So I’m walking into a Baptist church in the Midwest for a wedding, and I hold the door for the maid of honor.
As I step inside, I’m hit with that wave of familiarity that remains fresh in my memories, even though I haven’t set foot in a church in ages. It’s a wave of recall, of stubborn ambience, of uninvited memory – an insistent cord that snaps me back to my abandoned past like the elastic band on a paddleball.
“All churches smell the same,” I suddenly realize – and I wonder why this has never registered before.
The maid of honor pauses and turns to me.
“All churches smell the same,” she says in a low voice, as if Yahweh Himself were in the room and she’d just asked, ‘Who farted?’ She’s right, of course.
Suddenly I’m five years old again, descending into a cinderblock basement painted the yellow of children’s construction paper, leaving behind the sanctuary, with its vision-confounding windows and hard-as-stone, stained-oak pews and their puffy thin-carpet padding. Florescent light beckons. There’s a fellowship hall with long, collapsible tables and Army-brown folding chairs around here somewhere, filled with fried chicken and covered-dish corn and green beans and scalloped potatoes and styrofoam cups full of lemonade and iced tea, and the scent of coffee emanating from large metal cylinders somewhere nearby.
“They do!” I quietly agree.
She looks me in the eye. “It’s the smell of the Lord,” she states emphatically. I nod. She’s right, of course.
I’ve known this smell all my life. It is, indeed, the smell of the Lord – the unmistakable aroma of righteousness, olfactory evidence of piety and salvation. My father, an evangelical pastor, gave my siblings and me generous exposure to so many of these ample bunkers in our youth. My memory tells no word of lie: they do, indeed, all smell exactly the same.
But I’m knocked off kilter by a revelation: this is a Baptist church, and I’m a Campbellite! (a spun-off Church-of-Christer). I’m suddenly aware that over the years I’ve been in so many of God’s houses – Church of Christ, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, you name it – and the non-denominational scent of the divine holds true, across the deepest of doctrinal divides.
Another few moments of thought, and my awe deepens: for I have played weddings on pipe organs in Catholic domiciles, and there, too - that holy aroma! This most ecumenical of odors arises in cathedrals, temples, sanctuaries of all creed (though I confess I’ve never been in a mosque) - hanging like a yellow sign in the rear window of the day, announcing “Deity on Board”.
As guests are parsed Bride and Groom in the sanctuary, I ruminate - this is not an isolated phenomenon. Consider, for instance, the following:
- All government buildings smell the same;
- All old theaters smell the same;
- All high school gymnasiums smell the same;
…and yet they all smell very distinct; you could be blindfolded and escorted into any of them, and you’d identify your surroundings in a heartbeat – but none of them smell like this.
There’s something primal at work here, I think. In nature – and, by extension, the wayback past – the smell of a place gave us as much or more information about it than our vision and touch, a distinct survival advantage. Even on approach, the scent of a stream or the edge of a wood or the mouth of a cave would say, “Feces!” or “Large animals died here!” or “Hungry predators await!” – and a Go/No-Go would click in the mind. So it is with all of the above.
The government building is made of metal doors and tile bathrooms and stucco walls and ceilings. Old theaters smell of crushed velvet and the oil of hinged chairs and stale popcorn. High school gymnasiums are the maple of the court floor and the sweaty, jock-strappy reek of youth.
And the Smell of the Lord is aged oak and frequently-vacuumed carpet and fabric covering everything, with the must of the occasional heavy drape and fleeting wisps of crayon.
The Lord’s scent might signal hellfire or haven; it might accompany authoritarian exclusivism or Unitarian tolerance, the justification of the mighty or sanctuary for the downtrodden. It might herald the intimidating waft of legalist reprobation or the honey-sweet welcome of egalitarian quittance – the dull thump of tribe, or the whistling winds of amnesty.
Only one thing is certain: that smell is the one damn thing, the onlydamnthing about houses of worship that is, between them, even remotely consistent.
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