The Blessing of the Hands

“I don’t think he’s going to make it through the ceremony,” my daughter Madi predicted of her two year old son, Eli.  We were standing in the foyer of Ransdell Chapel for Madi’s Pinning Ceremony. She was graduating from Campbellsville University’s School of Nursing.

I was already proud of Madi and wanted to be there for this special moment but found myself dreading the ceremony itself. All I knew about the Pinning Ceremony was that it was supposed to last about two hours. Not knowing what to expect, and imagining speaker after speaker droning on and on about Lord knows what, I had brought a book as a diversion.

I would never open the book.

First Eli’s daddy, John, and then Eli’s Gigi---my wife, Lori--- tried keeping him calm. But every time the little guy would see Madi on the stage, he would cry out, “Momma, I wanna go see Momma.”

Here I saw an opportunity to exit the ceremony. All I wanted, after all, was to see was the part where my daughter received her pin.

“Come on, let Pop Pop take you,” I said as I lifted Eli.

“Don’t let me miss the actual Pining Ceremony,” I whispered as I tiptoed toward the exit with Eli in my arms.

The cool night air was refreshing, and soon Eli and I had found cupcakes in the University’s Student Center. Eli was on a sugar high, and I was congratulating myself for my adroit escape from the preliminaries to the Pinning Ceremony when John text messaged me: “We are getting ready to pin.”

“Drats,” I said as I hurriedly wiped the icing from Eli’s smiling face. “We've got to hustle back over there, boy.”

“Getting ready,” is a relative term when they pin the graduates in alphabetical order, and since Madi Walls is a “W,” we had to keep Eli occupied from A-V. 

As Lori placed the pin on Madi’s collar, I whispered, “We’re proud of you.”  

Then Eli reached out to Madi as John held him: “Momma,” he cried as we stepped down from the stage.

I heard a collective, ‘”Ahh,” from the audience.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I thought we were done.

And then something happened that drew me back in.

“The graduates will now participate in the “Blessing of the Hands Ceremony,” I heard the Dean of the School of Nursing announce.

“Hmm,” I thought, “what’s this?”

Then the Reverend Dr. James Jones took each nurse by the hand, rubbed oil onto their hands, and blessed them.

Since Campbellsville University is a private Christian based institution, I thought this ceremony was unique to this particular school.  But the Blessing of the Hands is a tradition in nursing practiced worldwide by a variety of institutions.  It’s been a part of nursing graduation ceremonies since the time of 19^th century nurse, Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.

“Blessing of the Hands,” I whispered aloud to myself as I watched the nurses file by Dr. Jones, holding out their hands for him to bless.

I thought of the people these nurses’ hands would bless across the years: touching babies at the beginning of life, soothing people in the throes of pain at other times, and closing the eyes of the deceased at the end of life.

And suddenly being wrapped up in that moment, I didn't care how long the ceremony lasted.

For in their blessing, I had been blessed, blessed with a glimpse of what already is and will continue to be in a future place and time where blessed hands reach out to touch others, giving people hope, perhaps, even healing them, and helping---at least a little---to mend this broken world.