I can still vividly remember being 20 years old and leaving the country for the first time. I can remember walking off the plane in Entebbe, Uganda. There was a burning smell in the air that I didn\u2019t recognize. I remember grabbing my bags, leaving the airport, and being swarmed by men wanting me to hop in their taxi or carry my bags. I remember driving through Kampala and it being unlike any car ride I had ever previously experienced. And I can definitely remember finally getting to my room where my host handed me an Orange Fanta in the old school glass bottle. That night I wrote in my journal, \u201cAll my senses experienced something new today and my view of how big God is just grew.\u201d<\/p>\n
I love what Sarah Pink states as one of the goals of a sensory ethnographer. She says, \u201cI propose that one of the goals of the sensory ethnographer is to seek to know places in other people\u2019s worlds that are similar to the places and ways of knowing of those others.[1]<\/a>\u201d It just makes sense that to know others (and I would add to grow in understanding of God) we need to observe, participate, study, and understand the places of the people we want to know. We all have something we can learn from this process.<\/p>\n What is interesting to me is the person coming in to observe might just see something we ourselves can\u2019t see. I remember talking to an Ugandan about the unique burning smell that seems to be everywhere. I don\u2019t know any Americans that have traveled to Uganda and don\u2019t know what I\u2019m referring to, yet the Ugandan responded with, \u201cwhat burning smell?\u201d Sometimes we have become so accustomed to our surroundings that our senses take some things for granted. Sarah Pink would say, \u201cthat perception is fundamental to understanding the principles upon which a sensory approach to ethnography must depend would not be disputed.[2]<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n What we sense, how we feel, and the way we experience life matters. It even matters how we communicate those things to others. It should be no surprise to us that our Creator created some to have heightened senses in some areas while others have heightened senses in other areas. This is the body of Christ at work and to fully know each other, know this world, and know our Creator we need one another. Pink says, \u201cPerception is integral to the very production of these categories: culture itself is not fixed. Rather, human beings are continuously and actively involved in the process through which not only culture, but also the total environments in which they live are constituted, experienced, and change continually over time.[3]<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n I enjoyed this book because it highlights our need for intimacy with one another as we gain knowledge about one another. The same can be said about our Creator. We all know we can have a vast knowledge of the scriptures and yet not know God. There is an intimacy with God that comes when we engage our heart and our senses, and participate in the culture around us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Pink, Sarah.\u00a0Doing Sensory Ethnography<\/em>. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009, 23.<\/p>\n
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