fragrant

Today I celebrated my birthday.  I woke early, to the crisp sound of the frogs and the birds.  The heady wind of yesterday melted to a sweet breeze this morning.

Top of my list was to jog to Wilson's Beach, part of the eastern shore of Gull Lake.  As I walked (note: the jogging lasted for a while until I yearned to slow down and catch my breath), I noticed how unchanged many of the features are around here... the bushes, the buildings, the blond gravel road.   Everything about it: familiar.  I turned the last left turn into the lane leading down toward the lake's edge, past the gate, past the kitschy, but well-loved campsites, past the signs and the outhouses, with just one slight turn to get to the beach.

And then, the quick surprise of the lake: the sight and smell of it entered me all at once.  My feet on the level of the water, the gallery of the shore enveloped me.  Then the cool draught turned up sharp, like a sudden kiss on the cheek.  The fresh water smell, with a hint of recent ice-water melt, and the way the sun shone, prompted - from nowhere, it seemed - a sob in my throat.
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If it's one thing this sabbatical is gifting us with, it's the return to my senses.  The unforced invitation to see, hear, smell, taste, feel things all over again, to come alive again, to practice the joy of the resurrection, to linger in the sweet conviction that there lives a dearest, freshness deep down things.

During one of our times of prayer at the Prayer Summit, a boisterous friend of ours sat calmly, stilled and quieted.  Then, with weeping, she whispered that she had smelled the fragrance of Christ.  That she hadn't smelled it in years, and that it felt like re-birth.  The smell of holiness and pure sweet joy that rose up in our time of fervent prayer, the crescendo of voices, the sincerity of tears all mingled together, and the presence of the Spirit was like a cloak, draped warmly over our shoulders.  The aroma of Christ.

We cannot conjure up these moments.  We can remember that we love a fragrance, but when it comes to us, it comes as a gift.  We make ourselves available and with senses alert, we wait and watch.  And when the Spirit descends, we receive God's presence as sheer gift, pure grace.

We wait and watch as the men who hung onto every detail of Jesus' ascension, seeing him rise up, shining like the sun.

Christ's ascension, the very thing we also celebrate today - on my birthday, a re-birth-day! - makes real for us the joy of knowing him through his Spirit, who comes to us as surely as the dawn, and as surprisingly as an off-shore waft of fresh-watery air.  Christ's physical farewell becomes his promise to be spiritually near.  Not just nearby, but within.  This is reconciliation.  This is the invitation to be one with him, to be awake to his presence and alive with him.  The gifts of the Resurrection and the Ascension and the Pentecost, braided together and given to us that until we are drenched in the dearest, freshest deepness of the warm, bright Spirit until we also smell like Him!