Let’s take a moment to quiet ourselves. Relax. Feel free to close your eyes. Focus on your breathing. Allow the air coming in to fill your body. Feel it flow through your body filling you with peace extending to your fingertips and down to your toes. As you exhale feel all the tension of life flowing out, leaving your body through the circle of air coming from your mouth and nose. Allow your shoulders to drop, your arms to relax, your neck to loosen. All there is, is this moment, this time together. Breathe in filling your body with peace. Breathe out letting go of tension. Breathe in peace. Breathe out tension. Breathe in. Breathe out.
As we sit in this peace, imagine yourself near water, whatever form that may take for you. Be in the presence of water. Breathe in. Breathe out. As you imagine yourself in this place near water imagine the smells that surround you. What do you smell? What memories does this invoke? Breathe in, inhaling the smells around you. Breathe out. Breathe in noticing everything you are smelling and its impact on you. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. When you are ready, return to this space and open your eyes.
Welcome to the season of creation! This year’s theme is “Living Water”. What are your thoughts about water and the smells just invoked?
Smell is an incredible sense. It is the sense most powerfully tied to memory. So, we can imagine the smell of chlorine in a pool which also invokes memories of summer days where we can feel the warm water on our skin as we learn to swim and the sound of laughter as we play in the pool with cousins and friends. We can imagine the smell of lobster bakes on beaches and remember the taste of feasts by the ocean. We can imagine the smell of grass after the rain and remember the beauty of flowers blooming in meadows. Smell is an incredible sense that can connect to memories and awaken all of our other senses.
They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
Jewish families have celebrated Passover for millennia. In the same way the smell of turkey and stuffing invokes memories of Thanksgiving for many of us, there are Passover foods that invoke memories of this tradition for these families – lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. These connections and stories are important. They remind us that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. The older these traditions are, the bigger these connections can feel.
This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.
This is the gift of traditions. They can connect us to the smells of the past, our history, our stories, our families, our communities. They can remind us that there is more to life than this moment. They can help us understand that, sharing and preserving from one generation to the next has value and meaning. They can remind us that we need to consider what we are passing along to the next generation.
What are we doing to protect the traditions, the stories, the places and spaces that hold value and meaning? How are we seeking to ensure the water places that have been special for generations past will remain special for generations to come? In what ways will our sense smell continue to remind us of what is sacred yesterday, today, and for the future?
As we embrace the smells of water places, and enjoy the feasts of this week, may we pay attention to what we will leave for future generations to remember. This we pray as we sing: 404 The Trumpets Sound.
