Pipe Smoking 08:The Theological Part

“I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.” — C.S. Lewis

I started this series as an introduction into the wonderful world of pipe smoking and theology. So far, we’ve focused on the pipe side of the series. Now I want to focus on the theological side of it.

Before we go any further, though, let’s just put this out there so there’s no misunderstanding:

There aren’t any passages in the Bible that speak directly to smoking a pipe.

Oh, I suppose someone could claim that since prayer is like incense before God and the smoke from a pipe is sort of the same thing, it’s really not. And while Latakia tobacco does remind me a lot of incense, and incense is mentioned over 120 times in the Bible (even more so if you include the Apocrypha, and if you don’t, you really should), let’s not kid ourselves. We don’t have to spiritualize everything we do. No, make no mistake about it—there are no references to smoking a pipe in the Bible.

Someone else, I presume, could make the claim that the mature believer can do whatever her conscience allows her to do (see Romans 14). While that’s certainly true (up to a point, I’d say), that’s still not a direct line tying together smoking a pipe and theology.

So then…how do the two tie together?

C.S. Lewis

For me, it all goes back to the quote from C.S. Lewis at the top of each post in this series. Smoking a pipe offers one the chance to slow down and contemplate. As I said before, it’s allows one to mull things over, to turn it this way and that, to think of things through to the end, if you will. For example, almost every post I’ve ever written (and most certainly the posts within this series) has been with the aid of one or more of my pipes. The pipe gives me a moment’s pause—to tamp it down, to relight it, etc.—and that pause gives me a moment to think again about the passage, to connect some dots that I may not have thought of connecting. It may even bring up some dots that weren’t even on my radar. It also helps me formulate words and sentences and the general flow of my writing.

Certainly, those things can happen without smoking my pipe. But it’s absolutely amazing to me how the simple rituals of smoking a pipe aid me in my thinking and writing.

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“I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.”

Albert Einstein, 1950.

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There’s also the “not thinking” thinking that goes along with it. I know that sounds weird but it’s more experiential than anything else. I remember once, before I started smoking a pipe, when I was working on a drawing (I was an art major in another life) and I just couldn’t work out this one part. Something about it just didn’t fit but, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what “it” was. So I walked away for a few moments and did something else (I don’t remember what). But when I came back a little while later, the part that didn’t fit jumped right off the page for me. I was able to immediately see the problem and correct it, all because I wasn’t thinking about it.

The same thing happens when I’m working through a “tough bit” of theology. Sometimes the Lectionary readings leave me a little bit, well, empty.1 I have no idea where to take my reflection on the text. But when I light up my pipe…I ponder the passage again and again. I turn it over in my mind. I take a page from St. Ignatius Spiritual Exercises and place myself in the middle of the story and think about how it would affect me if I’d been there. More often than not, I have to read the context (the bits not found in the assigned passages) to get a better sense of what’s going on in the passage. And all the while, I’m sipping on my pipe, listening to the Spirit of God and thinking.

You know, just now, as I was pondering that last paragraph and where to go next, a scene from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s book, The Red-Headed League (you can watch an adaptation here), came to mind. Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. John Watson, “It is quite a three pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.”

The point Holmes is making is that, sometimes, the way forward isn’t readily seen and it takes more time seeking it out. I’ve found that I agree with Holmes; sometimes, it takes more than one pipe for me to get through a reflection on a passage of Scripture! As is almost always the case, it takes me several days of reading and reflecting before I’m ready to write anything about it. And my pipes are my faithful companions on the journey.

Click here for our next post where we’ll continue our look into a theological view of pipe smoking.

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In the Love of the Three in One,

Br. Jack+, LC

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1. I write a weekly reflection that posts every Sunday on one of the passages from the Sunday’s Lectionary readings.