The Smoking Toast by Skylar Borsman
Great and broad leaf in which we delight,
Bless us this day as we strike up a light;
Aim us toward heaven but bind us to earth
Make our minds thoughtful and fill us with mirth.
Here we sit down as a gath'ring of friends
Each of us happy to be among men;
Peaceful reprieve from laborious life,
Sweet, sweet incense in the bowl of the pipe.
Charm us today with a billowy shroud;
Each does his part and puffs into the cloud;
Help us forget, for a moment, our woes;
Let your scent cling to each man as he goes.
Let them depart who cannot bear the smell;
We shan't refrain but we shall wish them well.
God gives good gifts that His people employ;
Let us then glorify Him and enjoy.
It seems that God created this world to be a place full of blessings. The changing seasons, various geographical wonders, and regional flora and fauna all speak to the creativity and variety of the mind of God. Before the fall of Man, all of creation was to be subdued and enjoyed by mankind without fear of danger or abuse. After the fall, however, nature has taken on many great perils, yet remains pregnant with blessings.
In the times I take off my headphones and put down my phone, even a short outdoor jaunt here in East Texas is an occasion to revel in the good world God made. But these instances are sadly more rare than they should be, as I live in a constant state of busyness. I have trained my attention span to be short and limited my ability to live “in the moment.” I am working to remedy this by spending more time reading physical books and doing tasks with no music or podcasts playing.
However, I am not the kind of man who can easily keep my mind focused while my hands are idle. Having something physical and methodical, or rhythmical, to occupy my hands seems to settle my mind. In the appropriate settings, I find that a great way to occupy my hands is to smoke either a cigar or a pipe. Naturally, I have an appreciation for tobacco, as it is the ideal material for smoking.
Growing up, I was taught largely by Southern Baptists and the Christian homeschool curriculum my parents used to train me. Those preachers and authors had a sort of consensus that drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco are inherently sinful, and they convinced me as a young man until my parents pointed out that the Bible does not really say that. My parents indeed blessed me by sowing a seed of dogma-oriented skepticism in my mind and encouraged me to read the works of intelligent philosophical minds like C.S. Lewis.
When I was twenty-three, I finally took the leap and bought a two-pack of gas station cigarillos on a road trip in my Ford Ranger and lit one with my windows down, headed back to my fundie Baptist College in Florida from my summer job in Texas. Since then, I have always enjoyed smoking, though I try to save my first-timer friends from letting their first cigar be a one-dollar gas station cigarillo.
As I started into the world of pipe smoking and collecting, I stumbled across Christian Pipe Smoking: An Introduction to Holy Incense by Uri Brito and Joffrey Swait. The book was very short but included a few poems I deeply enjoyed, and it struck me while listening to some Irish music that there are plenty of toasts men like to give when drinking together, but precious few, if any, for men who smoke together. Thus I set out to write a short poem that could serve as a sort of traditional dedication when we smoke together.
Colossians 3:23 tells us to do things heartily as unto the Lord. If God has indeed given us many good things to enjoy in this life, and He has, then we should not be reluctant to partake in moderation and enjoy, giving God the glory all the while.
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