I have the daily lectionary on my phone, allowing me to reflect on passages from the rich scriptures of Holy Week as I walk. I was particularly struck yesterday by the scene in John 12 where Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfume. One sentence provides the kind of sensory detail that is rare in the gospels: “The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” I’m sure John had his symbolic reasons for this verse, but it made me wonder about the last sensations taken in by the incarnate One in the last week of his life. With all that was on his mind and heart, did he still hear the birds of dawn, or notice the warm hues of late afternoon light? Did he gaze with wonder at the Paschal moon? Of course he hadn’t read the Romantics, but as Rebecca Solnit wrote about her experience of being arrested on Good Friday at a Nevada desert nuclear test site, “even when you’re in handcuffs, the sunset is still beautiful.”

That reflection in turn heightened my own attentiveness to the privileges of embodied being, and I tried to be present to the many sensations of an 8 hour walking day (perhaps excluding my aching shoulders and complaining feet).

I arrived in Logrono in time for one of their several Semana Santa (Holy Week) street processions. The “float” of prisoner Jesus was preceded by dozens of hooded drummers, pounding a deafening tattoo, the terrible sound of inescapable fate.