By Rev. Dr. C.E McAdoo
May 11, 2024
GREETINGS TO ALL! Sometimes, I don’t know when or where or what may come for a conversation piece for an article that I may be writing on a certain week.
Recently I was at a Memorial Service/Funeral, and I was asked to make a statement during the time when people were asked to get up and say something. For some reasons this is what came to me, and I thought I would share it. I said to the family and those who were there, because I had known the person who passed and the family, but had not seen them in a minute; “when sick in context, remember contact."
In this day and age, we are always seeking context, because of the internet, and sometimes I think that’s part of a person not doing as well; the aggravation of not being able to get on. You may be seeking context in a certain way and the internet will send you to all kind of places. However, when you go to make contact with someone, that’s a direct situation between you and that person or that particular situation.
So, let me get the cat out of the bag on the front end. To be in contact with someone, it covers a lot of areas, and many times in a physical sense. Let me say, some people, they privilege that distance as a part of their personality. People like myself and others, I live in a world of church and community contact. I have to be super careful myself in those moments, times and places, where I may be in contact with all sexes as well as ages in touching and contacting people. This is no disclaimer, it’s just a true reality for some of us who are in that kind of world. It’s also a true reality for those persons who, whether you touched them or called them or said anything to them, they from my perspective prefer not to be touched, and I’ll say this is a gentle way, they feel they are doing just as well.
I won’t put a value judgment on that, I do think there is much value in those of us who are kind of gregarious, quote/unquote real good touchers, and not just physical touches but touch with voice touch with eye contact touch with love, touch with eye contact. We’ll get to all that later. But I wanted to get that out on the front end.
When I’m talking about this contact, I’m talking about it in a gentle way, to where it’s going to affect many of us in many kinds of ways. I think I mentioned this before, I think it has a lot to do with our early development.
I’m thinking about my son, and we had an auntie who was a natural kisser! Sometimes my son would be running from her because she would put those sloppy kisses of hers on him, and I love ya, love ya , love ya, and oh would he run!! Anyway, I thought that would be good to get us out on the front end. To say this is truly not a disclosure, but a reality that we all need to face!
With that all out, let’s dig down deeper, into a place I pray will empower us, to be people of positive human contact. I’m going to run through a few and then I will refer to a researcher who have done work on this. Let’s start with the basic handshake.
· HANDSHAKE
This contact with people can really mean a lot. Sometime when you shake someone’s hand, (and I’ve had it happen) when I have shaken someone’s hand and I’ve felt the spirit of thrust in me, and I certainly appreciated shaking that hand. I have also shaken some people’s hand, (and in that touch with them, and I know and can say it right off the bat), they did not want me there. Some of them, I found out later, had a very raciest attitude, and some of them just didn’t like me because, and I don’t know what the “because” was. The basic handshake is what we do in America and other places, and there’s another thing; even when you go places and you hear a woman say, “I saw you over there and wanted to come over and just touch base with you,” and that means to come over and shake your hand or do whatever, and I didn’t get to do that. That’s a part of our culture.
· THE QUESTIONABLE HUG
The reason I have the “Questionable Hug” is because you know if you are in certain situations (and I’m a child of the 60’s) where you would have Communion hugs, and you know if you went to certain places, there would be a lot of hugging going on. Also, there are certain people, who privilege their space, and they probably don’t want to hug you. You can sense that by observing them, and you can see this is one of those situations and one of those persons that’s not in a big hugging mentality and attitude, and that’s why I say it’s questionable. When you are in those situations, you’ve got to know, is this the time for a hug? Then, it’s the position of the hug, to be quite honest, sometimes it’s some of my students I’ve had, it could be a frontal hug.
Then you’ve got what I call:
· THE COUSIN HUG
That one could be on both sides, and all of these are appropriate for a certain time, and that why it’s called questionable. Because you’ve got to ask yourself, “is it appropriate for me to even approach this person with a hug.” You also can get in trouble particularity for folks like myself being in the public all the time, then you hear: “yea, yea, I saw you hug so and so, and you didn’t come hug me”, well anyway, that’s why I put “questionable hug.”
Then, there’s the:
· ARM ON THE SHOULDER
I’ve gotten into this one more than anything else. Because, putting your arm on someone’s shoulder, or just the intent of raising your arm up, says that you do want to touch them. However, you want to touch them in a very respectful way. So, once again, the “arm on the shoulder” is almost as personable as a hug. But, the arm on the shoulder has more distance. Matter-of-face, when I’m leading the service, rather than ask that you hold hands, I would ask that the people touch someone’s shoulder for two reasons, number one is for distance, and the other is because it's a bonding thing, in other words, shoulders put together can strengthen one another. Sometime it’s easy to break through a person’s hand, but if you touch someone’s shoulder, it a little harder to break that.
I’ve got three or four question marks about this next one. It’s the:
· COUSIN KISS ????
I can’t say a whole lot about this one, because I don’t do a lot of it myself. I can’t say that I’ve seen it, I’ll only say that I believe that’s something that people can do with one another. I will say I’ve been in settings where I can’t say whether or not they were cousins, but it seems like they had to smooch one another on the side of the jaw.
Then, there’s the:
· COUSIN SQUEEZE AND HUG
Another part about this is, if that’s a real cousin, you add a little squeeze to the hug. However, if that’s somebody you’re not sure of, you be very careful, because with her husband there, you can feel people tense up! Then you say, uh-oh, maybe I shouldn’t have done that, so that’s why I’m trying to throw it out there!
The last of this section is:
· CHRISTIAN HISTORY OF LAYING ON HANDS
We know even today, as part of the Ordination Service in the United Methodist Church, the Bishop and others lay hands on those persons who are going through the Ordination process. The “Laying on of hands” is something that has been done down through the years, it’s a Christian tradition. We do have three or four hundred denominations in the world, and everybody may do it differently. I am reminded of some of my friends who have told me about certain situations in certain denominations where they do it differently. I am a United Methodist and hope to be one until the Lord calls me home. I believe in laying on of hands. I remember distinctly when my nephew was Ordained a Deacon, I felt so proud of Laying my Hand on him as he was moving into being a United Methodist Elder.
Now, let me talk about a researcher who has done a lot of work in this whole area. The researcher’s name is Dr. Tiffany Field, Ph D. She has written a book, entitled Touch. She has a paper trail that goes back to 1553 BC. Even with that, she also discovered some Parchment paper, with a quote on it on “The early practice of healing by touch.” Then, she further notes in 400 BC, the hand use in Greek was called: “Kheirougrgos”, which is the origin of the word surgery. So, you had some hand healings even back in those days. In some of our communities there were people who were healers, people would go to them so they could be touched by this person, just by laying on hands and talking to you. Dr. Field uses the term, “High Contact Cultures” where there is more eye contact, you speak louder and you incorporate touch on a more frequent basis. When you go to these places and see people in some of these High Contact Cultures, and there’s nothing in the room that wrong, you just have to bind yourself and see if this is what you want to do.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
In the United States and the UK, I talked earlier about the handshake, it’s considered appropriate. I think about the great basketball players from other countries, I am told when the people come in, the players greet the people by kissing them on both cheeks, and that’s common in the French culture. I have heard that one way of contact in the Eskimo culture is the rubbing of noses. We know there are different ways of touching folks, but different cultures have different ways to do that. Head touching is something that we do in the United States but in Asia to touch someone’s head is a sign of disrespect.
Many of you may or may not know it, and it may not be culturized now, but I was blessed to belong to the University of Purdue in 1964, before we really integrated at all. There were a number of white Youth at a youth meeting, and they were fascinated about my hair, and I did have some more hair back then, I’m ball headed now, but they wanted to touch my hair! I don’t know what the fascination was, but as I said in some cultures that is acceptable, but in our culture, I’m not big on somebody touching my head, but they wanted to and some of them did! I’ll just have to live with that. Also in the Middle East, if you accept something from someone, with your left hand, that’s very rude, and some folks won’t even shake your left hand, and we may have gotten that from the folks in the Middle East. They’ll shake your right hand but they won’t shake your left hand.
Lastly, there is still research going on in many countries about contact and the standard of touching. The whole contact scenario about physical touching has strong leaning for all of us, verbal, non-verbal and there are thousands of ways to touch. I leave you with the end of this particular article, be careful and be mindful that this whole contact piece is something we have to really be quite mindful of. Let me throw in a theological piece; and this is our theology as Christians, we do want to be touched by God, as we talk about that touching, then we move to the whole theological piece, that God is the Author and Creator of the world. Then Jesus, the one who was able to come into this world, and we can look at the Bible and see that He touched the woman with the issue of blood, and so many others. Then we know lastly, theologically speaking, and this is for Christians, because if you are not a Christian, you may not be touched at all. It’s the touch of the Holy Spirit, who comes in and touches us in ways that I cannot even verbalize, what it means to be touched by the Holy Spirit because it’s individual.
As we are trying to find context for the life we are living today, there is nothing better than contact, and that contact can be done in many, many powerful ways! I encourage you to do those things that are going to make a positive contact difference in someone’s life!
Love,
Charlie Edward McAdoo
Rev. Dr. C.E. McAdoo is a retired District Superintendent with the United Methodist Church.
Photo Credit CCA
