i came over to my parents place today, and am sitting on their back deck, enjoying wifi and the outdoors.
i came over for a couple reasons.
one: to get out of the house, as it is a lonely place to be right now, since my wife no longer lives there.
two: to check on my sister’s dog, brutus, who is staying here this weekend while she and her husband are on the west coast at a wedding or something.
my parents were going to be here to watch him, but since grandmom went home to jesus on friday, they’re now in southern illinois helping granddad do all the mundane crap that must be done to put a body in the earth, as well as the harder task of rejoicing about old times and mourning about these times.
in any case, mom arranged for a neighbor of theirs to check in on brutus, but i didn’t like the idea of him being here all weekend and me not being sure he was being looked in on, so i’m doing it too.
(even if he is a pug)
so i’m sitting here in their backyard and the smell is wonderful.
i don’t know what all combination of plants they have going on here, but the smell reminds me of something very specific.
sandalwood.
there is in tuscon arizona an old mission, i forget the name of it, but it is a beautiful place out in the desert.
the sky there is as blue as it is in colorado and the ground is as red as ground gets.
this mission has an amazing chapel, full of iconography, a mixture of spanish and indian influence, and it feels holy inside.
there is attached to the rectory another room in this mission that is more “meditation room” than chapel — and the entire room is made from sandalwood.
the entire room.
it smells of god in there.
in any case, i walked out here to the deck a few minutes ago to let the dogs out (i brought trog over here to run, too) and that same smell was here, and i realized all over again that the universe is god-bathed, and we are in his hands, and it is well with my soul.