Just the right touch.

A lingering embrace at the funeral home, the playful tickling of a baby's toes, a quick good-bye kiss before starting a new day--even here Jesus shows us the way. As Patrick McCormick writes, we too possess the power of healing hands.

There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the human body. Nothing is holier than that high art form. Bending before the human is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hands on a human body.

--German romantic poet Novalis

Summertime and, as Gershwin noted, the livin' is easy. Or at least it's sunny. Long, bright days stretch out like a warmed cat on a well-lit porch. Sunlight wakes us before the alarm goes off and lingers over our backyard barbecues and badminton games till well past 9 or 10 at night. Gratefully, even gleefully, we slough off our wintry cocoons and slip into shorts, sandals, and T-shirts, heading for the beach, the ballpark, or the golf course in hopes of soaking up as much of those golden rays as possible. After months of hibernating under skies that are gray, wet, and cold, our skin is hungry, famished for daylight, and we mean to bathe and bask in it.

Of course it's not just light our skin is hungry for. We're also hungry for touch: for the hug, hold, and comfort of another's hand, for the soft caress of a lover, for the rocking coziness of a nursing mother, even for the gentle stroke of a purring pet. We want someone to give us a goodnight kiss, to tuck us in before we go to bed, to hug us before we go out into the cold, dark world or when we come home from a tough day. We want someone to take our hand when we're frightened about getting on the school bus, going out into the skating rink, or walking into the doctor's examining room.

When we're sick we want someone to sit at our bedside, mop our brow. When we're tired and sore, we want someone to rub our aching bones, massage our temples, or just hold our hand and tell us it will be OK. When we're thrilled and excited, we want to hug somebody, jump up and down like we did when we were 10, or slap hands in a high five. And when we're numbed and shocked by grief and sorrow, we want someone to hold us, to cushion the racking sobs, and to protect us from a world grown too dark.

As kids we ran blocks and blocks to get to someone who would kiss the swelling bruise of a fall. We brought old cuts and healed gashes home from school or camp in the hopes that someone would touch, kiss, or hug them.

As young parents and siblings we passed around newborns and hugged, cuddled, and cooed to them. We stuck our faces into the soft warm flesh of their bellies and blew raspberries into their navels.

And as tired and worn adults we've crawled into beds and snuggled up against the warm accepting skin of our beloved.

Touch is our oldest, most primitive and pervasive sense. It's the first sense we experience in the womb and the last one we lose before death. And our skin, which has about 50 touch receptors for every square centimeter and about 5 million sensory cells overall, is hungry for touch. We need touch to live, to grow, to calm and protect ourselves, and to make peace with one another.

Study after study of our mammal cousins have shown that young animals that are touched a great deal grow more quickly and soundly, develop stronger immune responses, exhibit more playfulness and less fear, tolerate stress better, and have a greater resistance to all sorts of physiological harm.

And this is not just true of lab rats and primates. Human neonates, preemies, and infants who have been touched and held regularly do much better than those who have not. Children who are picked up, cuddled, cradled, rocked, petted, and stroked have been shown to gain weight and grow faster and to start crawling, walking, and grabbing earlier. They are also more alert and active, sleep more soundly, and develop stronger immune systems and higher I.Q.s than those left in their cribs.

History seems to show this, too. At the turn of the century the infant mortality rate in many foundling homes hovered between 80 and 90 percent. Uncounted numbers of these warehoused children died of marasmus, a wasting disease that also struck many upper-middle-class infants whose mothers had been advised not to spoil their children by picking them up too often. It was only in the 1930s that American hospitals and physicians began to discover that a failure to cuddle and hold children had devastating physiological and psychological results. Tender loving care is just what the doctor should have ordered.

Today we're getting a better sense of the importance of touch, recovering the wisdom of our bodies and relearning some of the wisdom of ancient Eastern traditions. Hospice workers are trained to hold and touch the sick and dying. Heart-attack victims are encouraged to get a pet to stroke or cuddle. Ancient disciplines like accupressure and shiatsu massage are becoming increasingly popular, as are a wide variety of physical and emotional therapies relying on the healing power of touch.

Still, touch remains hard for many of us, and a lot of us continue to hug each other as if we were afraid a good squeeze could set off an explosion or--worse--some sexual attraction. Part of the blame probably goes to an entertainment media that offers us a very skewed picture of how we touch one another. We see lots of folks on TV jumping into bed with each other at the drop of a hat, and lots of others beating the living daylights out of somebody--but we hardly ever see people just holding hands, or hugging for more than two seconds. Maybe that would be too dull for our TV eyes.

Maybe it also explains why we pay the folks who offer tender loving care in our nurseries and nursing homes so little money, because we don't value touch enough.

Of course the recent barrage of reports about all sorts of abuse and harassment probably hasn't made us feel any more comfortable with touch. When we hear about parents, teachers, coaches, clergy, and bosses caught touching their children and charges in uninvited, destructive ways, it spooks us all a bit and we get even shyer about touching others. How sad that we are being so well educated about how not to touch each other, and getting little assistance learning how to touch and be touched. After all, the solution to touching badly is not to give up on touch. It's to learn a joyful, loving, and compassionate touch.

Jesus as a big toucher. The New Testament has 14 accounts of him reaching out to touch another person, often with healing, always with compassion. He reached out especially to touch the untouchables: lepers whose skin was mottled with disease, prostitutes whom others touched and then scapegoated, sick people with open sores, blind people thought to be cursed from birth, even the dead. He also let others touch him--a woman with a long-term hemorrhage, a weeping penitent who lavished tears on his feet, and small children who probably played in his lap and stroked his beard.

What's critical about Jesus' touch was that it was not hierarchical, controlling, or abusive. He didn't touch to manipulate, to push, punish, or belittle. And he didn't touch in ways that weren't invited and welcomed, in ways that failed to respect others. Instead, his touch was compassionate, gentle, loving--and miraculous. It was also generous, given in large doses and gestures, not small, jealously guarded dabs. The Word Made Flesh blessed, hugged, anointed, laid on hands, and embraced.

We may not have the gift of a miraculous healing touch, but we do have the capacity to give and receive a touch that is compassionate, loving, and respectful, and to model that touch for our children. We have a capacity to give comfort, solace, pleasure, and joy with our touch, and in that way to embody God's compassionate grace. Your touch can be more graceful and warm and loving than that of the friendliest kitten on a warm couch. That's healing power enough for anybody.

By PATRICK MCCORMICK, an assistant professor of ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.