Coming to Our Senses

As with so many things in life, we tend to take our senses for granted until illness or aging diminishes our ability to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. I’m currently contending with an eye infection, which means I will be wearing glasses instead of contact lenses for a couple of weeks. As a result, my depth perception has changed, and I need to be careful when going down stairs or stepping off curbs.  Although this infection is a nuisance, it does offer the unexpected gift of heightened gratitude for the awesome gift of sight—a gift of which I am rarely cognizant.

At one time in human history, the senses were uniformly seen as gateways to sin rather than gifts from a God who meets us through our interactions with the world. However, as the mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If humankind could have known God without the world, God would never have created the world.” We know the world, and thus God, through our senses. Indeed, Richard Rohr suggests that Jesus came as a human being to teach us how to be a fully alive human being here on this earth—Jesus, who enjoyed eating and drinking, who healed the sick and injured through touch, who heard God’s voice say that he was God’s beloved son.

We all have the impression that time passes more quickly the older we get. Our senses offer us the great gift of slowing down to contemplate and savor what we see, hear, taste, smell, and feel. May we not wait until diminishment sets in to be aware of the gifts of our senses and use them to know God and enjoy being with God in the world.