"The Smell of Baking Bread"
 

It's quite something when our senses take us back to some experience we are reminded of. As I'm out walking each morning, and turn on to Bascom St. at Chances Are, I can smell the baking bread from Bredin's bakery. What comes to mind for me each time is many years ago when I went to nursery school and we would go for our walk each morning. As we went along Facer Street, the bakeshops all had that wonderful smell of baking bread. That's what I think of and remember.

It's funny how certain things trigger memories of certain people or events. When I eat dill pickles, which I love, I remember my Aunt Donna who reminded me at family gatherings how much I loved them. I also think of her because she made the best macaroni salad for family bbq's. I think of Beth's Aunt Marg when we have Christmas pudding and sauce; and Mrs. Berry when I see candy apples because that was her specialty.

As we go through our lives of faith, and grow in our spirituality and our relationships with God and His Son Jesus, there are many invitations we have to connect with the divine and sacred. Many of them involve our using our senses to receive the gift God is opening before us.

One of those for me is when we gather around the table and share in the Eucharist together. I noticed personally a marked loss for me when we couldn't do that throughout this pandemic. The sharing of bread, whether as a wafer or actual bread, connects us with God in a way that is tangible and uses our sense of taste. Sometimes it can also use our sense of smell. I remember being at General Synod 2016 and they had set up bread makers to make the bread for the closing Eucharist. Needless to say it was hard to concentrate on the business at hand with the tantalizing smell of baking bread. 

Using our hearing can also be a way of encountering God present in our lives. Maybe it's in the gift of song as we listen to a soloist. I know I've had more than one occasion when after a Sunday liturgy there was a solo we heard that I can't get out of my head. As well, though, there's the song of the birds in the yard that encourage us to recognize and experience God in our midst using our sense of hearing.

For some, the sense of smell is incorporated into their spirituality and worship experience of God. I have been in liturgies that have included incense and have appreciated the way it invites me into prayer. Smudging liturgies, from the Indigenous tradition, use sweet grass and sage which has a fragrance that invites those participating into a spiritual experience of the holy and sacred.

Finally, I also use my eyes and what I see to experience God. As a photographer, what I see through the lens of my camera, and thereby simply with my eyes at other times, speaks to me of spirituality and encountering an experience of God. That's why for some time, although not so much at the moment, my photography was an integral part of my spirituality.

Our senses are a gift from God and inspire different reminders of times past when we experienced something that is still there even if only in our subconscious. Ask yourself, and be aware as you are out and about this week, how do your senses help you recognize and experience the presence of God? How does what you see, hear, taste and smell invite you to encounter the sacred and holy either in the moment now, or remembered from the past? 

Let's embrace using our senses to experience God and grow in our being able to recognize the holy and sacred in our midst.