Shartse Monks from India, they are robed in saffron and burgundy, and their heads are clean-shaven. With one exception, all are young. It is the exception that demands my attention. He is a much older man who holds his age in his dark eyes the way the pond holds the image of the mountain and sky. His skull is massive and magnificently shaped, his features strong. I feel my attraction toward him in my hands. They—my hands—want to sculpt his head from clay. Throughout the chanting, horn blowing, and drumming, throughout the bell ringing and dancing, I watch him. And while I watch him, I imagine the clay between my hands, my right hand with its strong, sensitive fingers, my left hand paralyzed, skin smooth as that of a baby.

After the monks changed into brightly colored costumes with fantastical masks and elaborate headdresses to perform some of their rituals and dances, I whisper to my friend Debbie Yaffee that I’m sorry I forgot to bring my camera, I wanted to paint watercolors of them from the photographs. She tells me she has her camera with her and will ask permission to photograph the monks for me.

Immediately after the concert, we hurry out of the room and into the elevator. But by the time we are able to get to the large room upstairs that they used as a dressing room, their costumes have been packed away and the monks are once again in their traditional saffron and burgundy.

Directly across the room from me sits the man who had captured my attention all evening. Debbie makes her way through the crowd to where he sits. He is the Venerable Lobsang Topgyal, Abbot of a Tibetan nunnery in India, and “renowned as a pure practitioner and healer” according to the program notes for the performance. From where I sit in my wheelchair, I can see that Debbie, along with several Tibetans, is talking with him. After their brief conversation she approaches me, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

“He wants to see you,” she says, pushing my wheelchair through the crowd to where he sits, waiting. After she parks me near him, he and I shake hands. Then he begins to ask me questions about my stroke. A young Tibetan woman standing by his chair acts as interpreter. “I knew you in another life,” she says to me casually. “I’m very happy to see you again.”

It is 1990, two years since I had the stroke that paralyzed my left side and damaged my speech. Because, the Abbot says, it happened so long ago, it will be more difficult for him to treat me. The healing will take time. But he wants to perform a healing ritual on me. Could I come to the house in Amherst where he is staying along with the other monks? He has a performance in New York City scheduled for tomorrow, but if I want him to perform the healing ritual, he will delay his departure until I can get to Amherst.

Of course I will come. Debbie says that she will drive me.

And does. It is snowing heavily all the way to Amherst.

The monks are guests in a large two-story frame house just a block from the center of town. They are seated around a long table in the breakfast room, eating toast and marmalade, and drinking tea or coffee. The Venerable Lobsang Topgyal has not yet made his appearance so Debbie and I wait for him in what looks like a large family room or a casual living room. Again the Tibetan woman is here. She introduces the man with her as her brother, explaining that he will be doing the translating because he is more fluent in English than she. Then she explains briefly how the Chinese killed most members of her family.

The Abbot comes into the room, greets us, and sits down opposite me. He instructs a young monk who leaves the room and quickly reappears with a cloth that he spreads over my thighs before placing an enormous stainless steel bowl on my lap. In the middle of the bowl lies a small piece of clay. The Abbot takes it in his hand, pressing his fingers into it and leaving the imprint of each finger in it. Then he hands the clay to me, instructing me to use it to suck the sickness out of my body. He makes dabbing motions to illustrate what he means. I follow his example, dabbing the clay on my face, arms legs, imagining all illness leaving my body and going into the clay. Imagination made powerful through intention, I think. Or intention made powerful through imagination. And now I remember all the Bible stories of Jesus casting out devils, commanding the blind to see, the lame to walk.

“Now,” the Abbot says through the translator. “Throw the clay into the bowl.” And with great force he makes the gesture of throwing my illness into the bowl.

I follow his example.

Then he takes a peacock feather from where it stood in the top of a pitcher with a very long slender spout. The pitcher looks like something that Aladdin might have owned. The feather is magnificent.

“Bow your head over the bowl,” the Abbot instructs me through the interpreter.

Using the peacock feather like an elegant whiskbroom, he begins to brush me all over.

“This is to brush away any remaining crumbs of the illness.”

After he completes brushing the crumbs of my illness into the bowl, the young monk takes the bowl away.

I raise my head and look at the Abbot.

He looks back at me and announces with finality: “I will throw your illness into the ocean.”

Then he asks that I bow my head again.

“Imagine,” he instructs, “that I am the Buddha of Overcoming Obstacles.”

He describes that Buddha as wearing the same blue of my blouse.

“You have to believe only enough to make it work,” he smiles, his whole face collapsing into wrinkles like the terrain of an old and rugged country, mountainous, and cut through with rivers and canyons. “Only enough to make it work,” he repeats, and takes the pitcher in his hand.

I bow my head.

“Imagine that this water is going to wash you clean of all illness. Imagine—”

As the fine stream of water hits my head and divides itself into many streams finding their way among the short gray hairs, I see the image in my mind of the baptismal fount in the Southern Baptist Church I attended as a child, and of the minister lowering me into the water; I see the priest sprinkling water on my grandson’s head in his christening in a Catholic Church in Amherst, Massachusetts; I see the dark-skinned women in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, lighting their candles and kneeling before Our Lady of Guadeloupe to pray. And from films I’ve seen and books I’ve read I see Aboriginal women chanting together, Africans drumming, American Indians doing sand paintings, Muslims bowing reverently, Buddhists raising prayer flags. As the water streams over my bowed head, over the dome of my skull holding my brain with its knowledge of stars and planets, seasons and years, I feel as if I can hold the experiences of the rituals of all people together in my heart. I feel that I am all people. Or that they are all me.

A single drop of water begins its journey down the right side of my face, and I close my eyes, breathing in the fragrance of the breakfast coffee. I fill my lungs with air that is also the Abbot’s air, and Debbie’s air, and the air of the monks gathered around the table, and the air of the Tibetan sister and brother who have lost so many members of their family. I breathe our shared air as I listen to the Abbot’s soft chanting and, from the dining room, the dim clatter of table silver.

Then the Abbot is silent.

The healing ritual is complete.

From deep inside his robe, he draws out an object not much larger than my thumbnail.

“This is very special,” he explains reverently. “It was made in a monastery in Tibet. The monks there chant continuously as they make these so they have a strong and special power. And because they are very difficult to get from Tibet, and because there are so few of them, I rarely give one away, but I’m giving you this to you to prevent you from having another stroke.”

He places the object in my open hand.

It looks like a miniature God’s Eye like those some American Indians make. Many years ago, I found instructions for making God’s Eyes and made five large ones that I hung on a wall in our family home in the Shutesbury woods. I twisted brightly colored yarns around sticks that I’d broken from trees in the yard and tied together securely into a cross shape. I alternated colors so that each God’s Eye was different from the others.

Now I look down at this tiny echo of the God’s Eyes I’d made so many years ago. Only this is made with sticks thinner than any I’ve ever seen. And instead of yarn, the many-colored design is made of thread no thicker than the thinnest thread I ever used with my sewing machine. I cannot imagine how the fingers of those monks could have possibly twisted that thread around those thin crosses. But somewhere in Tibet a group of monks sat doing exactly that, while filling the room with their low continuous chanting.

The Abbot’s assistant hands me an envelope for my God’s Eye-like object. I thank him, put the object in it, and put it in my purse.

The Abbot tells me that he looks forward to seeing me in India once I have healed from the stroke.

He smiles.

“You will be most welcome,” he says.

Then he turns and leaves the room.

Debbie and I say goodbye to the Tibetan woman and her brother. Then she pushes my wheelchair across the room, down the hall, and through the front door.

Outside snow continues to fall.

Snowflakes tickle my face as Debbie pushes my wheelchair to the car.

After I get in the car she folds my wheelchair and puts it in the trunk. Then we begin the long drive home. How can I possibly talk when my mind is so full of images and my heart is so full of love and gratitude? I watch as snowflakes appear to be rushing to meet the windshield of the moving car. Seeing this, I feel exhilarated even as I experience a sense of stillness in the center of my being. Snow-covered trees rush past on either side of the highway. Mountains rise in the distance. Miles rush away beneath us as snow continues to fall.

When we arrive at my home Debbie unloads my wheelchair, helps me into it, and pushes me up the wheelchair ramp to the door, which she unlocks and opens. Then she pushes me inside into the warmth of my apartment. I thank her and say goodbye.

Then I close the door. After taking my coat off, I roll over to my writing table, lock the brakes on my wheelchair, and sit watching snow falling onto the frozen surface of the Deerfield River. All those snowflakes and no two alike. I learned this about snow in elementary school when I was a child growing up in South Georgia, imagining what snow must look like. Now, after all these years in New England, I still feel a thrill every time it begins to snow. Each snowflake exquisite in its unique detail; each snowflake part of the whole.

Part of the whole.

Thinking about this phrase turns my attention away from the snow and onto myself. Something inside me has healed. I am still sitting in my wheelchair. My left leg is still weak and unreliable. My left hand still lies limp and useless on my lap. My speech is still slurred and imperfect. But these material things no longer matter. What matters is that something deep inside me has become whole. More deeply than ever before I feel my Oneness with all humanity and its many ways of reaching out to connect with and celebrate the Divine. Today I am beginning to understand the meaning of grace.

Copyright © 2006 Margaret Robison