Day 34: Lent for my Five Senses

“God’s inexhaustible poetry comes to me in five languages: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.” –David Steindl-Rast

Jesus,

We forget that at one time You ate bread and tasted olives,

that You saw dirt roads and tired faces,

that You smelled oil and sweat,

that You touched blind eyes with mud and spit,

that you heard the cry of newborns and the last breath of the aged.

We forget that Your humanity makes us like You,

that there is a string of hope

keeping us forever tethered to the

Good News that runs through your veins

even today.

We forget.

But our senses always remind us, too,

because we hear and smell and see and touch and taste,

and we remember who we are:

a complex entity that holds depth and height,

fear and courage,

death and life.

We hold Mystery.

We hold Salvation.

We hold God.

And if Lent gives us any news this holy week,

it is that.

So we will sip our coffee and eat our cheese and bread and tacos,

we will hear our children play and our co-workers gossip,

we will see political ads and pedestrians crossing the street,

we will smell the candles burning down in our houses and the flowers blooming in the spring air outside, 

and we will touch each other’s hands at meal time, rub each other’s backs when things are stressful,

just to remember that we are alive, just as You were and are.

Amen.