Dear Friends
Many of you kindly said you would value a weekly email.  And I relised I was missing writing them.  So this is the first!  I think they may take on a bit of a different character being weekly rather than daily, but see what you think.

Mark 8:  22 – 25
Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. 23He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Can you see anything?’ 24And the man looked up and said, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.’ 25Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Apparently the sense of smell is about the most powerful sense in bringing back memories or evoking an instant reaction.  I’ve heard it said that if you take an instant like or dislike to someone, then it’s odds on that there is something in their human scent that has either attracted or repelled you.  Which is why I may not have too many friends after a long bike ride.
In this healing miracle, Jesus is restoring sight, but the other senses are vitally important too.  How many of the five senses can you spot in the story?  There’s sight of course.  But touch is also very important as is hearing in the initial exchange between Jesus and the blind man’s friends.  You could argue that taste, through the saliva, is present, and although smell isn’t mentioned, the scene always evokes for me a hot, dry, dusty day, with the smell of olive groves and Middle Eastern herbs like thyme and oregano.
I like this healing story because we get the incidental details about the man’s partial sight once Jesus has anointed his eyes with spittle just once.  The man can see, but it’s all blurry, with people looking like trees walking about. Once again Jesus uses the senses of hearing, sight, touch and taste to fully heal the blind man.  Because of the exchange the relationship between the man and Jesus is deepened, and we are drawn a little bit deeper into the story.  All our five senses are important and powerful in the responses they evoke.
Wherever you go outside at the moment you will find the sense of touch diminished as people avoid each other.  In enclosed spaces,facemasks dull the sense of smell.  The response of some people to this seems to be to scurry along and make even less eye contact than usual, allowing the loss of one sense to reduce the usefulness of another.  That is a shame.  The logical thing to do would surely be to enable the other senses to work overtime in order to compensate!  So when you’re next in a supermarket, or somewhere else public, try it out, try and get some eye contact and notice the response.  You might make someone’s day!!
Here is a pryer by Thomas Traherne (1646 – 74)
Is not sight a jewel? 
Is not hearing a treasure? 
Is not speech a glory? 
O my Lord, pardon my ingratitude and pity my dullness who am not sensible of these gifts. 
The freedom of thy bounty hath deceived me. 
These things were too near to be considered. 
Thou presented me with thy blessings, and I was not aware. 
But now I give thanks and adore and praise thee for they inestimable favours.”
Why don’t you listen to Benjamin Brittain’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra?
It amplifies the truth that there are many ways to discover the same thing!
Every blessing
Andrew