Journey into Smell
Smell may be the one sense that features less than the others in most church worship, at least in the West. Yet in everyday life it’s a powerful force. A newborn child turns to her mother for sustenance without opening her eyes, guided by a sense of smell to the source of nourishment. Fresh bread and newly brewed coffee are widely regarded as having a similar effect on grown-ups. And of course animals all have an acute sense of smell and can recognize danger or welcome at a considerable distance.
So what aspects of smell might enable us to explore God? Earlier this week I sat with two friends in London, ruminating over this as we ate dinner together. Whether it was the smell of the food, or of the environment we were in, we had no difficulty keeping the conversation going for a considerable length of time. It so happened that the news that day had been dominated by the trial of Josef Fritzl, and the prosecutor opened the case by passing round the jury pieces of fabric taken from the dungeon where he imprisoned his daughter, so they could smell what the place was like.
We all had our own recollections of visits to musty castles and ancient monuments, and the sort of damp smells found there, evoking memories of eeriness and isolation as well as torture and injustice. We also remembered smells connected with having fun. Visitors to the House of Bols in Amsterdam can play with 36 puffers each of which creates a distinctive smell. The game is to guess what they are (all of them flavours of Bols liqueurs): one person got almost all of them right away, while another scarcely guessed any correctly. Realizing that we actually smell things in different ways helped to explain why when one person says, ‘There’s a funny smell round here’ another might wonder what the fuss is about because they can’t smell it at all.
House of Bols
Then we also talked about the different smells we meet in different countries around the world. The Tropics smell quite different from northern Europe, and islands smell different from cities. Even two cities can have quite a different smell from one another. In the present critical financial climate many people can smell death, destruction, and decay - scents that echo with our journey through Lent, as we work out how we might get back to the core of those things that really matter. Of course, we already know the end of the Easter story and that makes it hard not to race ahead to Easter Day. Perhaps in the midst of so much turmoil we should slow down and sniff out signs of resurrection. I wonder what resurrection would smell like? Would we recognize it if we did smell it?We ended up making a list of good smells and bad smells. The good included flowers, earth, newly-mown grass, along with herbs and spices, fresh bread or food, recently ironed clothes, a baby just bathed, perfume - while bad smells included fire and smoke, mould, rubbish, and the smell of poverty and battle. There again, the two categories are not absolutely fixed, and for someone who was lost the smell of smoke could be a sign that help might be at hand, in the form of a house or a fellow traveller. Disinfectant is another one that could fit into both categories - or the smell of the dentist or hospital, that can be bad news and good news all at the same time. And what about the smell of the school we went to? So much of our understanding of smell depends on the associations that different places have for us. That’s why talking about this with others was such a good way for me to explore this topic, because we all have our different ways of experiencing life through the senses. But we were all agreed on one question: I wonder what God smells like? And whether the smell of church reflects who God is. And how any of that connects with the smell of resurrection. And how those smells might motivate us to become agents of change in our local communities.
Week 3 - Journey into Smell | Olive Drane March 20, 2009
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By Anne, March 27, 2009 @ 1:23 pm
I read this in the Metro and there’s a BBC link below. If smell is an important part of the parking experience, how much more might it be part of the worship experience?
‘When you think of car parks, you think of dark dank places that smell of pee. Not any more. One national chain is planning to pump out the smell of roses, freshly baked bread and cut grass at its multi-storeys. Research by NCP revealed a third of drivers would not use a car park again if it smelled bad. The company plans to introduce the aromas at its car parks in London, Birmingham, Leeds and Cardiff. Spokesman Andrew Potter said ‘We fully recognise unpleasant odours could drive away customers. Smell is an important part of the parking experience’.’
Metro 27/03/09
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7967979.stm