Talking Hands: Participants in a Sacred Conversation

For some time now I’ve been waking up in the morning because one or two of my fingers seem to be trying to get my attention. Sometimes it’s my thumb. Sometimes my index finger. Sometimes two fingers together. They seem alive with a gentle current of energy.

At first I dismissed it. But after months of this happening, I began to wonder.

What if our hands are participants in a sacred conversation?

As curiosity led me to explore this further, I was surprised to discover that many traditions have paid close attention to the language of the hands. In Hindu and Buddhist traditions, mudras—sacred hand gestures—are used in meditation and prayer to cultivate particular qualities of awareness, often drawing on associations between the fingers and the five elements. Jin Shin Jyutsu, a Japanese healing art, relates each finger to particular emotional attitudes and patterns of life energy. Traditional Chinese medicine likewise understands the fingers as participating in the body’s energetic meridian system. While these traditions differ in their interpretations, they share a remarkable intuition: our hands are more than instruments of action. They also participate in awareness.

In Attunement, we often speak of becoming transparent to the One who lives within us. I’ve begun to wonder if our hands are among the ways that indwelling Presence may communicate with us. That possibility has changed the way I enter my mornings.

Whether or not we fully understand how this works, I find the possibility compelling.

My mornings begin with a quiet practice of Attunement. Before I read the news, answer an email, or enter the concerns of the day, I begin with gratitude and thanksgiving. Then I take three deep breaths and enter a process of clearing my own pattern, releasing whatever would interfere with the free movement of Life.

When that feels complete, my hands make a gentle sweeping motion, almost as though they are bowing to one another. I pause for three more breaths. I then enter a time of sanctification—a quiet opening to become more fully aligned with the Divine Presence.

Again my hands bow. After another three breaths, I enter a time of enfoldment, holding people and situations in the current of love and blessing. Again my hands bow.

Finally, I bring my hands into the shape of a steeple, my fingertips close but not touching, and slowly pray the Twenty-third Psalm. One last bow of the hands. Three quiet breaths.

This rhythm was never something I planned. It evolved naturally over time.

Somewhere along the way I realized my hands had become active participants in my prayer life. I no longer think of prayer as something I do only with my mind or my words. Increasingly, I experience prayer as something in which my whole being participates.

I’m not interested in proving that one finger means one thing and another finger means something else. I’m more interested in learning how to listen.

When a particular finger awakens me, I simply ask, “What are you trying to show me today? What quality of Life is seeking expression? What blessing wants to move through these hands?”

Sometimes an answer comes. Sometimes only a deeper stillness.

Either is enough.

Perhaps prayer begins long before words. It may begin in the quiet intelligence of the body, where the currents of Divine Life are already moving through the heart, the breath, and the hands. As we become still enough to listen, we may discover that communion with the Divine is not something we create. It is something we awaken to.

Perhaps becoming the temple of the living God is not simply a theological idea. Perhaps it is a lived experience, discovered one breath, one prayer, and one quiet gesture at a time.

Tomorrow morning, before the world asks for your attention, become still for a few moments. Notice your breathing. Notice your heart. Notice your hands. You may discover, as I am beginning to discover, that the conversation has already begun.

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