Senses + Soul = Memories :)
Have you ever really thought about our senses and the way they relate to our innermost place? How a certain smell can take you back in time to a hidden place that you had forgotten about or when a song that you haven’t heard in ions comes on the radio and you are instantly in a moment that had been buried so deep that you never imagined it would resurface? It’s amazing, to me, just what the heart remembers but we forget and more times than not, it’s because of one of our many senses…sight, hearing, touch, taste, and my personal favorite…SMELL!
I’ll just start with that because it actually IS my favorite of all the senses…my nose and it’s incredible knack for smelling EVERYTHING! I associate most things with their aroma, fragrance, scent, odor, or worse…their stench! Usually though, it’s the good whiffs that have the best memories and the ones that can take me to another place and time almost instantly. Take for example the smell of vegetable soup cooking on the stove…that instantaneously reminds me of my mom’s house on Sundays during football season. Every Sunday, while watching the Chiefs play my mom would cook up a BIG pot of homemade vegetable soup ( I can still smell the THREE bay leaves). Fall would always bring about colder temperatures so soup would be the perfect antidote for a lazy day. That aroma reminds me of not only family unity but also the warmth of my mother’s love. Her way of showing love was through her cooking and I find myself, occasionally when I am really missing her, concocting a ginormous kettle of her vegetable soup that simmers for hours on the stove, putting out the exact same redolence that hers did, making me feel like she is right in the next room ready to walk out at any minute.
Hearing is probably my second favorite sense because if you close your eyes your heart can capture so much just by the sounds that go on all around us. An example would be, and one of my all-time favorites, in the spring when you wake and hear birds chirping and singing outside your window. I love that sound. It’s like a favorite melody that you once loved but had forgotten you loved it until you hear it again. It’s the sound of rebirth and things new. It’s the sound of life being breathed into a new day after a long, cold, winter. Birds singing their individual songs are amazing to me. Sometimes I just listen to all their different versions of communicating that spring is finally here and it’s time to get up and enjoy your day. Each one has uniqueness and all are the epiphany of the meaning of the beloved season we call Spring!
Hmmmmm…TASTE! Although it’s one of the five senses, I don’t associate as much to this one. However, that being said when I was a kid my mom canned beets! Sweet beets! Now to some this sounds terribly gross but to me, not at all. Even though I haven’t had them since I WAS a child, I can promise you that if someone was to pop the seal on a jar of those purple delights I would delve in with a fork devouring them like they were Halloween candy. OMGoodness…how delicious they were! I can’t really recall any other taste that strikes a memory as much as Mom’s pickled beets!
Sight and feeling, or touch, sometimes go hand in hand where memories are concerned. That brings me to the reason I chose this subject to blog about today. While driving back from Mt. Vernon, on 39 highway, I am always reminded (right about the time I pass Limestone Creek) of an unforgettable day on the first of August in 2005. There’s something about passing by that one spot, right there at Camp Cumberland, that can take me back in time in a millisecond to not only the vision in my head but to the pain that continues to be present in my inner most place…my heart. I can drive by that spot at any given time, on any given day, in any given year and remember EXACTLY how I was FEELING and what I SAW so many years ago. You would think that time would erase at least some of it. But it doesn’t or at least it hasn’t yet. I think the heart remembers what it wants through our five senses and its through those same senses that memories are recorded into the scrapbook of our soul. A friend of mine’s daughter got married there this past fall and I remember when I drove across the entrance of Camp Cumberland to go inside this eery, unsettling feeling hit me like someone had just punched me in the gut. I honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to stay and help them set things up. Tears welled up in, not only my eyes but, the pit of my stomach. I had to come to terms with the pain right then and there if I was going to be able to share in someone’s, whom I love, special day. And as hard as it was to do, I did come to terms. Love, in spite of our senses, trumps everything else. At least it’s supposed to.
The definition of “soul” is the part of you that makes you who you are…your personality…your ESSENCE. It is my belief and understanding that our senses and our soul work as a team to “stitch” us together. It’s our memories, formed out of those senses, that end up being our own “personal” handmade quilts that keep us warm through the trials, tribulations, and even in those valleys of the shadows of death that life sometimes takes us down into. However, it’s in the warm, happy seasons when we can throw off the quilt and fold it up and place it securely in our cedar chest because in that particular moment it’s not needed anymore…while we are listening to and enjoying the familiar sounds of our feathered friends as they chirp and sing.
We were made for lying down in green pastures with the smells, sights, feelings, sounds, and even the tasting of OUR season of spring. John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
