On Not Stinking Up The Place or Going Fragrance-Free

In many Jesus stories, the way things turned out, usually well, was completely unpredictable from the way the story began. It was almost as though Jesus’s friends could have prepared themselves best if they had said to each other, “OK, here’s the deal. Today, Jesus is probably going to blow our minds. Let’s pay attention.”

Jesus was really good at paying attention, of course. There was the time They were in a crowd and a woman who had been sick for twelve years touched Their robe. “I felt some power going out from Me,” They said. Then, there was the time a short person really wanted to see Jesus, so they climbed a tree. “Come down,” Jesus said. “I’m going to your house today.” Jesus definitely noticed individuals, even when they were in the middle of a crowd.

Some disabilities are hard for able-bodied people to notice. Multiple chemical sensitivities is one of those. Someone might not look sick and still have intense symptoms that could even interfere with breathing or manifest as a seizure or other serious difficulty, such as vomiting or dizziness. (There might be other reasons, too, such as allergies that trigger asthma or wheezing.)

One way to lessen these difficulties is to practice fragrance-free care of your skin, hair, clothes. Sometimes people who are not sensitive to chemical fragrances resist or object to this request. But just as the Teacher did, you can notice the people in your life who get ill from fragrances and trust them to know their own needs and their own bodies.

I am in the final year of a two-year part-time ministerial internship at a congregation. As part of my development, I have made an intentional decision to practice that fragrance-free care (deodorant, shampoo, clothes detergent) when I am going to be around congregants. The reason for this is simple: I want to be accessible to people as I meet them and talk to them. I don’t have a way to know if someone is susceptible to fragrance or might have their asthma triggered. Even something like sensory overwhelm is a good reason for me to be fragrance-free.

The practice of expecting the bodies of others to conform to an idealist standard, that is, the standard of being able to do everything that someone next to them does is one classic way of describing ableism. We can do better. We can notice and be supportive of unique function, for the simple reason that all of us need all of us to make it. Part of being supportive is giving up the need to control and judge the situation (ie, “just a little fragrance”—observers don’t have a way to know how much is a little. They are risking making a person sick, rather than letting go of the use of fragrance in a space.)

There’s more to the subject, of course. I didn’t write this post because I am super smooth about being fragrance-free. I’m still awkward sometimes. But I have a clear purpose—to create more access, to be supportive of people whose bodies maintain function without fragrance, but might otherwise get sick. I want to be someone who notices individuals and reaches out to them in supportive ways. It’s what my Teacher practiced.