May Sumatra Be With You
I love coffee. I love it more than I should. This I know, because my sensitive digestive system often tells me so; nevertheless, I love coffee so much I often ignore what it says. This post, however, is not about my physiological responses to coffee, but about a disparity in my experience of coffee, which is that coffee never tastes as good as it smells at that moment when it is being ground. That smell is like heaven crashing my senses, like God has said, “I will enter the world as an aroma” and when that aroma hits, I am suddenly lulled into a deep sense of contentment, peace, and that everything is aligned, both in the world out there and the world within. It’s almost a mystical experience, a sudden sense of oneness, but the problem is that this sense passes all to quickly, and I am left bereft with only a faint memory to sustain me.
Now that I think about it, this post is about my physiological responses, as I am convinced that body and spirit are two-sides of one coin, and when the aroma of coffee hits my senses, catalyzing a whole series of hormonal responses, I am certainly expressing both the psychosomatic dimension of human existence, as well as the capacity of these physiological responses to engage my spirit at a deep level. Again, the aroma hits, and I am one with God, everyone, and all things. This phenomena reinforces my deep sensibility that ultimately all things are sacramental, that God ordained in the structure of creation that the material can participate in the spiritual, and that the senses, when rightly trained, can lead us into the presence of God.
So, in thinking this through, I’ve decided I’m gonna start carrying around a battery powered coffee grinder, and some fresh coffee beans in a vacuum pouch, and when I start getting, anxious, frustrated, or angry, which is far more often than I want any of you to know, I am going to pull out those beans, grind them, and be one with all things and everyone.
May Sumatra be with you…
sacramentally of course, as only God can give peace.
Wrote the following comment on May 3rd, 2014 at 1:06 am #
Yeah?
Well Jose can give you peas.
And Maria can give you cornbread.
Care for any collard greens?