We are beings ruled by our senses. Every waking moment is an interpretation of the world through sight, smell, sound, touch, taste. We take in information through one or more of these modes and in turn make meaning in our lives. While we share some of these experiences with other creations, we are the ones who engage these senses and then create story. It becomes our privileged responsibility to be awake and alive to these gifts, these ways of knowing. Though we may employ all five senses at any given moment of any day, we seem to be hard-wired to lean on one or two more than others.
So when you become aware that one of your less dominant senses is working overtime, it is good to pay attention. This was my experience this particular morning. As I headed out quite early to exercise, I was assaulted by the very scent of the air. It held the weight of moisture from last night’s rain and the fog that still hung heavy in the sight-lines before my eyes. I stopped and breathed in the fresh, sweet smell that wove through humidity and fog, a scent that signaled what I can only describe as the freedom of summer. Standing in my driveway, I allowed this fresh smell to carry me back over the years to those precious first days of summer vacation. Though I loved school, I also relished the sense of the easy going, relaxed possibility a childhood summer holds. Over the last day, I have seen this possibility on the faces of the young ones in the neighborhood. Days, nights, weeks, stretch out before them like a blank canvas begging for brush and paint. They are standing on the precipice of adventure and they know it.
The sense of smell is curious and connects us to our most primal selves. Our brothers and sisters with four legs are more adept than we at using its gifts. And yet our sense of smell holds memory and has the potential to catapult us to places we thought we had long forgotten. It is the place where some of our deepest memories find a home, waiting for the most unexpected time to take us on a magical, mystery tour of by-gone experiences. Certain scents can have me sitting at my grandmother’s kitchen table or dancing on the floor of my high-school gym. Other smells remind me of cars I once rode in and the people who rode along. Still other scents take me to lands to which I have traveled and the interesting people I met there, the foods I ate. Does this ring true for you?
This morning’s air, doused with the freshness of summer took me on a journey, not only of my own childhood, but that of my children’s early years. As parents we often have the opportunity to re-live some of the moments we held dear in our own childhoods by providing similar ones for our own children. Days at the lake. Campfires. Cherry Popsicles dripping down tiny hands. The act of marveling at the glow of fireflies on a warm summer evening. Laying in the grass looking up at the night sky, feeling the tiny place you hold in the vast universe. These simple pleasures connect us to something larger than our own individual lives.
The psalmists had a handle on what it meant to experience the Holy with all the senses. Theirs was not an intellectual but full-bodied pursuit of the presence of God in the midst of every day living. “May my prayer come to you like the sweet smell of incense. When I lift up my hands in prayer, may it be like the evening sacrifice.” These are the words of the writer of Psalm 141, words that remind us that even prayer can have a sweet, wonderful scent. Perhaps, it might smell something like the fresh, possibility of a warm summer’s day that wakes up slowly and leads to discoveries we never imagined. No matter our age, today could be a good day to live into the possibility of this ever-greening world that is opening up,waiting to dazzle all our senses.
