It was early in the morning when Jack saw the delightful smell drifting in from the kitchen. A haze,

It was Stijn, his son, cooking bacon for the family breakfast. Delightful, visible and delicious.

A combination of several senses at once.

Another combination is lightning. The stroke, which grasps our sight as suddenly it appears and

continues for a very brief time afterwards as dark lines as we blink it away. Then comes the sound.

Calculating in our mind the speed of sound @ 1125 ft/s we come up with a mile every 4.7 seconds.

It’s fun to see how close the strike is by the timing of the thunder. So, we have sound and sight in

combination. If the lightning is close, there is a smell of the ozone as well. The fertility of the earth

is enhanced by the generation of Nitrogen. A natural fertilizer and the ozone protects us from the

harmful radiation from sunlight! Quite a few senses involved. Sight, smell, hearing and the

engagement of our mind in calculation and awe.

Along with the lightning, comes the wind and the rain. So now we combine sight, smell and sound

in a different way with seeing the rain, hearing it spatter on our head or the rap on a roof. Then

comes the smell of freshness. Does anyone have few words for the smell of the rain? It’s the smell

that aromatic companies try to duplicate for those horrid car ‘fresheners’ or scented soaps and dryer

sheets. That isle in the big box store that gives us the challenge of holding our breath until we wheel

past with the wobble-wheel cart, looking for toilet paper (Same breath holding reaction to the kitty

litter aisle)

There is, of course, the smell of an old bound hard-cover book while reading it. We could talk about

the delight of those two, but that’s another sense we have. Awe. It’s a natural emotional response to

the senses combined. It’s a sense of presence of the Numinous Creator God. You may call Him a

different name in your awe, Jack calls him Yahweh or Lord or God, the best one for him is Jesus.

Another sense often occurs with that Awe, shivering or a tingling of suddenly being aware of the

supernatural that is always with you but now, sometimes visible (It HAS happened to the Gator,

but is very rare.) After all, no one is supposed to see the face of God lest he die. In the words of

Pogo..”Death, I can live without it”.

It’s not the face of God Jack has seen, it’s the result of His presence he has seen. Jack knows He has

permitted him to see things and hear things, along with that presence that is unbelievable when Jack

talks about them. That’s OK if someone scoffs at these things, Jack knows, He was there.

As Jack has said before, he was there and he is not claiming any thing else. Just a gift we get if we

would know it is so. Jack Gator looks forward to this gift from Him with a smile of expectancy. Jack

never knows when it will occur, but it does and gives him more than he can try to describe in the

description of senses. You probably have had this happen to you, the reader, but perhaps have

thought of it as incredible luck or coincidence unexplained. It’s Joy, that’s for certain.

It’s pretty good. Jack Gator