A Fragrant Offering
Bob Wickizer
Isaiah 43:16-21
It's that Sunday in Lent when we need to talk about something delicate - our sense of smell. Our olfactory system connects directly to the emotional centers of our brain. A close friend of mine had just returned from three tours as a medical evacuation helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. I took him duck hunting a year or so after he returned. When he picked up his first duck, the smell of blood took him to an instant flashback of picking up mutilated bodies from the battlefield. For a few minutes I literally thought we had lost him.
Sometimes we try to cover up our sense of smell to avoid unpleasant odors. Years later my family was visiting Spain and northern Africa. We visited a large, open air leather tannery in Fez Morocco. Child labor and worker safety laws in the US would have shut this place down decades ago, but we joined lots of other tourists in stores surrounding this open air scene where we could shop for leather goods in the store or go out to the balcony to fully experience the process of tanning leather.
In Morocco they raise millions of pigeons in the desert for food not unlike the way we raise chickens in NE Oklahoma. Desert cultures do not waste anything so the output of all these pigeons turns out to be a very handy way of removing the hair from camel and cow hides. The first step in this tannery involves hides placed in an in-ground vat filled with a little water and pigeon stuff (the stuff that city pigeons leave on the street). The open air tannery is larger than a football field and is surrounded by three story buildings all selling leather goods and all with balconies overlooking the scene.
Young boys stand in the vats down below and agitate the hides with their bare feet. Upstairs on the balconies, other young boys carry platters of fresh mint around for the tourists to stuff in their noses. The smell of the pigeon waste is unforgettable no matter how much green mint you have jammed ...
Bob Wickizer
Isaiah 43:16-21
It's that Sunday in Lent when we need to talk about something delicate - our sense of smell. Our olfactory system connects directly to the emotional centers of our brain. A close friend of mine had just returned from three tours as a medical evacuation helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. I took him duck hunting a year or so after he returned. When he picked up his first duck, the smell of blood took him to an instant flashback of picking up mutilated bodies from the battlefield. For a few minutes I literally thought we had lost him.
Sometimes we try to cover up our sense of smell to avoid unpleasant odors. Years later my family was visiting Spain and northern Africa. We visited a large, open air leather tannery in Fez Morocco. Child labor and worker safety laws in the US would have shut this place down decades ago, but we joined lots of other tourists in stores surrounding this open air scene where we could shop for leather goods in the store or go out to the balcony to fully experience the process of tanning leather.
In Morocco they raise millions of pigeons in the desert for food not unlike the way we raise chickens in NE Oklahoma. Desert cultures do not waste anything so the output of all these pigeons turns out to be a very handy way of removing the hair from camel and cow hides. The first step in this tannery involves hides placed in an in-ground vat filled with a little water and pigeon stuff (the stuff that city pigeons leave on the street). The open air tannery is larger than a football field and is surrounded by three story buildings all selling leather goods and all with balconies overlooking the scene.
Young boys stand in the vats down below and agitate the hides with their bare feet. Upstairs on the balconies, other young boys carry platters of fresh mint around for the tourists to stuff in their noses. The smell of the pigeon waste is unforgettable no matter how much green mint you have jammed ...
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