As I was washing my hands for the
umpteenth time yesterday, unsuccessfully substituting yet another song for the
ubiquitous Happy Birthday (speakers of
foreign languages, please tell me what
song you use for that 20 seconds) I thought about how suddenly our hands have
taken center stage in our lives these last few months.
Yes, they have always been there,
hanging off the ends of my arms, serviceable but not, in my case, particularly
glamorous. (I am usually on a ladder applying spackle to nail holes in my
gallery walls with my index finger—the only paint my nails receive comes out of
a can from Home Depot. Not for me the 2-inch talons bedecked with sequins—how
do people type with those? I barely have the dexterity to slide out my
credit card from its hidey hole in my wallet.)
So of course, I started thinking about
Peche-Merle, France in 20,000 BC. (As would you, I’ll bet.)
In Peche-Merle, a cave painting of
horses, circa 20,000 BC is silhouetted with human hands, which scholars believe
may have been painted by a shaman to induce magic within the hunting culture.
Also, in Catal Huyuk, Turkey, excavations have revealed frescoed walls with
rows of hands from 7,000 BC.
Similar
prehistoric hand imagery has been found painted on rocks in Wadi Sera, Libya
and in the Dumboshawa region of Zimbabwe. In the Punic era (from 250 BC)
Carthaginian funeral stele incorporated carved stone hands as symbols of
divinity. In addition, cave paintings and carvings of hands have been found in
Algeria dating from 3,000 BC.
Every
culture seems to have elevated the hand, Pre-Columbian, Toltec, Ancient
Egyptian, Phoenician, Roman, Nubian, Berber, and Arab as well as Christian and
Jewish. The hand appears both as
talisman and symbol. It is named,
revered, feared, its power protective and mysterious. Did you know that the wearing of wedding
rings links the hand to the heart by the third finger of the right hand, the
veins of which are said to connect directly to the heart?
Our own hands carry that power
now. While the rite of the King’s Touch,
the laying on of hands to cure disease, persisted in the English monarchy into
the 18th century and in the French until the 19th, healers, religious and
secular all over the world, practice it,
literally and figuratively, today.
We have the healing hands of doctors
and nurses, the hands of cooks and delivery persons, of postal workers and
firefighters and all who touch the things that bring us nourishment and
entertainment and solace and even life.
And really, our future is literally in our own hands, chapped from the
soap, tired from the daily tasks, hungry for the touch of a handshake but
communicating by the touch of a screen or keyboard. Wash them (please, I really need a new song)
rest them, use them to create comfort and change and to win the fight against
this pandemic. Touch hearts. The power is in your hands.
Photographer Najib Joe Hakim’s hands created
this powerful art moment. Art Heals.
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