Incensed

I have learned to live with certain odors.

I grew up in a country where people are hot and sweaty most of the time, and where "personal space" is a foreign concept - literally. It is also a country where people burn their trash and pee in the bushes, where animals roam freely, and where almost everyone raises some kind of animal--be it goats or chickens. The markets smell mostly of fish: dried fish, fresh fish, crayfish, you name it. And cassava. Oo, when you inhale that cassava drying alongside the road, whooee! There are wonderful smells, too: night-blooming jasmine, ripe oranges, grilling suya (usually--hopefully--beef) skewers, roasted peanuts, rain after a long season of dusty dry.

Smells.

When I went to southeast Asia in the summer of 2001, when I was 19, I also noticed smells. Many of them were very familiar from my childhood and adolescence: sewage, sweat, citrus. There were several new smells, like coconut and durian.

One smell in particular, though, brought me to my senses:

Incense.

We didn't smell incense often, but when we did, it was always in or near a Buddhist temple. I came to associate the smell with Buddha, as does my mother, who grew up in Taiwan. My teammates and I toured several Buddhist temples, the most notable of which, of course, was the Monkey Cave Temple with the Reclining Buddha. But there was one temple, a small one in a remote village, into which I just could not go. When I drew near to the incense, I became faint and nauseated. In broad daylight, the darkness was oppressive, almost palpable. I have never felt anything like it before or since, but I could not go in. Instead, I sat and waited for the others, praying against the darkness, like a character out of a Frank Peretti novel..

That fall, when I was back in college, I attended a Sunday evening World Christian Fellowship meeting, where students met together to spread awareness of and pray for global Christians and missionaries. Having been raised as a missionary kid in a foreign country and having associated with some other MKs in college, I had become disillusioned about global missions to some extent. But I went to the meeting anyway, to see what it was like, to see if anyone cared about my Africa.

They were burning incense.

I sat through the first hour or so, but after that, I needed fresh air. Even in America, in a gathering of fellow Christians, I could feel the darkness creeping over me from the incense. Two other times I smelled incense in American churches - at a Greek Orthodox church and an Antiochan Orthodox church I visited with friends on separate occasions. Both times I just felt closed in, suffocated, almost panicky.

Yesterday's sermon focused on the symbolism of the magi's three gifts to Jesus. To make it a more sensory experience, the pastor burned some incense. The minute I set foot in the sanctuary after coffee break, I commented to my mom that I could smell incense and that I was not enthusiastic about it. The sermon was quite good (as usual), and I know why Jeff burned incense for that particular service. But I have to admit that it was hard to overcome that chest-tightening feeling of being transported back to the statue of Buddha. I hate that the magi gave a gift to little Jesus that I now associate with something dark, almost sinister. I have to wonder if there is any way at all for incense to be redeemed for me, or if I will always have that first reaction to its scent.

Will incense ever bring me closer to God instead of tearing me farther away?