Variables of Touch

The man standing behind the pulpit was trying not to cry. His pain, our pain, was palpable. His message was about war. Wars. Why. When will they end.

His stories were horrific.

How an innocent young civilian is dehumanized and reprogrammed to kill his own kind. And then, what happens to them when, and if, they come home.

I listened to a soldier cry on C-SPAN, on the way to church. The killing. What it was doing to him. What it meant to him to kill. And have his brother in arms to be killed . . . right beside him.

I couldn't help think of the war document in the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Deuteronomy. With the formula laid out in cold merciless detail the rules for sacral war.

Kill! Baby! Kill! Save the virgins! But Kill! Baby! Kill!


When the Lord your God gives it into your hand . . . you shall put all the males to the sword. You shall annihilate them -- the Hittities and the Amorites, the Canaanitees and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites -- just as the Lord your God has commanded. But you can save the spoils of war. The virgins. The children. The goats and sheep and oxen and cattle. The stuff. The property. Those misfortunates born on the bottom of the penis-penetrating hierarchy . . .

My deaf ear!

Sorry God.

Your damn book on sacral war stinks.

Nothing personal.

But you are an abject failure for inspiration.

For inspiration I have to go to a humanist church of all places.

We sang three hymns in the course of the service. War songs.

If there are two signature hymns in a Unitarian Universalist Church, it would be #123 "Spirit of Life," and the other is #270 "We are a Gentle, Angry People."

If my descendants should elect to hold a gathering of sorts when the round Quaker Oat box filled with the ashes of what is left of me is to be disposed in some post hole, they can sing that song. The spirit of life song.

Maybe, they would be in a better mood for the gentle angry people song. It will be up to them if they want to sing at all. Actually, the telling of jokes might be more fitting.

We are a gentle and angry people, a justice-seeking people, young and old together kind of people, a land of many colors people.

And by the time it gets to the 5th verse, we are a gay and straight together kind of people.

That verse would never, ever, ever be sung in my old Seventh-day Adventist Church. The church that worships the literalness of sacral war.

Finally, the movement of the clock hands indicated to the peace-activist-preacher man that enough was enough. We got it. We had really gotten it.

And as preacher man sat down, I was startled.

I thought I was in a room full of manikins. Somebody, somewhere, activated a switch. Everybody raised their hands, in a circular motion, rubbed them together. There was a hint of swoosh sound in the air.

And then I realized.

A visible, but silent, applause.

We sang one more song, #168, "One More Step." We will take one more step, 'till there is peace for us.

My friend Equator Rainier jarred my memory a few days ago, after reading a story on this blog. A story about touching . . . touching at the end of another church service.

This church too is a touchy church.

A circle of unity, holding hands, during the parting reading.

Equator was crying out. About his need for touch. To touch. To be touched. And the abhorrent reaction when it happens.

We have this agreement, Equator Rainer and The Refectory Manager . . .

The Refectory Manger's expectation of Equator is that he will cry out, with his feelings, through his finger tips, on the qwerty keyboard, as he feels the need.

Equator's expectation is that The Refectory Manager is there to listen.

And for Equator, the other day, a touch went wrong.

Was it the naked skin?

Was it the petal of a flower that was placed on his skin?

Was it the circumstances of how it was placed there?

Three variables. Of touch.

And today, I was forced into facing those same variables.

I had to be part of that circle.

I had to touch.

Older ladies on each side of me.

Naked skin.

The venue of someone's touch, touching me.

The circumstances of being touched.

And that preacher man just had to preach another sermon for the closing reading . . . and so the touch was painful in its never-ending lingeringness.

I couldn't help but remember back to that old story that Equator found and reminded me of.

How different the variables were then.

How I relished his touch.

Naked skin.

The venue of someone's touch, touching me.

The circumstances of being touched.

The reciprocity of touch.

But today, changes in those variables.

Today, it was distressful.

To hold the hands of two women. For what seemed like forever.

To have my hands held by the hands of two women.

I suppose there are men who would die for that.

But not this one.

The variables are different.

The irresistible urge to recoil.

It was a gawd-awful way to end a church service.

Must remember to leave during the singing of the last hymn next time.

But what I don't know . . .

For those women . . . to have to hold the hand of some grizzled old scowling geezer might have been simply the quintessence of UUism for them . . .

Spirit of life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion.
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea;
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice.
Roots hold me close; wings set me free;
Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.

Like Mother Teresa, they were both able and willing to touch me.

The untouchable.

Something, someone, God annihilates in his jealous little sacral wars.

The Refectory Manager