How can I enrich my writing with details from the five senses?

When I studied Christian spirituality at Creighton University, I learned an ancient technique of meditation Ignatius of Loyola (16th century) called "contemplation."  Using the same technique, you can ponder your scene and enter into an imaginative experience from which you can gather compelling details.  The techniques I'm giving you below are geared for meditation of the events in the life of Jesus, but meditating on the event in your story that you wish to explore will also work.

St. Ignatius of Loyola taught a form of meditation with scripture he called contemplation.  It is a way of entering into a Gospel story and experiencing it as if you were there.  As a result, the story and the people in it, especially Jesus the Christ, come alive and interact with you.  The result can be transforming.

The imagination turns out to be a powerful way of knowing. Using this power that you have, you can pull together images or data that might seem to be worlds apart and make coherent sense of them. Great scientists and inventive technologists say that, after you’ve gotten all the information, then real knowing begins: you have to re-envision things, see them anew, differently. That demands imagination.

So you use this great God-given power in prayer. You are likely to have a common problem with this power: It is unruly. Our imagination turns to fantasy on the slightest provocation—leaving the real world behind and enjoying a never-never land. You probably know that the great religions have developed ways of taming and focusing the imagination, and some of their disciplines are aimed at that. Here is one proven way to focus your imagination in order to come to know, love, and follow Jesus better.

1. Read a gospel passage slowly.
2. Quiet yourself
3. Imagine an object in the scene
4. Enlarge your vision to things near the object and finally to the whole setting
5. Imagine the whole setting as vividly as possible
6. What kind of place is it? Clean or dirty? Large or small? What about the architecture? The weather? Time of day or night?
7. Let the whole scene come to life
8. See the people. What are they doing? How many people? How are they dressed? What are their concerns? What are they saying? What are they doing?
9. Enter the scene. What are you doing there? Why have you come to this place? What are your feelings as you survey the scene and watch these people? What are you doing? Do you speak to anyone? To whom?
10. Notice the central figure. Where in the crowd is this one? What do you say to this one? What do you ask? How does this one reply? Spend as much time as you can getting as many details of this one’s life and person as possible. What sort of an impression does this one make on you? What are your feelings while you converse with this one?
11. As you are speaking to this one, out of the corner of your eye, the Holy One approaches, (Jesus). What are the Holy One’s actions and movements. Where does this one go? How does this one act? What do you think the Holy One is feeling? What does the other say? How does the other respond? What happens?
12. Dwell on the Holy One. This Holy One turns to you, engages you in conversation. Talk to this one about what you have experienced. Ask any question you wish. Listen to the Holy One’s response.
13. What are your feelings?
14. Spend some time in quiet prayer with the Holy One.