Years ago, when I was studying abroad in Spain, I started smoking. I was lonely, reeling from a sexual assault, and desperately needing connection and community. Smoking with my host mom on the balcony became a blessed retreat in the midst of homesickness, fear, trauma, and isolation.
I only smoked one or two cigarettes a day. When I got home that summer I smoked that one cigarette with my coworkers at the restaurant. When I got back to Arizona for school I hung out with a group of guys in front of my dorm, smoking in the warm night air. Eventually between the asthma, not being able to breathe when I ran, and the cute boy who really wanted me to stop (thanks Adam) I quit.
So I smoked for maybe 5 months, not even every day, and only had a cigarette or two at most each day. Not a heavy smoker by any means, so quitting wasn’t very hard. And yet I sit here today, totally overwhelmed with caring for my in-laws and I realize I have my fingers up to my mouth and I’m breathing like I’m inhaling cigarette smoke. After all this time, when things are hard, my brain craves the soothing ritual of smoking.
I share this because it illustrates two very powerful factors in our lives. One is the way addiction works and the other is that the practices and rituals we engage in are deeply important in times of crisis.
The pattern of taking a deep breath in through pursed lips, stopping the breath for a moment, and then releasing the breath through my nose calms me. Breath prayer, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and more all harness the power of breath. When I am anxious breathing calms me.
Another things that calms me is Taize. One of the reasons I love Taize worship, and that our daughter Paige and I made the trip there 3 years ago, is the soothing nature of the repetitive songs. Another reason is that I first experienced Taize worship in my freshman year of college, right after one of my best friends from high school was killed by a drunk driver. In my deep grief singing simple prayers over and over allowed my broken heart to open more fully to God. Whenever I sing a song from Taize it grounds me more fully in God and releases something within my soul.
The things we do become touchstones in our life. This is why we talk about faith practice. This is why we as people who long to connect to God recite the same prayers over and over. It is why we sing together so that the songs become so familiar they fill us when we have nothing else. We do these things not for today, but for the day we’re lying in an MRI machine as the doctor checks the tumor or the moment where everything we know becomes shifting sand as people leave us.
We as human beings need ritual to soothe, to get us through, to ground us. Some practices are better for us than others, for example Taize is a far healthier touchstone than smoking. The rituals of faith do not exist to limit us, but rather to give us a steadfast foundation to cling to when we need it
Today as I breathe I’m taking time to reframe my habit from smoking to a breath prayer. Breathe in a word, breathe out in silence. I am breathing in peace today. May you find rituals and holy practices that ground you in the most difficult of times. And may we all reshape our harmful habits into life-giving rituals of peace.
-Eilidh
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