Advent: Peace 12/8 (text version)

​Can a certain smell create a feeling of … peace?
 
As a child, my Sunday School perfect attendance pins attested to regular worship at my home (Presbyterian) church in Paterson, NJ.
 
In that church, from girlhood, through high school, I, received quarterly communion, cheered basketball games in the gym, cooked in the kitchen, babysat in the nursery and swooned over my first crush.
 
Church attendance? NOT an option, and my adult self is now grateful.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fast forward to my first time at CHI. I was struck at once by..the smell!  CHI’s old-church fragrance transported me immediately to my early years.
 
I felt God’s soothing welcome. 
 
I knew peace.
 
Each subsequent opportunity that I have to enter the sanctuary – I stop, sniff, inhale, and find the peace I seek.
 
 “The work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.”       Isaiah 32:17
 

​The sanctuary at  The Church of The Holy Innocents