“Meeting Matter: It Matters How We Touch and are Touched By Life”

I recently returned from an intense week at Great Hucklow. I was a part of the Summer School team and together some 60 or more of us were exploring “Theology in the Flesh”: How Might Our Embodied Experiences Shape Our Answers To Life’s Ultimate Questions?”. As part of the week everyone attended or lead an engagement group. This year I was co-facilitating, with Rev Sarah Tinker, a group we had called “Sacred the Body”. We were exploring our bodily experiences and how we experience and live in the body of life, how this affects us and how we affect it. Looking at what life has done to us and what we have dine to life and to try and find better ways to recognise the sacredness of our lives and the whole of life.

I was grateful there was no major health problems this year. If you remember last year my co-facilitator was unable to attend and during the week about a third of the people at Hucklow were struck down by the Norovirus.

I was particularly grateful to work alongside Sarah. I feel we complimented one another. What we created together, along with the thirteen participants, was far more than the sum of the parts we brought to our time together. I know I have grown as a result of the experience and I believe that others did too

Each day we explored the theme “Sacred the Body” from a variety of perspectives. iI was fascinating to observe the ways that different people interacted with the subject, Sarah and myself and with each other. It was deep work, challenging at times, but I feel that we held them through the process. I am sure that many of us discovered new truth and understandings, I know that I did. The experience changed me, it opened me to new truths, but this was not pain free and my word it took a lot out of me. Summer School is like that.

Of all the themes that we explored I think the one that touched me the most was the one we titled “Aspects of the Body: Meeting with the World”. I noticed a shift within the group dynamic and people began to really get into the marrow of the subject this day. It was an attempt to explore what David Whyte has called the “conversational nature of life”, by reflecting on the two most visible aspects of our bodies, our hands and our faces. I introduced the subject by suggesting that our faces symbolise how life touches us and as a result how we face life in response to this “conversation”. While our hands express how we touch life. You see our hands are one of the tools, perhaps the most significant, with which we work with one another within this our material world.

Our hands and faces are the most exposed aspects of our humanity. If we look at them and at one another, they have many stories to tell. Our hands and our faces show our vulnerability, but also our power to both love, create and damage. Who we are is written on our faces and what we do is shown through our hands.

Abraham Joshua Heschel said of the human face.

“A human being has not only a body but also a face…A face is a message, a face speaks, often unbeknown to the person. Is not the human face a living mixture of mystery and meaning? We are all able to see it, and are all unable to describe it. Is it not a strange marvel that among so many hundreds of millions of faces, no two faces are alike? And that no face remains quite the same for more than one instant? The most exposed part of the body, it is the least describable, a synonym for an incarnation of uniqueness. Can we look at a face as if it were a commonplace?”

Among many things Heschel says that no two faces are alike. Now I’m sure some will object and say “what about identical twins?”

Now I recently had an experience with two seemingly identical faces. A few weeks ago I conducted a wedding for a couple. The groom is an identical twin and I was told that his brother would be flying in from Australia for the rehearsal. Now when I first met them I could not tell them apart, after all they were genetically identical. They were the same, but then again they were not. After a while I began to notice differences in them. They were not as identical as they first appeared. Life had shaped them in different ways and I could see this in their faces and their bodies. One of them even appeared a little taller than the other, although I suspect that this was more about how they carried themselves.

So here were two identical faces that had been somehow changed by how life had touched them. Our faces show who we are to one another. Mine certainly does. I do not have a poker face. How I am feeling is written all over my face. I am particularly sensitive to how other people are feeling, I am aware of this as I look into the faces of others. Summer school revealed my deep sensitivity to the emotions of others; I see it in their faces, hear it in their voices and notice it in their body language. I find this exhausting at times. From a child I have always had a heightened awareness of the feeling of others. I used to consider it a great handicap, I no longer do so. I have to be careful of it though. For there have been times when it has been too much and as a result I have found myself turning away from life.

Our faces reveal so much of who we are, it I written all over them. Think about when you meet up with and old friend or relative, one who you have not seen for many years. How often do they say or do we ourselves say “come on let’s have a good look at you” and how often do they or do we then look into one another’s faces to see how we are? And isn’t the response often fascinating for it either brings immense joy or gut wrenching sadness as we see our loved one as they are, for it is written all over our faces. I remember in my darkest days how I used to hate people doing this to me, for I was afraid that they would be able to see right into my soul and know that things were not ok. For how I am, I know, is written all over my face.

Our hands say much about who we are too. There are stories in those lines and scars on our hands. There are many memories in our hands as there is in all of our bodies. Our bodies carry so much of our lives within them; we can express who we are in the world through our bodies, particularly through our hands.It is through our hands that we interact with the world. They express so much of who we are and what we do to the body of life that we interact with life. We are not passive beings in this life. We touch life as much as life touches us.

It matters how we touch life, how we interact with each other. For how matter touches matter, really matters. We need to be careful and loving with our hands, the world needs us to touch one another and life gently for all that we do impacts, it really matters. We are all a part of the co-creation of life.

Just think about all the things that you have touched already today, in fact think about the last few days. How many people have you waved at or gestured towards, was there love in the interaction? How many people have you physically come into contact with? How many hands of you shook, people you have hugged or patted on the back? Perhaps those you have kissed? don't worry I won't go any further. What have you picked up or dropped, opened or closed, torn apart or repaired?

What have you touched in life, how have you touched life? Have you done so loving, gently, or have you done so aggressively? Have you brought violence to life?

It matters how we touch life for how we touch life plays a part in the healing or the destruction of this thing called matter that we are all a part of. Matter really matters you know.

Life is a conversation and it matters, it really matters how we engage with matter, with the skin where in and the skin we live in, with life. We have all been touched by life in so many ways and we all touch life in so many ways. It matters how we do so. We can not alter how we have been touched, we carry that with us in our being, in our bodies and sometimes this really shows. We cannot change this. That said we are not passively blown about in the winds of life. We can do something about how we ourselves touch life. It matters how we touch life, how we take care of the little bit of life we interact with. We can do this with love and care, or we can do it violence and lack of care.

It is in our hands. So what is your choice to be.

How will you face life today?

How will you touch life today?

It matters it really does

Matter really matters…