My mom’s spiritual texts and crystals line the bookshelves of our house. I sneak around to peek in her books, hoping that they hold secrets, only to be unentertained when they are about zodiacs, life path numbers and Reiki (Japanese energy healing). These were all things my 8-year-old self had deemed uninteresting, like any adult subject I didn’t understand.

As a child, I’d been around spiritual practice based on the belief that there is a power beyond ourselves in the universe. I also knew of religion as customs rooted in the belief of one or many omnipotent beings. But it wasn’t until the coronavirus pandemic and experiences with grief, that I started to think deeply about spirituality and religion and their relation to comfort.

Spirituality and religion both seek higher powers for guidance amidst hardship. The root of the satisfaction we feel in these practices is the comfort we get in return. In trying to understand the relationship between faith and comfort, I wonder: How does looking to either a higher being or the whole universe equally comfort people?

So, I first explored the basis of why we seek comfort. I asked myself, why are we so uncomfortable in uncertainty? It became clear our discomfort is rooted in our natural wiring. When our brains sense danger, our instinctual response is fight or flight as a reaction to the release of adrenaline and noradrenaline. When faced with what we can’t control, like loss and fear, or what we don’t understand, like why certain painful situations happen, the same fear response is triggered.

We turn to forms of faith amidst this fear. It’s as if spirituality and religion satisfy both fight and flight; a higher power takes enough pressure off our hands to fulfill the flight response. It also gives us control in knowing we have something to turn to, gratifying the fighting feeling.

Senior at Grant, Ja’Shawn Young, an avid member of the Christian community, spoke to me about finding satisfaction in times of hardship by looking to God. Through his lonely times of depression in the pandemic, he was comforted by God being, “the only one he could communicate with heavily.”

Looking to God relieved the pressure of navigating adversities alone and gave him an outlet to make him feel in control during uncertain times. Young says he finds comfort in religion by knowing, “God is never gonna give us what we want, but what we need.”

Growing up, I wasn’t exposed to religion, which meant that I couldn’t connect with the idea of a God or the act of prayer. I also never understood the appeal of spirituality, so I dismissed both without asking questions. I knew spiritual practices made my mom and others feel more supported in life, but I couldn’t grasp how it garnered such an effect.

It wasn’t until quarantine when I had an immense amount of free time that I started looking to spirituality myself. I gradually became involved in different aspects of spirituality, from tarot readings and angel numbers, to spirit guides and crystals.

I eventually found New Renaissance, a store on Northwest 23rd Avenue that sells a variety of metaphysical items. It was then I became a believer in the greater meanings behind coincidences, which was one of the original ways I found comfort in spirituality. It implies that whatever comes my way, good or bad, is meant to, which is a concept similar to Young’s ideas about being divinely guided to what we need.

When I added spiritual practices into my life, I felt I could see moments in a more significant sense than the present reality. The idea of life having a larger scale also resonates with Claire Potter, whose parents own New Renaissance.“We all have our own soul, but we all are connected with a unifying level of life,” says Potter.

She finds comfort in spirituality because she feels she doesn’t need to rely on any external factors to feel fulfilled. “All of us have a place in us that’s pure joy, and we can always tap into that,” says Potter, conveying how spirituality provides us with the tools to access that sense of joy.

Now, finding comfort for me means I get back what I put into the universe, which is one of the most fundamental concepts of spirituality. This creates the feeling of support from the whole universe and means I can aid myself with my intentions to find guidance through life. It’s a mix of being in control and seeking assistance, consistent with finding comfort through faith.

After coming to terms with what religion and spirituality mean to myself and others, it’s clear we turn to both over other outlets for comfort because they provide us with a unique feeling of life having rhyme and reason. Whether we are comforted by God assisting us or by the universe guiding us, both supply us with the tools to cope with our natural resistance to uncontrollable and unknown circumstances. With life’s inconsistent nature, spirituality and religion provide us reassurance as a constant source of guidance towards the future.♦