As someone who has generally done whatever they can to avoid churches for fear of getting smote down on the spot (I jest… sort of… I also always thought the past tense of smite was smited, but Google thinks it knows better than I do. Ok Google, we’ll go with your way), I’ve actually been going to churches that have appeared down the streets I’ve wandered in Paris.

I remember being so angry years ago when I went to the Vatican. All the gold, the marble, the opulence in the name of religion, while the people around had nothing and starved, and in fact even died building that insane city… All the things I hate about organised religion. Nothing about that place felt like it was made by the people for the people. It made me angrier still to think about how even now, it still exists, just as it ever did – a way to separate themselves from everyone else.

Perhaps I’ve mellowed in my old age but I’ve been walking into these churches with a different mindset entirely – though I do prefer the smaller ones. The really huge, grand ones still give me a slight uncomfortable feeling. I now try not to think about the religion aspect, but think more about the history of these sacred spaces, how they are places where so many people through time have come together, congregating to connect with something greater than themselves.

I feel a really spirituality and connection when I swim on Hampstead Heath, where so many have swum before me, and now I tap into that feeling when stepping inside a church too. I take a seat and I close my eyes, earphones in, and I meditate for 20 minutes.

Did you know that the word ‘spiritual’ comes from the Latin word spirare, which means ‘to breathe’? The noun counterpart of spirare, spiritus, means “a breath”, “air” or “inspiration”

There’s a quote I remind myself of when things feel like they’re all going wrong: ‘As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong, no matter how ill or how hopeless you may feel.’ – Jon Kabat-Zinn

So being spiritual needs to mean nothing more than connecting to our breath. The same breath, the same mechanism we all use, 4-16 times per minute, all day every day that we’re alive. No vengeful man who preordains all life and attempts to control people through the idea of sin and shame for just being human, no elitist club that only some people get to join when they die, no converting, nothing evangelical. Just the one thing that connects us all, and with every other human, ever. With every animal on the planet, too. From the animals that live the longest – like the tortoise that breathes only 4 breaths a minute and lives for 150-200 years, to the mouse who breathes up to 230 breaths per minute (!) and lives only 1-3 years – It’s a sliding scale, which we all sit on (and there’s a message there in longevity too – slow ya breaths down, peeps).

I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to ‘live our best life’ (cringe), we need some sort of spiritual connection – whether we get that through our friend the breath, or through meditation, swimming, walking in nature, prayer, movement-based practices like yoga, tai chi or qi gong… doing something that quietens the mind, allowing us to go beyond it and connect with ourselves and all of humanity. Otherwise it’s too easy to get caught up in the chatter, the chitta vritti*, the self. And I assure you, we are all so much more than just that.

In one church, they had an ‘intention de prié’ box – intention for prayer. Beside it, they had pieces of paper and pens. And so I sat, and I wrote, in my very best, hasty French, ‘please pray for me to heal from this cancer’, wondering whether I should feel weird asking for help from a deity I didn’t believe in. But I poked it into the overflowing box which they would apparently empty on Friday, praying for all those who asked.

My views on this whole life-after-death thing got very confused by the research of a sceptical doctor named Bruce Greyson who studied hundreds of cases of Near Death Experiences (NDEs – a bit of a misnomer, because it refers to people actually dying and getting revived) in his book ‘After‘. I went from ‘obvs not’ to ‘well it’s hard to ignore these case studies…’ In her book, ‘Dying to be Me‘, Anita Moorjani also writes of her own NDE, when her organs and body shut down from cancer progression, and she writes: ‘I was overwhelmed by the realization that God isn’t a being, but a state of being . . . and I was now that state of being!‘

I still don’t know (who does). But the day before I found myself in that church, I’d read about a study where a group of people were prayed for during their cancer treatment, and another group were not, and the ones that were, had better outcomes and lived longer. I have also since read studies that said the opposite was true. So still, who knows.

But hey, I’m hedging my bets.

If a big man in the sky wants to help me out, I am so here for it.

Or a big woman. Or a small woman. Or some fab non-binary angel floating around (might I add, non Christian religions have genderless Gods). Or any sort of lesser God chilling around up there who happens to decide they want to pop into a church in Paris at the exact time a man in a robe reads out my specific piece of paper out of the hundreds of others there and decides I’m somehow important enough decide to heal. Or just that they’ve got nothing else on this week and were feeling quite bored anyway, so why not.

As Moist Von Lipwig, said as was about to be hanged: “I commend my soul to any god that can find it.” (Terry Pratchett, Going Postal)

Me too, Moist, me too. But I’m not planning on going anywhere any time soon (and neither was he, so it turned out – Spoilers, sorry)

* I’m currently doing my yoga teacher training and I love this word – according to Yogapedia, chitta vritti, or citta vritti is a term that refers to the thoughts that clutter the mind. The name comes from the Sanskrit, citta, meaning “consciousness” or “memory,” and vritti, meaning “waves.” It can be translated in English to mean “mind chatter,” and is sometimes called “monkey mind.” One of the goals of yoga is to take control of citta vritti by quieting the mind, thereby reducing stress and increasing Self-awareness.