CHARMAIN NAIDOO: The loss of touch as Covid-19 refills holy fonts with fear

People talk to each other through filters — their smartphone; social media platforms such as  Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp ...

Real, face-to-face time is rare and getting rarer. We humans are disconnecting from each other. And it’s dehumanising us and turning us into robot-like automatons.

We’re being encouraged to stop touching each other by #MeToo, by employers wanting appropriate employee behaviour, by teachers at schools to keep teenage pregnancy at bay — and now by coronavirus.

Touch. It’s cathartic. It’s healing. It’s life enforcing. It’s under threat. The coronavirus, Covid-19, is changing the way we live, love and interact with each other. And not in a good way.

I use myself as an example of someone who needs touch. I have spent a lifetime keeping the black dog at bay. Depression is insidious. It creeps up on you when you’re feeling confident and in control of your life, when you think you have a handle on it ... Wham! It smacks you upside the head and throws you into a spiral that takes you into a place of hopelessness, lethargy, irritation, anger, sadness and despair that makes Dante’s “Nine Circles of Hell” look like a thrilling roller-coaster ride.

As a child, an asthmatic child, one thing worked: being cradled by my mother, rocked back to sanity as she hugged my limp airless body and sang a tuneless dirge that was at once annoying and comforting.

This damned coronavirus. It’s now threatening to ruin religious traditions that have lasted centuries. Deep-seated fears about contamination have pushed us to behave in ways that take away something of that which makes us human — interaction. At the Rosebank Catholic Church on Sunday, I reached into the cool, stone cup to dip my finger in holy water and cross myself — as I’ve done since my mother first dipped my chubby forefinger for me when I was an infant — and found the fonts had been drained.

It is the practice in my church that the sign of peace — shaking hands, or hugging those around you — is exchanged after saying the Lord’s Prayer

Then I saw the letter posted at the front door, from the Catholic Archdiocese of Johannesburg — sent out by the Vicar General, Father Paul Beukes OMI — coronavirus concerns were raised at the general priests’ meeting and guidance for the Catholic faithful were issued by His Grace, Archbishop Buti Tlhagale OMI.

The congregants were encouraged to pray for an end to this challenging situation throughout the world, and also for those afflicted with the coronavirus.

Along with seeking divine intervention, a host of precautionary measures were to be immediately enacted with regard to the celebration of Holy Mass and liturgical services:

• Holy water fonts were to be emptied.
• The blessed wafer (the Communion Host) would be served only into the hand, not on the tongue.
• The distribution of the Precious Blood (a chalice of sweet wine that congregants sip from) to the faithful was suspended.
• Deacons and extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion were urged to practise good hygiene, washing their hands before Mass, and/or using alcohol-based, antibacterial hand sanitiser before and after distributing the Host. Some of us sitting in the pews hoped that this handwashing has always been the practice.
• The faithful were told that if they were sick, or experiencing any symptoms of being sick, they were not obliged to attend Mass. In fact, out of charity, they ought not to attend.

But there was one new measure that saddened me most: the forbidding of human contact during the service.

It is the practice in my church that the sign of peace — shaking hands, or hugging those around you — is exchanged after saying the Lord’s Prayer.

I have always found it to be the most profound part of the service, the most alive, intimate part of the Holy Mass. It’s that very special moment when people, strangers, turn to each other and reach out to touch one another — physically and emotionally — as they offer each other the gift of peace.

The new directive is that there should be no physical contact and that people should nod at each other when they give the sign of peace. Individual priests could choose to omit this part all together.

Does this signal the end to one of the most important social cues that humans have: touch?

This virus! If things continue in this vein we will lose the vital social cue that is touch — that tactile gesture that signals empathy, or comfort; that wonderful thing that reminds us of our humanity.

We know from science that touching and being touched activates areas of our brain that actually influence our thought processes, our reactions and our physiological responses. Touching or hugging a friend, or a partner, establishes a connection and communicates a need.

There is also cruel touch, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Society has already set more and more stringent regulations around how, who, when, where and why we touch — but that’s a topic for another time.

I’m limiting this to consensual, warm, caring gestures shared through touch; displays of tenderness, of respect; signals of human connection.

It is well-documented that children (and non-human primate babies) who grow up without being touched suffer from serious developmental issues and find social interaction extremely difficult.

Married people, people in relationships, people with small children do not realise how lucky they are: they are constantly being touched. Single people who live on their own (like me), pay people to touch them — feet during a pedicure; faces during facials; a back massage; a full body massage ...

We’re losing our face-to-face skills as we retreat more and more behind the social media wall. We text rather than call; e-mail rather than actually meet. We’re isolating ourselves more and more, relying on alternative methods of communication. We are leaving behind those wonderful human connecting ways that have served humanity since time immemorial.

Now, I fear, the coronavirus will strip us of that last shred of human contact — literally stop us from touching each other.

Already shaking hands is verboten. People are bumping elbows or kicking feet. Soon, we’ll be jazz handing each other from behind face masks that will strip us of our identities, making us all look indistinguishable from each other.

The threat is that we will become one big amorphous masked group, terrified of getting too close to each other. Scientific research has found that touch has an astonishingly strong impact on both our brains and our bodies. “Touch alters our perception of the world ... So, imagine a world without hugging?”

My favourite poet John Keats says touch has a memory. I hope we will be able to remember touch when touching is no longer an option.

What can I do to drive away by John Keats

What can I do to drive away

Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,

Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!

Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,

What can I do to kill it and be free

In my old liberty?

When every fair one that I saw was fair,

Enough to catch me in but half a snare,

Not keep me there:

When, howe’er poor or particolour'’ things,

My muse had wings,

And ever ready was to take her course

Whither I bent her force,

Unintellectual, yet divine to me; —

Divine, I say! — What seabird o’er the sea

Is a philosopher the while he goes

Winging along where the great water throes?