You know Jesus used to show me the score.
- U2, “If God Will Send His Angels”
“Well, our Lord Jesus, He wants me to pray,
So I do every single day…
Don’t know if I’m comin’ in very clear,
Supposedly he can hear me from here…”
- John Mellencamp, “Mr. Bellows”
“I said yeah, oh yeah,
You’ll never make a saint of me…”
- Rolling Stones, “Saint of Me”
Katrina and Covid.
Double-barreled chaos.
Different-decade destroyers.
Twin sense-of-smell killers.
For years, my olfactory system was defunct.
I could plunge my face into a bag of coffee grounds and…nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.
Zip.
Several trips to assist in the recovery effort after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the South, also ravaged me.
New Orleans and Biloxi stole my heart, while black mold stole my ability to stop and smell the roses.
Literally.
I couldn’t smell anything.
Covid-19 did it, too.
Stripped the around 75% of what the years had given back to me from Katrina’s no-smell-mess.
Stripped it back to zero.
No coffee.
No basil.
No mint, no chocolate, no fresh-cut-grass, no gasoline.
Nada.
Zilch.
Zip.
I couldn’t smell anything.
Again.
It’s back-ish these days, my sense of smell, but mostly, at times, I suspect, it’s memory-muscle-prompted aromas that waft my way.
One glorious afternoon, in-between my dual smell-tastrophes, Lauren sauntered past me in the kitchen.
“Hey, stop, come here!” I said.
I pulled her close, buried my face in her hair, in her neck, and breathed in.
A long breathe-in.
A deep, not-letting-her-go breathe-in.
“Oh my god, I can smell you” I whispered.
I can smell.
You.
It rocked me.
Exotic.
Erotic.
Holy.
It had been years since I had smelled anything.
Any.
Thing.
Until I could, in this moment, in this space.
In this time.
And it was her.
Her.
Beauty via fragrance.
A feminine vapor trail.
Intoxicating.
To this day, her perfume moves me.
Sensually.
Viscerally.
Gracefully.
I don’t take the aroma of anything for granted anymore.
Any.
Thing.
Definitely not Her.
A recent research paper out of Rutgers University suggests smell is much more important than we think.
“It strongly influences human behavior, elicits memories and emotions, and shapes perceptions” the research finds.
And there’s more.
Much more:
“Our sense of smell plays a major, sometimes unconscious, role in how we perceive and interact with others, select a mate, and helps us decide what we like to eat. And when it comes to handling traumatic experiences, smell can be a trigger in activating PTSD…”
Religion and politics.
Double-barreled chaos.
Multiple-decade, conversational, relational destroyers.
Twin sense-of-self killers.
Throw in the topic of sex, and there it is - the unspoken-unholy-trinity of the workplace environment.
This blog is PG-13, most of the time, so we’ll leave out the sex.
But religion and politics?
Let’s go there.
I know.
It’s blog-writing-suicide, but I think it’s time.
Time for me, at least.
Let’s talk religion.
We’ll get to politics.
I’ll start.
For years now - lots of years - my internal spiritual system may not have been defunct, like my sense of smell, but it certainly wasn’t operating optimally.
Questions.
Doubts.
Misgivings and reservations.
Hesitations and uncertainties.
Disenchantment, disillusionment and disengagement.
Regrets.
Yes, regrets.
I’ve had a few.
But then again…well, more than a few.
I grew up the son, grandson, most likely great-grandson, and nephew several times over to preachers.
Good preachers.
Actually, no.
Great preachers.
Unique, once-in-a-lifetime, set-the-bar, gold-standard, great preachers.
An east-coast, fairly-renowned, almost mafia-like-family of Baptist Dons.
I’m not exaggerating.
Growing up, family gatherings were the stuff of Coppola-Puzo epic sets and legends.
Without the bloody horse-heads.
At least none that I recall.
It was all larger than life.
It was all-encompassing.
My first breaths were church breaths.
My first smells were church smells: church suppers, worn-out hymnals, parchment-paper-like and leather-bound-Bibles, and summer-Bible-conference-sawdust-strewn aisles.
I played in musty church basements, kissed girls in darkened sanctuary balconies, and sat in the last aisles of auditoriums cutting up with friends while others prayed the sinners’ prayer.
I was a Classic PK - “preacher’s kid” - a little off, pushing-the-boundaries, not to be messed with, mocked, mimicked or brought home to your Mom.
In 7th grade I had a shop teacher tell me “you’re the most obnoxious kid I’ve ever met”.
7th grade.
In 7th grade you’re barely a teenager.
I took it as a compliment.
I had cultivated the privilege of rebellion at an early age.
The church world - the only world I knew - felt claustrophobic, cluttered and closed.
I was trying to get out and it pulled me back in.
My inability to “smell” anything outside of the religious atmosphere I’d grown up and into my entire life began to dissipate in earnest during my covid-chaos-health-scare-horror-movie-blockbuster of several years ago.
Cracks and fissures had developed long before those extremely fragile days.
But just like covid-19 revealed and accelerated a host of deeper abnormalities in my body, the knocking-at-death’s-dark-door-nearly-full-stop physical trauma I experienced mirrored a host of spiritual abnormalities I had long since ignored, covered over and hidden away.
Physical crisis meet spiritual crisis.
After over 30 years of preaching, teaching, leading and pastor-ing myself, something was shifting.
“Hey, stop, come here!” I said.
I pulled life close and breathed in.
A long breathe-in.
A deep, not-letting-it-go breathe-in.
“I can smell you” I whispered.
I can smell.
Apparently I’m not alone in this long, deep, breathing in, either.
This condition has been given a name.
Deconstruction.
“Deconstruction” is the current pop-trend-term being loudly whispered about in growing religious I-used-to-go-to-church-but-not-anymore circles.
It’s everywhere.
It means, simply, “to examine or take apart in order to reveal a basis or composition often with the intention of exposing biases, flaws, or inconsistencies”.
When applied to church, religion, or -gasp- faith, it’s a trigger of the triggery-est kind.
It’s a tightrope many don’t, can’t, won’t or just refuse to walk.
It’s a term that gets dismissed out of hand by those who don’t, can’t, won’t or just refuse to consider that all is not well in church-world.
Picking away at the underpinnings of a lifetime-faith can be, well, a frightening shit-show.
A show to avoid at all costs.
I get it.
Especially these days when faith and spirituality are woven together in a deadly tapestry of toxic politics, culture-war-insanity, and conspiracy-theory-lunacy.
Russell Moore is the Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today and he’s written a book called Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America.
It’s a sober wake up call to the church in America, lamenting, among other things, the mass exodus of younger generations from churches and from the Christian faith.
At one point, Moore offers this brutal takedown:
“I couldn’t help but wonder if the plot twist to the story of American conservative Christianity was that what we thought was the Shire was Mordor all along…”
I recently ran into a woman who knew me from a church I taught at years ago.
Pleasant conversation.
Updates.
Smiles.
“What church are you with now?” she asked.
For those unaware, I had been a pastor for over 30 years.
“I don’t have one”, I replied.
“I don’t go”.
She was taken aback by my answer.
I was taken aback by her next question:
“Are you still a Christian?”
For those unaware or wondering, those two things don’t necessarily go together.
I smiled.
“Yes, I believe so” I assured her.
“Oh, ok”.
She seemed relieved, but pressed on.
“How’s your relationship with God?”
Pretty personal stuff, I thought, for a crowded grocery store aisle, but remember, I’ve been in the church-world my entire life.
I’m well-versed in the lingo.
I’m very familiar with Christian-ese.
My relationship with God.
My relationship.
With God.
God.
I paused, smiled again, and answered her.
“We’re cordial”.
This is my story.
My.
Story.
I’m telling it because I want to.
I’m telling it because I need to.
I need to.
I don’t know how it will land or who will need to hear it or who will or won’t even care.
I’m old enough not to worry about any of those things.
I just know I don’t take the aroma of anything for granted anymore.
“One little problem that confronts you,
Got a monkey on your back…
Just one more fix, Lord, might do the trick,
One hell of a price for you to get your kicks…”
- “That Smell”, Lynyrd Skynyrd
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