Incense

I’ve been feeling uninspired by writing today, even in my blog. I’ve spent the morning and much of the afternoon doing laundry, writing emails to students, and drinking a Starbucks venti brown sugar oatmilk shaken iced espresso (which reminds me of this.)

I enacted one of my writing rituals, incense. Not those cute little incense sticks or cones you see (so I’m told) at the local head shop, but the real thing: frankincense tears. The kind you have to burn on self-igniting charcoal. Church incense (if that church is hard-core; most of the church incense I’ve been seeing is myrrh and rose).

It’s a fine ritual: get the goblet-shaped censer (or the thurible if you’re high church), put a puck of charcoal in it and light it, let the sparks burn through, and add the incense.

But something happened differently this time.

I put the usual amount of incense in, the amount that gives a small trickle of smoke, but that’s not what I got. I must have accidentally found the formula for optimizing the amount of smoke, because that’s what I got — billows of smoke. So much smoke I thought the smoke alarm was going to go off. So much smoke that the Brothers at the Abbey would tell me to knock it off. So much smoke that I was getting a contact frankincense high.

It was lovely.

Growing up Catholic, I remember the thurible brought out on special occasions by the priest. A thurible has long chains and the priest can swing it back and forth. I remember smelling the incense and wishing more would waft into the back of the church where I invariably sat. My friend Les, not a priest, had a thurible and would swing it 360 degrees, but only in my peripheral vision so I didn’t see it. (The little imp.) I got my love of incense from him, and still have a couple ounces of myrrh incense from him I only use on very special occasions.

The quality of my day has changed because of the incense. I haven’t written any more yet, but there is a softness to the day I didn’t notice before.