Smoking cigarettes, it is said in advertising and on pamphlets, is the most preventable cause of death. It's an absurd statement of course: there is no way to prevent death; unless you take the virgin birth route. And I wouldn't suggest anyone take that path too lightly, the responsibility is too heavy.
But, smoking does cause health issues, which are preventable — from cancers to cankers to respiratory conditions. It reduces the number of years you have to live and worse, makes the last few of those anguishing. According to Health Canada, over 45,000 Canadians die “from disease or illness caused by using tobacco and at least 1,000 are non-smokers.
“Cigarette smoke is the number one cause of visible indoor air pollution. Second-hand smoke exposes employees and customers to cancer-causing pollutants. It can also interact with other occupational hazards, further increasing the danger to health. Smoking costs the Canadian health care system approximately $3.5 billion every year.”
Them's the stats and they are incontrovertible. Because of them, smoking is a major health initiative taken on by various levels of government: it is banned in public buildings, even in bars, in some parts of the country; it is heavily taxed to prevent affordability; smokers are often treated as pariahs, at public functions, in office environments and particularly at dinner parties.
Therefore I was shocked at a Native worship service held at church offices when tobacco was used as a spiritual and religious tool. I knew intellectually that tobacco was a spiritual instrument — much like wine and bread — in Native religions. But, culturally it is often a symbol of shame. Here, it was a cleansing agent. Everybody at the worship service cleansed himself or herself in the tobacco smoke.
That was a strange sensation: the raw tobacco used in the spiritual ceremony smells just like a lit cigarette. Shifting the association from addiction to spirituality was jarring. I watched as the assembled used both hands to waft the smoke over their face and over their body — of the thirty-plus gathered there was only one who was a smoker. I could tell by the slight tics on faces that their primary association with the smoke and the smell was as an addictive health hazard and not as an instrument of spiritual cleansing.
The Aboriginal Peoples who spanned North America never intended for tobacco to be a mass-produced public killer. Bob Newhart in his famous sketch makes the point as Sir Walter Raleigh introduces tobacco to British society. Raleigh explains that you roll the leaf, set it on fire and then stick the burning thing in your mouth. It's a tough sell, according to Newhart. (The sketch ends with Raleigh selling some beans, which are ground and then soaked in hot water. Apparently many people like to have the hot water beans and the burning leaves together in the morning.)
It is absurd, and yet this once sacred element has been turned into vulgar excess. That is what our society does best of all: convert everything to excess. Of course, we — you and I — are society; we are also community and consumer culture and church and nation. So, it is we who create excess.
All that we consume has spiritual roots, whether it be coffee, salt, chocolate or love. But by becoming consumers, we forsake our spirituality. Spirituality demands contemplation, while consumption easily becomes indulgence in excess. And excess is the state in which most of us live.
Many disingenuously go on about how Native Canadians worshiped the land and worshiped all of its elements. I say disingenuously because we rarely bring that sensibility to our own lives. There is nothing in our theology that keeps us from spiritual contemplation. In fact, everything in our theology demands we clear the clutter of our excess and seek the roots to our spirituality.
And there's the rub: it is tough to clear the clutter, since there is so much of it. It is when we see the excess of our own lives — the hectic schedules, the unread magazines, the over flowing closets, the unopened bills and the dump-n-run garages, basements and attics — we see ourselves with greater clarity. We recognize, if ever briefly, in the passing seconds of our rushing agendas, how far we have slipped from our spiritual roots.
