Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God by Brent Bill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
We are sensual creatures. We constantly encounter our world through our five senses. We taste the coffee, we smell the roses, we see the glorious vista, we hear the blending of vocal harmonies, we feel the touch of a loved one comforting us when we hurt. Yet often our relationship with God is lived in our head–conceptualizing and analyzing words alone.
This book is a wonderful collection of exercises co-authored by two spiritual directors, Brent Bill and Beth Booram, that help us explore the wonders of God that come to us through our senses. Each section focuses on one sense beginning with a photograph to engage us in reflection around a particular sense.
Around taste, one of the exercises proposed by Brent is that of “eating the hours”, following the practice of fixed our prayer with meals or snacks at fixed time through which we taste God’s goodness. A seeing exercise using a photographic metaphor talked about re-framing and focusing, zooming in on one aspect of the scenery of our lives to see what God may be saying to us. Touching included taking a pile of stones and building them into an altar. Hearing included practicing an audio lectio divina, where one listens to a favorite piece of music, and focuses in on a particular musical phrase that arrests our attention. And smell included (ah, yes!) a reflection on the smell of coffee as a reminder of our communion with people and God–something with which I am well acquainted!
Not every exercise may appeal to every reader, but the cumulative effect is to open us to new ways of attentiveness to God as He meets us through our sensory experiences.