Tugging the Fontanelle

Growing up in southern New Mexico, I would hear stories about curanderos, the shamanic healers of Mexico. For me, the most memorable of these stories is how they would treat infantile dysentery. As the infant would become more ill, dehydrated, and volume depleted, their fontanelles would collapse, creating a depression at the top of their heads. As treatment, the curanderos would create a special paste and place it on the skin over the soft spot. Then the shamans would try to elevate the skin by pulling and tugging on the paste and scalp, so that the fontanelle had a normal, full guise.

This practice is a striking metaphor for trying to give the appearance of health without addressing the root cause. In all the wisdom traditions, but especially in the teachings of Yeshua, the way to fullness and maturity is not through outward cosmetics or exclusively focusing on exoteric/outward gestures. Yeshua teaches us to "wash the inside of the cup" and to "give birth to that which is within yourself". His harshest criticisms were aimed at external religious efforts that are really nothing more than camouflaged attempts to keep the ego settled and undisturbed. The most unfortunate outcome of all our vain "tuggings" is not that they are just some quixotic pecadillos, but that they ossify the soft spots of our hearts that are in fact the access points to our humanity and our Divinity.

My face catches the wind
from the snow line
and flushes with a flush
that will never wholly settle.
Well, that was a metropolitan vanity,
wanting to look young forever, to pass.
I was never a pre-Raphaelite beauty
and only pretty enough to be seen
with a man who wanted to be seen
with a passable woman.

But now that I am in love
with a place that doesn't care
how I look and if I am happy,
happy is how I look and that's all.
My hair will grow grey in any case,
my nails chip and flake,
my waist thicken, and the years
work all their usual changes.

If my face is to be weather beaten as well,
it's little enough lost
for a year among the lakes and vales
where simply to look out my window
at the high pass
makes me indifferent to mirrors
and to what my soul may wear
over its new complexion.
Fleur Adcock