“When a woman calmly grazes the end of her … finger across any exposed skin on a man’s body and offers a verbal or non-verbal vote of confidence or support, his world changes at that instant.”
Friday I was in conversation with two women friends who I now realize are among my muses.
Gustave Moreau, Hesiod and the Muse (1891)—Musée d’Orsay, Paris
The Muses/ˈmjuːzɨz/ (Ancient Greek: ΜοῦσαιMousai; perhaps from the o-grade of the Proto-Indo-European root *men- “think”) in Greek mythology are the goddesses of the inspiration of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, song-lyrics, and myths that were related orally for centuries in these ancient cultures. They were later adopted by the Romans as a part of their pantheon.
As we talked, one stood behind me, her hand lightly on my neck. I remember feeling that so many times with my wife Marci, when she was well and able to touch. It is the synergy between us here that is creative, what Lester Ward in his Glimpses of the Cosmos called “the universal constructive principle of nature.”
Women’s jaws would drop if they could listen in on my conversations with married men. …
♦◊♦
The Power in Her Pinky
The truth for these men lies in the end of her pinky finger.
In that finger is packed an unspeakable power many wives choose to ignore or have yet to discover.
When a woman calmly grazes the end of her pinky finger across any exposed skin on a man’s body and offers a verbal or non-verbal vote of confidence or support, his world changes at that instant.
It’s so simple and so tender that men are afraid to even ask for it. We barely talk about it with each other! We don’t want to appear soft. We don’t want to risk a woman’s reaction to our weakness.
What is it?
It is the power of a delicate, skin-to-skin touch of feminine acceptance and approval.
When a woman calmly grazes the end of her pinky finger across any part of a man’s body and offers a verbal or non-verbal vote of confidence or support, his world changes at that instant.
It is so powerful we are often left speechless. Our throats and tear ducts begin to swell and we quietly indulge in the comforting reassurance of the moment. If we could package the word “love”, it would feel like this when the bottle was opened.
Our “well-being meter” pegs out and our heart rate and breathing slows.
Every husband I know is dying to feel this. Simple, easy-peasy feminine acceptance and approval. Nothing else. Just…this.
Muses at Parnassas, detail from a painting by Simon Vouet, circa 1640, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
The gender relationships here are not bounded by a person’s biological sex; a man can give this touch to a woman, and human gender roles and identities are fluid.
(Thanks to Isabel Andrew’s blog Musings, etc. for the link to Steve Horsmon’s post)
I’m now clearly feeling love as a flow toward another person, or between two people. While it’s between individuals, the love itself is generic, a kind of energy (whatever that is), metaphorically like light or water. In the moment, I may have a lot of it, or little. Good relationships create more of it, which is then available to flow elsewhere. I feel myself in a force field of love that includes friends, family and acquaintances. Some connections are stronger than others. And flows can move more in one direction than another.
It’s like light, in that it illuminates the particularities of the beloved, the eyes, the fingernails, the smoothness or wrinkle in the skin, in a positive way, while in itself not any of these.
When I go to the gym or do warm-ups for Aikido recently, I go through a series of physical exercises involving feeling & visualizing energy (whatever that is) flowing into, through and from me along various lines. It’s not just mental; muscles, connective tissue and bones are aligning and moving. I think the genius of O’Sensei, the founder of Aikido, was to see such flows as love, translating combat imagery into love. He wrote explicitly about that. I think it can be seen as an interesting take on Jesus’s primary message. Practicing those flows, O’Sensei in his 80’s at 4’11” could respond to multiple simultaneous sword attackers with safety for himself and all of them. I’ve seen videos of that, and it’s similar to what I’ve felt personally with Saotome Sensei, who was his direct student, Mary Heiny Sensei, and other teachers.
Seems that anger and hate can be seen similarly as energy flow. O’Sensei started from aggressive energy in his Japanese combat training, and transformed it. This association of love and hate appears in Christianity in Jesus and the Devil, with the incarnation of Jesus a similarly transformative event. Christian mythology begins with the loving God. Satan rebels against that. Then there is competition between Jesus and Satan for ascendancy.
The Devil is the shadow and Jesus the light. – e.g., take a look at Ary Scheffer’s 1854 painting:
The metaphor of God as light appears in the burning bush and in God’s leading the Israelites through the wilderness for forty years with a pillar of light; the creation was initiated by God’s creation of light. “The LORD my God illumines my darkness,” Psalm 18:28; “The LORD is my light…,” Psalm 27:1. And Jesus carries that on: “…we walk in the light, as he is in the light…,” John 1:7.
In popular imagery today, “receiving the golden light of God:”
Notice the intense eroticism in this image. God’s love is erotic.
An ongoing inquiry into change, stability and connecton, by Ben Shaine
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Living on Unstable Ground 