we also may become that touch for the welfare of another. Within the days we think move along under our own power and influence and control, we face opportunities to be connected. The time at hand is always open to the Reign of God to be made known. The love that bridges our differences and our divisions and our structures and our patterns is able to make itself known. No - it must make itself known - and it will. The nurse’s touch was more than likely something she did with every patient under her care. But in that moment of fear and anxiety that I know I don’t let out enough so that it can be readily seen by others, she took the risk to touch and speak and – beyond her knowledge – calm me so that I could float. Without her, I would not be writing this. 

Too often we do not let ourselves spill over into the lives of those passing around us. What a mistake! What an abuse of our presence! Have you ever hand someone take your hand with both of their hands...to greet you...to emphasize a point...to offer a deeper thanks or more deliberate peace? Or what of an intentional reach of a hand that moves through the spaces between us that usually serve to keep us separate and yet this hand comes to rest on your shoulder to offer thanks or offer support or share in a moment of grief – joy – surprise? 

Could it be that the stream is among us? Rather than retreating to another place to find rest and security and peace, we become a part of the engaging manner of peace that seeks to open up the wideness of God’s love that is eternally communal? I’m an introvert and I like my space away and alone. In the meantime, though, I whither and begin to die when I am not liberated to float under the touch of others who may not even know that they can make people like me float and rest and come alive and be assured of life...now and here. 

As a pastor, when I make hospital calls and calls at home, I have been taught that touch is a vital part of the way we share the abiding peace and love that is available among us. Hands placed on the head of a person in a hospital bed. The prayer doesn’t have to be well-crafted. It is the touch. It is the action of separate ones becoming one within a touch and a word that reminds us of the peaceable Reign of our God. The touch of others need not be threatening. It can be a gift that amazes and liberates and spills out into the rest of the day. Within the Rite of Healing, hands placed on heads and shoulders can seem manufactured. Then again, it is a deliberate touch that is sustained and directed and without condition. One of the blessed parts about being touched even in such a ritualized moment is that we can never be sure of how that touch will drench us again with a love that is swirling around us and is now, quite literally, at hand. 

TRRR