In her book Do What You Have the Power to Do, Helen Bruch Pearson reflects on this woman who anoints Jesus. She writes, “Jesus accepted her silent acts of intimacy and devotion with profound respect and reverent silence. Perhaps Jesus longed for the warmth and comfort of another’s touch. Perhaps the cool ointment cascading from his head over his face and neck was like a baptism of sorts.”
In today’s reflection from Sacred Journeys, I tell of a friend who, while I was in seminary, became a massage therapist. In that time that was so often marked by wondrous and draining intensity, Betsey became a minister to both body and soul as she offered the sacrament of touch.
Missing Betsey
I left her when I left Atlanta. I had scheduled one last massage with Betsey, but there was too much to do. I canceled. I wish I had gone. In the aching of those days, of that leaving, I wanted one more time to walk into her space. To stretch my body out on her table. To ease into the candle’s light, the quiet music, the sure touch of her hands. To be once more with this friend I had known since before she became a massage therapist.
Early on, the easing into was not so easy. To allow myself the time, the space to be touched. To risk someone’s learning her way around my body. Around me. To receive. But at Betsey’s table I learned. We learned.
She knows the spiritedness of flesh. She is wise to the connections between body and spirit and teases out the boundaries. She understands geography; that the body is the spirit’s landscape, which is not separate from it but both takes and gives it form.
She is a celebrant. She knows of broken bodies. Of communion. Of re-membering. At her table. She knows of pouring out. Of grace. Of integrity. Of mercy. At her table. She knows of sacraments. Of oil. Of flame. Of touch. Of heart. At her table.
I miss her touch.
Questions for reflection
Do you have a person in whom you experience touch as a gift for both body and spirit? How are you tending the connections between spirit and body these days? Are you in need of a space, a practice that will provide balm and healing? Where might you find this?
From Sacred Journeys © Jan L. Richardson
I am deeply grateful for this. It mirrors what I have with my friend Connie who has worked with me for nearly 20 years. I have always felt there was something sacramental about the times she has laid hands on me. May the ending of Lent and the turn into Holy Week find you resourced and able to receive whatever comes!