Fragrance of the Season

Fragrance of the season
For me, one of the most notable things about this time of year is the fragrance. It starts in October with the smell of crushed leaves in the air. Then comes, cinnamon, pumpkin pies, candles. It continues with evergreens, cranberries and turkey. For over two months, I find for me - the fragrance of comfort. Now there are other times of the year when the smells in the air are remarkable. When the entire yard is blooming in May and your senses are engaged with lilacs, and fruit trees – well, there is not much that seems to get better than that – at the time. For me, those are adult aromas – ones I have learned to appreciate as an adult. But the fragrance of November and December, well those are childhood aromas. There are deep memories attached to the fragrance. It is amazing how a certain scent can bring you back to another time of your life.

I invite you to close your eyes - Take a moment – consider a fragrance, an aroma, a smell that takes you back to a place – to another decade of your life. What feeling arises as you think about that aroma? What is the story that is attached to that smell? What is the memory? Let’s hold that story for a moment.

Breathe
From John O’Donohue’s Anam Cara: “Traditionally, the breath was understood as the pathway through which the soul entered the body. Breaths come in pairs except the first breath and the last breath. At the deepest level, breath is sister of spirit. One of the most ancient words for spirit is the Hebrew word Ruah, this is also the word for air or wind. Ruah also denotes pathos, passion and emotion – a state of the soul. The word suggests that God was like breath and wind because of the incredible passion and pathos of divinity. This ancient recognition links the wild creativity of the Spirit with the breath of the soul in the human person. Breath is also deeply appropriate as a metaphor because divinity, like breath, is invisible.”
So today, let’s wonder together for a moment. If God is like the breath and the wind – how, when we breath in…when we breath out….do we experience the holy? The sacred?
Let’s go back to the fragrance we considered a moment ago. Close your eyes, go back to that memory. Smell the fragrance, breath in, breath out. How in that memory is God present to you? How can you be present to God in that memory? In that story of your life? Breathing through the stories of our life, we can begin to see that God has been present. In times of great difficulty and times of great joy.
So, today – whether you are in times of great difficulty, or times of great joy, I invite you to stop, breath in God’s presence. Stop. Look around, stay aware of the presence of the divine in your story – as it is playing out today. And breath in God’s presence.