My father in law died and was buried yesterday.
His funeral started with a mess in a chapel. A young priest with a merry round head preached to the people gathered in the small chapel. He talked about the importance of touch.
Touch is an important issue in a human life. We can touch a person with our eyes, with the words that we speak, we can metaphorically touch a person’s heart but the most important is maybe the physical touch. The physical touch can be clinical, casual, abusive or loving and supportive. What they all have in common is that they have an intention, nobody touches without any intention. Therefore touch is an intended movement from one to another.
When you touch another person with a loving, supportive intention, something magical happens. The person relaxes and seems to come to the point of contact, muscles there become more alive.
Touching someone in this way means confirming his or hers existence.
It is like saying, “I see you and respect you for who you are.”
Recognition is a vital ingredient of life and touch is a strong way of recognizing someone. Nowadays there are somatic psychotherapists that promote psychotherapy without touch. This is a reaction to the threat of sewing a person in puritan countries like the U.S.A. for sexual abuse in therapy. I am sure that this sometimes happens but if you know that 30% of all people, as children, were somehow sexually abused in their family we cannot say, let’s put all children in an orphanage directly after being born to prevent them from possible abusive family members.
Therefore, I admire the priest, whose name I do not know, for speaking freely about the importance of touching each other. Especially because the priests are scrutinized for all the sexual abuse that happen(s)(ed) in church. And it all started with a simple touch.
Jesus touched to heal, Judas kissed to betray and Lionel Ritchie sings, ‘It started with a kiss, never thought it would come to this.’
It is not in the touch itself but in the intention and awareness of the touching person.
