Table Talk: Power

Colorado Cave Bear painting by Phillip Hoyle

     As I entered Alfredo’s massage office, my attention was drawn to a Navajo saddle blanket woven of wool yarn in several shades of brown. Though clearly the centerpiece of the room, the blanket was in sorry shape. Someone had tried to repair its fraying edges to keep it useful or, at least, intact. But the design itself had not been damaged. Its saw-toothed mountain pattern dominated the space, creating a sense of movement. I liked the design, but the blanket’s greatest appeal for me was knowing that it had been used for many years. I ran my hands over its surface, surprised and pleased by the softness of the wool. Touching it, I got goose bumps on my neck and head.

     “What do you feel from it?” Alfredo asked. I had recalled the red monoliths of Monument Valley, and imagined horses resting after a day of riding across mesas and mountains. I could almost smell burning piñon from an evening campfire where an old-timer told Navajo tales of sheep, snakes, and sex on the Rez. I pictured stacks of weavings in a trading post, but none of them were quite so attractive as this beat up blanket. But I explained to Alfredo only about having the goose bumps. They continued for about a minute, reaching down my backbone to its base.

     “When I felt it,” Alfredo continued, “I had images of a shaman. I think he used the blanket in healing ceremonies. It’s a very strong feeling. There’s lots of energy there.” My friend was sure that the blanket still had in it power for healing.

     Alfredo discovered the blanket in a pawn shop along with a bear skin. He purchased both: this healer’s blanket and the skin of an animal widely regarded for its healing properties and, in spirit form, for its aid in healing ceremonies. The blanket hangs on the wall over his massage table. I suspect the bear skin may be in the room as well, although I didn’t see it. Perhaps he placed it beneath the pad on his massage table.

     My friend reminds me of the Navajo bear priest in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony. The old man was called to help save a child from the bear people into whose territory the youngster had wandered. In one scene, the priest runs towards the bear canyon, strapping onto his wrists sprigs of spruce, readying himself for the ceremony that would call the boy away from the beasts. I picture Alfredo bedecking his massage table’s legs with spruce branches in anticipation of the arrival of a client he wants to help. Certainly Alfredo is a kind of priest, a healer.

     I once helped organize a seminar that sought to create a New Mexico definition of health. The event brought together medics, lawyers, judges, philosophers, theologians, social workers, psychologists, Hispanic curanderas, and Native healers. We talked. We laughed. We prayed. Together. We created a statement that we hoped would assist the New Mexico legislature as it tried to create health laws to benefit all the citizens of the state.

     Green-eyed, Mexican-American Alfredo manifests a similar inter-cultural, multi-lingual, broad-perspective definition of health. While he gives Swedish massage, he is always alert to his intuition, informed by the traditions of the curandera. He uses Native symbols and techniques in his work. My buddy believes in his intuitive insight, finding it both meaningful and helpful.

     If Alfredo hadn’t asked me what I felt when I touched the blanket, I believe I would not have noticed my goose bumps, or if I had, I would have registered them as only a response to touching the very soft and worn wool. Still, my mind was working in response to the touch. Did I, too, sense a lingering energy in the rug? While I was pleased to have seen and touched it, my rationalist education regarding common and holy things stood in the way of my perceiving the item as being imbued with power.

     An old woolen rug. Is it more than a common object? The designs worked into it do have some kind of religious meaning. I can easily accept that the weaving does have symbolic power such as theologian Paul Tillich described--the existential power of true symbols. Perhaps the blanket does “partake” of the power to which it points. I wonder, though, at the notion that the rug itself may contain some of the strength of mountains or the capacity to heal. I feel I cannot begin to answer my questions, but I do connect the rug with the bear skin and see their potent symbolism for healing.

     My own experience alerts me to some possibilities. Perhaps my goose bumps relate only to my imagination of Native American life, but such images may provide actual connections with a past and a present reality. They could communicate an invitation for me to accept and use healing energy. I do not want to project an image of myself as some kind of psychic or magical healer. But while I usually want to limit myself to ordinary experience, at the same time, I would like to open myself to any potentials that may reside within me. My thoughts want to be more than thoughts, definitions more than words for someone else’s use, scenes from books more than simply literature. Perhaps the power of blankets and bear skins can become as plain and ordinary a power for me as they are for Alfredo.