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"  This is an open letter to all my friends who included me in the Saint Th\u00E9r\u00E8se&amp;#039;s Prayer chain letter as one of the 12 women who touched their lives and who implored me not to break the chain and to forward the e-mail to 12 women who have touched my life: Let&amp;#039;s all stop touching each other. I don&amp;#039;t have time to touch myself, let alone a dozen other people, who, frankly, even though I sent it to them, haven&amp;#039;t really touched me, because if they had, I wouldn&amp;#039;t have rewarded their kindness with an annoying chain letter telling them to &amp;quot;make a wish and read the prayer and pass it on within the next five minutes!&amp;quot; Or else.  &amp;quot;May you be content knowing you are a child of God&amp;quot; is the line that really irks me. I&amp;#039;m sorry, but is God willing to take a paternity test? And if he is my father, can I charge him with parental neglect? I need more supervision. I&amp;#039;m just curious. Which one of you bitches started this thing, and why Saint Th\u00E9r\u00E8se? She, the quaint &amp;quot;Saint of the Little Way&amp;quot; who did &amp;quot;little things in life well and with great love.&amp;quot; (Like the way I eat M&amp;amp;amp;M&amp;#039;S.) A Saint Jude prayer\u2014now that I could have used. His area is desperate cases, lost causes, and hot flashes. Staring in the mirror, contemplating my contemplation, pulling up the southerly sag of my skin, it occurs to me: I need a faith lift. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! An e-mail arrives inviting me to a monastery in the Czech Republic where monks make Cr\u00E8me Ancienne\u2014an ultrarich, pricey ($135 an ounce) face and body cream using a second-century recipe. The world&amp;#039;s first cold cream, it was invented by the Greek physician Claudius Galen, then employed as resident sports doctor at the Roman school for gladiators, where he mixed beeswax, rose water, and almond oil to use as a balm for burns and wounds. During his four years on call, Galen lost only five gladiators. His predecessor lost 60.  Two thousand years later, Fresh cosmetics czar Lev Glazman found Galen&amp;#039;s formula in a pharmacopoeia and had the fresh idea of re-creating it. He was actually re-re-creating the recipe, as it had been tweaked in the late 1800s when an American druggist added borax and spermaceti (a wax harvested from the head of a sperm whale) to Galen&amp;#039;s original concoction. &amp;quot;We updated some of the ingredients,&amp;quot; Glazman says, over dinner at a restaurant in Mari\u00E1nsk\u00E9 L\u00E1zne, two hours outside of Prague. He used meadowfoam seed oil instead of almond, added chamomile wax for its healing and anti-inflammatory properties, and spurned the spermaceti. I listen while at the same time trying to swallow a spoonful of the &amp;quot;traditional pork soup&amp;quot; recommended by our waiter that turns out to be not so much a soup as a black gruel made with pig blood and pureed piggy parts that would send a Survivor contestant crying, &amp;quot;Wee, wee, wee!&amp;quot; all the way home.  Born in St. Petersburg and raised in Tel Aviv, Glazman has Putin-ish good looks, Warren Buffett\u2013ish business sense, and the funny appeal of a James Bond villain. After moving to Boston at 19, he washed storefront windows for cash, literally climbing his way up; within two years he&amp;#039;d created a milliondollar company\u2014Sky Services. In 1991 he and his wife, Alina, founded the cosmetics company Fresh. &amp;quot;I always wanted to sell cosmetics, because they are the most affordable luxury,&amp;quot; Glazman says in a Russianaccented purr. &amp;quot;I seek great, natural, interesting old recipes. Without a past, there is no future. Like, how I came up with the idea for Brown Sugar Body Polish? When I was little, my grandmother put sugar on my wounds, which heals without stinging and locks in moisture. So to me, a no-brainer.&amp;quot;  Cr\u00E8me Ancienne is made by monks &amp;quot;to preserve the tradition of the cream,&amp;quot; Glazman says. &amp;quot;It must be handmade, so it can only be done in small batches.&amp;quot; It was originally produced in a small convent, Tautra Abbey, on an island in Norway. &amp;quot;But there are only seven nuns, and they were so consumed with production, they called me and said they had no time to pray.&amp;quot; Now they make soap. So it came to be here, at a secluded whitewalled monastery that shall remain nameless, outside the Czech village of Dobr\u00E1 Voda\u2014&amp;quot;good water&amp;quot;\u2014that the cream is now made by French friars with very soft hands. The head monk, Father Samuel, greets us at the end of the long gravel driveway wearing brown robes, a tooled leather belt, Birkenstocks, rimless glasses, and a warm smile. Tall and handsome, he has an air of knowing, like a man who armwrestled the devil and didn&amp;#039;t always win.  There are rules. Sitting at a table with a crucifix hanging behind him in an otherwise empty room, Father Samuel explains the need for anonymity. &amp;quot;Cr\u00E8me Ancienne cannot be associated with this monastery in a concrete way,&amp;quot; he begins. &amp;quot;There is no conflict between us and the people who buy Cr\u00E8me Ancienne. There is opposition between the monastic culture and the culture of these people. Very complicated.&amp;quot; The monks would rather not be associated with consumerism related to vanity. He sighs. &amp;quot;We were going to bottle water.&amp;quot; But Glazman made them an offer they couldn&amp;#039;t refuse (and won&amp;#039;t disclose). Huge apothecary jars sit on a steel table. Nearby, a double boiler is filled with beeswax heated to melting. A monk adds rose water and, using a hand blender, whips it into an opaque emulsion. A gorgeous smell fills the air. &amp;quot;We use damask rose petals,&amp;quot; Glazman says. &amp;quot;It takes one ton of roses to extract one kilogram of oil, which costs $5,000.&amp;quot; When the cream cools, the meadowfoam oil is added. &amp;quot;A lot of creams today have a lot of water in them,&amp;quot; he notes. &amp;quot;This cream can hold so much oil and yet it is so light.&amp;quot; Meadowfoam is unique among oils in that it is easily absorbed, resists oxidation, and is happy to be in the mixed company of other ingredients. Finally, a tiny amount of borax is added as a preservative. (I can attest that the cream cured my chapped lips and excommunicated my eczema.) I slip away to find a restroom. As I wander through the halls, it occurs to me that something&amp;#039;s missing. There isn&amp;#039;t a looking glass in the place. How great would it be to live without the bad news of a mirror?  I wish the monks would adopt me and put me to useful work and allow me to defrock and refrock them in something less brown, more cheerful. I&amp;#039;d introduce casual Fridays and they could rock smocks in Pucci paisley or Burberry plaid. Father Samuel would shake his head at my antics and call me Chip-Monk and I would call him Big Daddy.... Those were my musings while washing my hands in the loo before discovering the door wouldn&amp;#039;t open. Should I call or pray for help? What would Jesus do? Gently: Hello? Anybody out there? Up there? Anywhere? Silence. Jesus would start banging on the door. I can now answer the question: How many monks does it take to get a sinner out of a bathroom? Five who speak French and can&amp;#039;t stop giggling and one Big Daddy who shoos them away, peers through the keyhole, and, before explaining the mysteries of the temperamental lock, asks, &amp;quot;Is there anything you&amp;#039;d like to confess?&amp;quot;  I must confess that I am a jury duty dodger, that I engage in chain letter activity, that I have impure thoughts (including one when I passed the monk who looks like Jon Stewart), that I don&amp;#039;t believe in miracles, that I do believe in astrology, that I&amp;#039;m sure God isn&amp;#039;t everywhere, and that I hope there isn&amp;#039;t an afterlife because where I&amp;#039;m going could be an aftershock, and even if it&amp;#039;s a party it will technically be an after-party, and they&amp;#039;re overrated, and besides, I&amp;#039;m already exhausted by this life so an after-one would be one too many, and I just want whatever comes next to be like a before-life\u2014a black velvet nothingness. That&amp;#039;s what I would have confessed if he&amp;#039;d really asked. But I&amp;#039;m glad he didn&amp;#039;t, because honestly, there isn&amp;#039;t a rosary long enough to save me. Thirty minutes later, the bathroom door finally opens to blushing young monks, a pat on the head from Father Samuel, and Glazman rolling on the floor, boots in the air, holding his stomach, laughing. That night in Prague, unable to sleep in my bed at the Mandarin Oriental (erected, ironically, on the site of a former convent and Gothic church), I google &amp;quot;Tautra Abbey.&amp;quot; Seven nuns on an island; if that isn&amp;#039;t a reality show... I click on &amp;quot;Becoming a Nun.&amp;quot; The first bullet point: &amp;quot;We accept women under the age of 45.&amp;quot; (And no, the ability to carry twice your weight in well water does not make you an exception.) I dress and go down to the concierge and ask him to show me the hotel&amp;#039;s mini museum of relics, past the Monastery Lounge, near the spa. Mounted in lighted, velvet-lined cases are medieval skeleton keys, hair ornaments, rings, a thimble and crude needle\u2014everyday things that survived the women who used them. That will survive me. Last night, back in my bed in Manhattan, lying awake in a skyscraper forest filled with the sounds of sirens and horns and garbage trucks and rap music booming from a car, I thought, What will I leave behind? My own artifacts\u2014hair combs and bobby pins, an eyelash curler, a lucky subway token, the keys to a lock that will be changed, my grandmother&amp;#039;s wedding rings, a prized Smith-Corona...words. These words. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/beauty/makeup-skin-care/tips/a9664/heavenly-cream-286522/>