Wafting Memories

     It is May 13, 2011and I am sitting in my office with the window open because it feels like August; hot and humid. I am not complaining, mind you. One of my pet peeves (and I have many such pets) is people who complain in the winter when it is cold and then complain in the summer because it is hot. Make up your minds, folks. Anyhoo, it is Spring and it feels like late Summer. No problem, says I. I like heat.

     Adding to the seasonal confusion is the fact that wafting through my open window is the glorious smell of wood smoke. This smell creates an emotional response within my being; the smell of campfire smoke is a reminder of summer campfires! (I use the word wafting, rather than drifting or blowing, because waft not only sounds much more educated, but it means "a gentle blowing through the air." When I looked the word up online one of the sample sentences was “the smell of stale fat wafted out from the restaurant.” Gross. Not the gentle or comforting sense I wish to convey). To those of us who have worked at or attended summer camp the smell of campfire smoke is both amazingly comforting and incredibly exciting. Why?

“Importantly, the olfactory cortex is embedded within the brain’s limbic system and amygdala, where emotions are born and emotional memories stored. That’s why smells, feelings and memories become so easily and intimately entangled, and why the simple act of washing dishes recently made Dr. Herz’s cousin break down and cry. ‘The smell of the dish soap reminded her of her grandmother,’ said Dr. Herz, author of The Scent of Desire.’”[1]

     The summer camp environment is a vastly different culture than what our worldly society offers (at least it is so at our camp). What a summer staff person experiences is a 24/6 New Testament adventure of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to a particular and targeted group of youth. Everything we do orbits this nucleus of proclamation. Five days of morning and evening sermons and Bible studies (four times a day in the Word) provide more Christian education for a youth than a year of Sunday school—that’s incredible!

     For most of the staff, the culmination of each day (a day that is filled with activity, fun, community building, fellowship, learning, and fun) is the evening campfire. Here youth can worship in one of the fuller senses of that word. Singing, shouting, dancing, clapping, laughing, praying, listening, responding, engaging, reading, crying, hugging, being still and silent while staring into the fire; these movements and experiences are all completed in the gentle waft of campfire smoke. It encircles us worshippers like incense and rises up with our praises and outstretched arms. Fire and smoke are as much a part of our evening worship as the singing and preaching. Which is why the smell of campfire smoke evokes such an emotional response in us; the smell is “intimately entangled” with our spiritual beings. The smell is a reminder of the experience of worship.

     For me the smell takes me back to about age nine, sitting on the top seat of Pine Cove listening to the pastor talk about the enormous love of God and giving an invitation to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The pastor said, “As a symbol of your decision come and put a stick on the fire.” In that moment, God broke into my awareness. I do not understand how he did, but I remember my mind suddenly expanded and I was keenly aware of the LOVE OF GOD. And I practically leaped off that seat to go place a stick on the fire; and there I was wrapped in the smell of smoke.

So here I sit, thirty-sevenish years later, enjoying the warmth of pseudo-summer and the spiritually emotional journey that wafts from my amygdala. Inhale deeply, oh my soul; my God of love is very near.

“May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.”  Ps 141:2

Deb Horst

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            [1] Natalie Angier, “The Nose: An Emotional Time Machine,” The New York Times, August 5, 2008, Tuesday; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/science/05angier.html (accessed May 13, 2011).