Path of Wellness

ISO: A skin heaven on this fleshy earth.

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An “all-inclusive wellness retreat” in the Catskills Mountains was featured in T Magazine last fall¹: “The name Hemlock Neversink might conjure a wooded fairyland, and that idea isn’t too far from the truth.” You can bird or watch try something called “pine needle weaving.” You can experience animal therapy with goats. On a video on the website, goats slo-mo leap across a stony brook. The guest house is shown in golden sunset light. “The property’s design draws from the region’s Quaker heritage,” the website continues, “with a neutral color palette, ash and walnut furniture and quilt-inspired custom wool rugs.”² In another image, someone is petting a goat. There is a close-up of a masseuse’s thumb running over a woman’s left eyebrow. 

When guests arrive, they are asked to complete a survey to customize their stay: “How structured do you like your days?” and “Would you like to move or rest?”

How would you like to move or rest?

I would like to rest with Jesus in a grassy field from the 1970s in the Catskill Mountains. I would like to sleep on the stomach of Jesus with a lamb’s wool laid over his lap, his thumb over my temple. I imagined these scenes. They kept coming. They were a little cinematic-funny, but mostly visceral. I would like to sit with the resurrected Jesus on a log around a beach fire and eat fish. I am not sure if the fish are in a resurrected body or from the sea. 

When my friend turned 40, she went to Mexico. During the trip, friends surprised her with a session where she was carried into the water by a yogi, or some sort of spiritual guide, and for an hour she was swayed back and forth in his arms in the ocean, in loops and dips. She said she let go. She trusted him, cried, released things that you can see clearly enough to release at 40. 

I would like to move or rest cradled like a baby, being held by Jesus in the sea. I don’t care if that’s too tender or pure. I close my eyes and picture it, Jesus is waist deep in a white robe. I am dead limp, no irony or embarrassment. No male gaze or body judgment. No workweek professionalism or makeup. My own body, as she is, with more than an inch of flesh to grab. With asymmetry and cellulite. With dead skin and dandruff. Always dry. All my real self, in real arms. 

I am not sure if the arms are resurrected, and in this imagination, I do not check for stigmata. I do not think about whether I am back in Bible time when Jesus lived, or in the present day. I am in the water, falling back, heaving forward. I am strips of bulbous seaweed: ribbon kelp, mermaid’s bladder, sea otter’s cabbage, in and out with the tide. 

Energetic Debris

Some of the things I can buy to help my body and soul? I can’t make them up. In the same New York Times newsletter that features the Hemlock Neversink, I read about the recently launched High Light Rituals, a line of “dainty necklaces and bracelets that are handmade in New York and Rhode Island.”³ For $115, I can buy a silk bracelet with instructions for a ritual to cast love spells.

I can also order an altar kit containing “a ritual designed to cleanse and shield.” The 19-piece bundle is used to “clear away energetic debris, experience peace and access divine protection,” including crystals: “Smoky and Lemurian Quartz, Hematite and Black Tourmaline.” As the ceremony concludes, I will find myself, “harmonizing with the universe’s rhythm, your energy purified and safeguarded, and glowing with divine light.”^[4]

I do not order a silk spell bracelet, gemstone necklace, or altar kit. My own ceremony kit of gathered objects (or the closest I have to one) contains four unremarkable pieces: A quilted red blanket from Vashon Island, a taper candle inside a finger loop holder, a book of Three Stars Safety matches, and a cup of coffee. In the early morning, my ritual is to sit and read something from Ignatius, then an epistle or Psalm, maybe something from the Prophets. I sit in the dark sunroom and do the Spiritual Exercises, pacing my way through the nine-month retreat. I wonder, would my ritual look as ridiculous to some people as the altar kit sounds to me, a non-believer in the power of crystals and spells? 

Facetime

My skin routine has a ritual, and it is much more in line with products featured in the New York Times style newsletter. In the morning: hydroiodic acid and vitamin C serum. In the evening, lactic acid or retinol. I honest-to-god tried snail mucin. I apply sunscreen in the morning and afternoon. I wear a baseball hat outside and sunglasses. I wear neck hankies and turtlenecks. I take vitamin D supplements to account for the lost sun exposure. I wake up with new wrinkles and puffy lines anyway. A serum may slow aging, but nothing you put on your skin can undo life and the stressors that accelerate it.

I wrote a section of Orphaned Believers about how a root cause of the brokenness of the church is capitalism. Shouldn’t we all know better by now? The way the market weaves itself into our subconscious does not change. It ages up. And regardless of gender or life stage, there are broader spiritual questions the industry of aging, and our own tender feelings about our faces and bodies, raise.

This is not a gender-specific situation, and I’d pay good money to read more stories of how men think about aging and its underlying impulses. It is simpler, easier for men, sure. Instead of disqualifying, we’ve learned that wrinkles distinguish. But I’ve seen plenty of dudes in the skincare aisle at Sephora. A pastor friend put up a photo of himself before and after the pandemic. His forehead was baby-ass smooth before the pandemic but had strong, deep lines three years later. His hair was mostly gray. We are all interacting under a market that can captivate with a promise of youth, a la “AG1” and Rogaine.