The Healing Touch
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For most of my childhood and adult life, I had been very dismissive of miracles portrayed in the New Testament, including the healing stories. I read them narrowly and very literally, and I absolutely disbelieved in a deity engaged in supernatural interventions that defy the laws of nature and cure incurable diseases, available only to those who have faith in Jesus.
Interestingly, it was through Buddhism that I came to an understanding of New Testament healing stories that allows me to claim them as a significant part of my own theology. More specifically, Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and his beautiful book, Living Buddha, Living Christ, helped me see the beauty of these Christian healing stories. From that book:
Mindfulness is very much like the Holy Spirit. Both are agents of healing. When you have mindfulness, you have love and understanding, you see more deeply, and you can heal the wounds in your own mind. The Buddha was called the King of Healers. In the Bible, when someone touches Christ, he or she is healed. It is not just touching a cloth that brings about a miracle. When you touch deep understanding and love, you are healed…. When you are really there, showing your loving-kindness and understanding, the [healing] energy of the Holy Spirit is in you.
“When you touch deep understanding and love, you are healed.” This was an epiphany moment for me, helping me understand the healing stories of the Christian Scriptures in a way that was faithful to my own religious convictions. The story of the hemorrhaging woman in the Gospel of Mark is one that stands out for me. This woman, who remains unnamed, had been hemorrhaging for 12 years, despite medical treatments that had cost her all that she owned, leaving her worse off and in utter despair. But she had heard of Jesus and she believed that to be near him was to be in the presence of a profound and healing love, acceptance and understanding.
She so trusted that deep understanding and love that she, a woman who under Jewish law should have kept herself bound to her home, instead became empowered enough to disregard the law, at risk of being caught and punished, and go out into the crowded street where she would have to rub up against other people, all to surreptitiously touch Jesus’ robe.
The story goes on to say that at the moment his robe was touched, Jesus felt his power drain from him, and he stopped suddenly in the midst of a great crowd of people. Ever mindfully present, Jesus paused to find out who had touched him. He stopped because it was important to publically acknowledge the faith and courage of this unnamed woman and forever end her emotional and social isolation. The woman approached Jesus, trembling with fear, and admitted she had touched him. Rather than shame her for her audacity or condemn her for violating the purity laws, Jesus openly and lovingly called her “daughter” and affirmed that her own faith had healed her.
In the past, that word “faith,” in the context of the New Testament, always upset me. As someone brought up Catholic, I associated it with faith in Jesus and the Catholic Church as the exclusive source of salvation, and I didn’t have that kind of belief. But, I understand now that the faith this story talks about is much broader and universal, and each of us can have this faith.
It is faith that depends on our own state of being. Are we mindful of and truly present with our own vulnerabilities, fears and sorrows—and those of others? Do we have faith in and show loving-kindness to ourselves and to others, regardless of our fears, shame, vulnerabilities and sorrows? Do we have the kind of faith in the existence and healing power of deep love and understanding that the hemorrhaging woman had?
If so, then I say we have faith in ultimate reality; we have faith in the Way of the Buddha and the Way of Jesus. With that faith we can know and touch God, however we conceive of God. We can be healed. And we can touch others with love, understanding and compassion and help them to heal.
And what are we being healed of? Fair question. Do I believe that deep love and understanding cures incurable diseases? I’ll answer by saying, for me, healing is a different and much broader concept with a more beneficial outcome than a medical cure of a medical illness. The most beneficial result is that we be able to heal our hearts and minds. And I don’t know of a more powerful medicine for healing our hearts and minds than deep compassion, understanding and the power of loving touch, as in the story of the hemorrhaging woman.
What the writer of this Gospel knew nearly 2000 years ago, and what the Buddha knew 2500 years ago—that “our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion”—is actually being scientifically proven now. We know from the research work of psychoanalysts such as John Bowlby beginning in the 1930s, and of primatologists such as Harry Harlow during the 1950s and 60s that humans cannot thrive without touch. Without human touch that communicates love and caring, understanding and acceptance, we are emotionally scarred and stunted.
In the last five decades there has been a considerable amount of scientific research demonstrating that caring touch heals, and it heals in all sorts of ways, physically and emotionally. Caring touch makes premature babies gain weight faster, strengthens their immune and nervous systems and enables them to thrive. Touch helps people who are HIV positive strengthen their immune system and produce more killer cells that fight infections.
Touch helps heart disease patients to lower blood pressure, reducing harmful stress hormones and releasing healing endorphin hormones. Touch helps people with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. Touch helps reduce depression and anxiety, both in the person being touched and in the person offering the soothing touch. Studies demonstrate that touch even helps athletes win more games, especially when the touch happens at emotionally-filled moments and when stakes are high.
In short, caring human touch actually changes us at a molecular, chemical, emotional and energy level. On top of all that, it changes us at a spiritual level—and I call that healing.
How is it that touch heals? Well, it is tied to the intention with which the touch is offered. Researchers have been able to demonstrate that there is a larger healing impact when the giver of the touch is feeling love or caring toward the person he or she is touching. The greatest healing impact is when there is a synchronicity of intentions and emotions between the giver and the receiver of the touch, as there was in the 2000 year old story of Jesus and the hemorrhaging woman.
We heal, we derive well-being, when we are touched with deep love and understanding, when we are in synchrony with or open to that deep love and understanding. And what is the greatest disease around the world today that cries out for healing? I agree with Mother Theresa when she said:
The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or cancer; it is being unwanted, unloved and uncared for. Of all the diseases I have known, loneliness is the worst. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair and hopelessness is love. There are many people in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love.
May we offer that healing love, that healing touch. May we be healed.
home congregation is the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City where she serves as a Lay Worship Associate, member of the Welcome Committee, the Diversity Task Force, and the Peace and Justice Committee.
- The Healing Touch - April 1, 2015
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