Not Just a Manicure

While visiting a patient last week, I witnessed a family member giving our patient a manicure.  It was beautiful to see.  Both were enjoying themselves immensely.

A manicure isn’t much, is it?  It doesn’t take long, or much skill to clean and polish nails.  From a hospice standpoint, there aren’t any studies looking at the pain-management benefits of manicures.

The extended touch, though, brought tremendous blessing to our patient.  People who are terminally ill often feel ostracized.  Having endured hospitalizations, catheters, IV’s and clinical sterile environments, they also feel de-humanized.  Human touch makes them feel human again, a part of the rest of us.

When I visit a patient, I have a hand on their shoulder, or I hold their hand during much of the call.  I connect with them that way.  I tell them that I respect them and will treat them with all the dignity of a human who is created in the Maker’s image.

Jesus was always touching people.  He brought children to Himself, and laid hands on them while He blessed them.  Once, a woman reached out to touch his cloak, hoping to receive his healing power. The gospel writers describe Him putting hands on most of the people he healed.  He didn’t have to, of course.  He had power to perform miracles from a distance.

Paul also laid hands on people as he prayed for their healing, or that they would receive the Holy Spirit.  He instructs us to “lift holy hands in prayer,” as if we are reaching to touch our Lord.

Even John, the apostle, got into this touching.  He notes in 1 John that he knew the Lord, and that Jesus was one whom he had touched with his own hands.

So what is with all this touching business?  Is there something mystical and powerful about human-to-human touch?  Do our spirits talk to each other that way?  Do people receive healing when we pray while laying hands on them?

We are, as the theologians say, embodied souls.  That is to say, our souls (mind, will and emotion) are woven into our physical bodies.  They are one.  We are not physical bodies into which a soul has been placed.  That latter way of understanding ourselves is insufficient.

Given that knowledge, I do think that through touch we commune spirit to spirit.  The reaches of our physical bodies determine our spirits’ posturing.  Even the atheist psychologists acknowledge that there is something beyond the intellect.

So that manicure, a simple act, was a deep, spiritual, ancient, supernatural, and loving work.   We are created for that kind of deep meaning.