I read somewhere that 80% of our tasting comes from the sense of smell.  I always said black walnuts taste like Nanticoke porches. 

I intensely dislike the taste of black walnuts. But I'm always delighted when an encounter with them carries me back to a "me" in a sunsuit with bows on the shoulders, sandals and socks, on the porch of my grandparents' turn-of-the-century duplex, with its distinctive bitter-sweet, dark, dank smell.

The smell of hot, wet asphalt always makes me smile.  It transports me to Niagara Falls.  As a girl I had to walk everywhere, in all kinds of weather, and I loved the summer rain.  As soon as the big fat drops would start, I'd run outside in my bare feet to feel the griddle-hot  surfaces sizzle and steam and cool in the sluicing downpour - and that oily, cooked smell - it was right there.

The smell or taste of lime lollipops takes me back to Niagara Falls, too.  It's the taste of the free lollipops at the bank, or in my Halloween cache.

Today it was socked-in rainy and humid - what you'd call "close." As in, "the air felt thick and close" around me.  I waited to cross at a DC intersection and I could smell a County Fair.  If I closed my eyes, I could imagine the Ferris wheel and sticky kids parading by with cotton candy.  But it was just the rich smell of the greasy hot water in the hot dog vendor's booth, trapped and all up in my face, the way the Fair food vendors' greasy pits' smoke permeates the Fair Grounds.

The spicy sweet scent of dark purple lilacs are the smell of my childhood.  Not the light purple, just the dark.  I used to pick armfulls of lilacs for my mom from Peggy Conti's huge bush across the street.  I would inhale their heady, unique fragrance, and run my fingers over the delicate tiny petals, flowers within flowers. Later, as a teen, I became fond of a candy called Violets.  They weren't delicious, in fact, they were kind of bitter and perfume-tasting.  But I remember thinking the taste (probably the smell) reminded me of lilacs.  So I liked them.

I so enjoy these scent-triggered trips to another time and place.  When I studied the brain and memory in college, I learned that our sense of smell is the sense that has access to our oldest, deepest memories - much more than our other 4 physical senses.  I so appreciate its power, the mystery of how it traverses those pathways in the brain, which no other stimuli can seem to navigate.

I think when we stop to revel in a moment, to capture an emotion, to make a memory, we should breathe deeply and remember how the moment smells. Its memory is faithful and long.

Not all smells transport me to childhood.  Some are just cool to recognize, or delightful to experience, or, weird.

Like being able to "smell rain" or "smell snow" coming, in the air, hours before precipitation starts - that's cool.

Or like smelling a delicious cologne on my husband's cheek and neck.  'Makes me want to bury my head in his neck and shoulder and sway together in a slow dance of contentment  - that's delight.

Or, like the smell that hits me each time I approach the back-door entrance to the buffet-deli in the basement of my office building on 18th Street.  It smells like the Zoo - that's just weird.

Wow.  Way to go, Presbyterians.  We recently celebrated "Trinity Sunday" and the preacher nattered on about the triune God, the mystery, yadda yadda.  I kept thinking, it's not "3 gods in one, or 3 persons in one" - that sounds like a commercial for mouthwash or something. 

The idea of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is just a way to express the Reality we have experienced.  It is a good start.  Plenty of room for pondering, discovering.  But, enter the Presbyterians, who this week have succeeded in allowing their local congregations to "experiment" with other descriptions of this same Reality.

http://usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-06-19-presbyterians_x.htm

Their purpose is to seek "fresh ways to speak of the mystery of the triune God" to "expand the church's vocabulary of praise and wonder." I read these, and I can only say, "YESSS!" because they echo, immediately, of my own experience of God.

— "Lover, Beloved, Love"

— "Creator, Savior, Sanctifier"

— "King of Glory, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love"

— "Mother, Child and Womb" 

— "Rock, Redeemer, Friend"

Just like "Father, Son and Holy Spirit," none of these is complete, is the last word.  But each of them succeeds in describing a beautiful Reality.

Interesting survey results when asking people what they believe about hell.  URL: Catch Hell

It just brings up questions for me!

What purpose does hell serve for us?

Does it fill that unfortunate need we have as humans to put someone else down to make ourselves feel better?

Does it fill that juvenile need for limits - behave yourself, or else?

Does it fill the need for self-punishment borne of guilt?

I think that when we realize that our Souls are made of the same Stuff as Jesus', and that we exist as part of, and one with, the Heart of God - before birth, during this time on Earth, and afterwards - then,

• there's no need to put others down, because they are made of the same Stuff, and our own self-value increases immensely
• there's no need for an "or else" because the Else is always returning to God, no matter what we've done
• there's no need for self-punishment because it is irrelevant and unnecessary - God is not looking to punish us, in fact, God wants us to simply acknowledge mistakes and pick up where we left off and start again - free.  Us making mistakes does not change our unity with the Heart of God, nor our "sonship".  We can't be separated.

We can't be separated.  Therefore, there is no hell. 

The only hell that exists is the one we choose, here, on this Earth, when we participate in a belief that we (or anyone else) are separated from our Source. That belief can indeed cause us pain, because it leads to all manner of dysfunctional behavior and illusions.

This is a foundational teaching from the Course In Miracles:

Nothing real can be threatened.

Nothing unreal exists.

Therein lies the peace of God.

Herein lies a little clue to the illusions of which I write.  Whatever threatens us, worries us, absorbs our nervous attention - these things are not real.  They are illusions we have created, learned and passed on.  Look harder - as Raffiki says - and we see that what threatens us is not real at all.  Look harder, behind the illusion, and see what is real, and we have peace.

"Forgiveness is the only illusion that does not beget more illusions."

This helps.  I do understand that God doesn't need to forgive, but that forgiveness is the bridge to humanity's experience of its true Self. We need to be forgiven, and to forgive (ourselves and others) so we can put an end to illusions and create a path to God, and to our true selves.

I wonder how many other illusions I can stop, preventing them from spinning into more illusions - Probably not many.  However.  I'm thinking that when I stop, and breathe, and stop thinking, but rather meditate to "come back" to my Self, and to my body (as Thich Nhat Hahn says), THEN I emerge, from the midst of the illusions and stop their spinning.

When I return to my life here, I pick up and swim among my perceptions and collective illusions.  It must be this way; this is the game of life we play.

But, I'm thinking that to re-enter from a STOP, from a clearing, I stand a chance of acting and thinking in a more true sense.  I stand a chance of making a choice born of God's thoughts, refraining from the old thoughts and actions that no longer make sense once I take myself out of the chain of assumptions that create our illusions.

No one really can see the difference - or can they?  Is there a difference between a Me who is swimming among my illusions, fatigued, working hard, following where others have pointed... and a Me who has just entered the stream, still standing, looking over the waters and seeing all ways, all possibilities, refreshed, not tired and not being propelled along?

To forgive is to let go, first.  I can see how forgiveness is a ladder out of the swirling stream - a ladder I can use to step onto the platform of my true Self for a while, one with our Creator.