A Spiritual Rule in Espresso

Musings on the Parable of the Coffee Shop

The parts to a good espresso:

Roasting, Blending and Grinding

The first thing needed in preparing good espresso is a good blend of beans properly roasted and ground. As the espresso of God I too must be properly prepared and ground.

An espresso bean needs to be roasted darkly. As the roasting process deepens, the bean releases its essence, what we commonly call oils, and they form a dark luster on the outside of the bean. This is where the flavors reside.

I must submit to the fires of roasting. Following Christ means submitting to discomfort at times. I also must submit to those who God has placed in my life, like my wife and spiritual director, to bear God’s word to me.

A good complex espresso should contain a variety of beans to give it a round complex flavor. A single origin espresso can be fun to play with, but nothing has the well roundedness of a blend.

I have to attend to what goes into me. Physically I must attend to my eating. I have to make a
discipline of eating breakfast, that’s been a tough practice, but my metabolism requires it. I also need to eat whole grains and lots of veggies. Likewise there are times when I must refrain from the food I love so much. I need to fast, and Fridays, before our Sabbath begins is a good time for that.

Grinding is critical. The beans must be shaved into uniform particles, and the size of those particles control how long water is in contact with the beans and how well the extraction occurs. Too slow and the water will completely leach the oils and also some of the bitter substances in the bean. Too fast and the espresso will sour, lacking the oils to create a good crema. The grind needs to be adjusted several times throughout the day to respond to changing temperature and humidity.

I need to be adjusted throughout the day as well. I need to practice the presence of God. God is the Good Barista who is always fine-tuning the grind and watching the extractions. I will put myself back in his hand for adjustment through out the day, first by bringing him to mind moment by moment. Second, by praying the liturgy of the hours. The times set aside through out my day give me interaction with scripture, prayer, poetry and meditation.

The tamp

Another key element to a good shot of espresso is the tamp. To receive the high pressure of the espresso machine and still keep the water slow enough to be in contact with the beans for about 30 seconds, the ground coffee has to be packed tightly. It takes 40-50 pounds of pressure to pack the coffee into the filter basket.

Like the particles of coffee I have to be packed into my community. I need them around me. To this end part of my rule is to practice hospitality. For me this means conversations at the coffee shop and dinners at the table. At home it means being open and available to my children and wife. It means creating an atmosphere where it is easy to be good for anyone who comes through our doors. When possible it means extending the bounds of our family to others so that we can live in intentional community. Intentional community has its rules too, like praying the hours. At night we get together and have family devotions and pray the hours. I need to also get back into the habit of praying with Elaine every night, confessing our sins to each other.

Hospitality also means living with responsibility toward the Earth. Taking care of the world is also a way to create sacred space. I want to eliminate my carbon footprint and live the ‘r’s of reducing, reusing, and recycling. This is a part of the wider discipline of simplicity that affects our relationship in community.

As a part of a church, hospitality also means visiting other members and inviting them over.

Pulling the shot

The barista locks the portafilter into the group head and starts the hot water flowing. The pump starts to whir and forces water through tubes that wind through the boiler picking up heat and out to the group shower head where they form channels and saturate the puck. Then a small honey gold stream of espresso forms at the bottom of the portafilter. It runs out the size of a rat’s tail filling the demitasse with deep rust crema. Then after about 30 seconds when all the goodness of the bean is extracted, the barista observes a small pale dot form on the deep rust and stops the cycle.

I need the water of the Spirit flowing through my life. Here are some channels of study I recognize that I find the water of the Spirit to flowing: Poetry, Scripture, Art (both the appreciation and creation), Literature (I read a masterpiece of literature at bedtime) and Meditation (contemplation of people and nature top the practice).

Enjoy

The good barista appreciates the color variations as the shot is pulled. The shot goes from deep rust to blond in tiger stripes. Then the barista will enjoy the aroma and warmth of the espresso as he gives it to the person who needs it. The crema on a good espresso is the hallmark of quality and the celebration of the shot.

I need times of enjoyment and rest in my life too. I need to live in Sabbath rhythms. As a pastor, Sunday isn’t a very restful day, so we have purposed to make sundown Friday to sundown Saturday our Sabbath. We want to incorporate rituals like lighting candles and blessings and meals together.

I also need to take a retreat 4-6 times per year to rest in the presence of my beautiful Barista.

Sabbath also means celebration. Both during the Sabbath time and throughout the week we need to set aside time for romance, getting a sitter, and having time as a couple.

We worship. This is a no brainer for a pastor; I get paid to worship with my congregation. As part of my rule for life, I also want to make it a point to worship with other traditions as often as possible.

Celebration also means music and dancing with abandon, creating and painting, and enjoying good food and great espresso.

Ultimately I am not my own God pulled this espresso for someone, I must be made perfect for Christ who I find in the little ones around me. That is who he hands the hot demitasse off to
after all.

A paradigm for everyday spiritual life

The sun is the light of God found in the cyclical process of awakening, purgation, illumination and union. The swirls of light irradiating from the sun represent the integration of the spiritual life in all things and the breakdown of imposed compartments and dualities. They remind us that God doesn't want to be the biggest part of our lives but integrated in to all of them. God invades our work, relationships, personal and communal life making all of life sacred.

The door is my home with God. The stone by the door is my touchstone that brings me back to practicing the presence. The path from the door is reversed in perspective like an icon to draw the viewer in. God invites me down the path to him, and regardless of how far I wander away from home the mere thought of my touchstone puts me at my front door again.

Stone

Coming Home to Your True Self: Leaving the Emptiness of False Attractions by Albert Haase

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Summary

Albert Hasse, lays out the spiritual life as coming home. He describes God as being at home and we returning to find him in the present moment. Using the imagery of the parable of the prodigal son, Hasse describes our need to leave the pigpen of our false self and come to the place of our true self.



Believe

Hasse quotes greats such as Meister Eckhart and St. John of the Cross. He builds his argument on the finding of God in the present moment where God communes with the imago dei in the true self. Meister Eckhart’s quote is central, “God is at home. It is we who have gone out on a walk.” If this is true then it follows that our work is to turn away from those tings that draw us to wander away from home and return to our house. Hasse calls these attention-drawing things the empty P’s according to his alliterative ordering.



Doubt

Hasse’s focus on the present moment can leave us unbalanced with reference to the future. At it’s worst we can spend the present moment lost in the false self, unconscious of the consequences of our actions. At it’s best such and imbalance fails to recognize the power of time to bring change. With out time change could not occur. The proper corrective to an unbalanced focus on the present moment is Hasse’s reference to the cyclical journey of awakening, illumination, purgation and union. One can also take issue with the true/false-self dichotomy as with out basis in scripture. However I find it does a good job in recognizing the imago dei is still within the midst of fallen humanity.



Synthesis

While I have had my fill of alliteration (after Kellemen) Hasse makes good sense in his empty P’s and escape from the pig pen. I found myself of thinking of Innocent Smith as I read about living with disciplined focus in the present moment with awe and wonder. The material is easy to balance and integrate into my spiritual journey.



Application

This book is rich with material, I can see myself returning to it as I teach my congregation about the spiritual life. The things that grab my attention right now are a couple practices Hasse mentions. One is the use of a word with little meat on it to return our attention to the presence of God. I found my mind immediately drawn to the word “stone.” Perhaps it is because of the stone’s lack of meat, or because I see it sitting at the side of the door to my home. I imagine it like some teleporter, that all I have to do is think about it and I am back at my door, ready to engage God in the present moment. The other thing that was very timely was Hasse’s treatment of lent (pp 96-110). His description of a feng shui reestablishing and preserving of relationships gave penance a needed focus to me.




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The Idiot A Novel in Four Parts By Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Black Garnett

The Idiot A Novel in Four Parts By Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Black Garnett: " I don't agree and in fact I'm indignant when somebody calls you well an idiot. You re too clever to be called that. But you re so strange that you re not like other people you must admit that yourself. I've made up my mind that what's at the bottom of all that's happened is your innate inexperience, mark that word innate prince, and your extraordinary simple-heartedness and then the phenomenal lack of all feeling for proportion (in you which you have several times recognised yourself) and finally the huge mass of intellectual convictions which you with your extraordinary honesty have hitherto taken for real innate intuitive convictions!" (538)

Slowed down in divine purpose

For those of us following the Revised Common Lectionary, this week Jesus commands us to take up our cross and follow him. I ran across this letter from Augustine, where he likens those things that weary us to the cross we carry. Take a look:

Augustine to Laetus

Turn, rather to these teachings, my very dear friend, take up your cross and follow the Lord. For, when I noticed that you were being slowed down in your divine purpose by your preoccupation with domestic cares, I felt that you were being carried and dragged along by your cross rather than that you were carrying it. What else does the cross mean than the mortality of this flesh? This is our very own cross which the Lord commands us to carry that we may be as well armed as possible in following him. We suffer momentarily until death is swallowed up in victory. Then this cross itself will be nailed to the fear of God. We would hardly be able to carry it now if it forever resisted us with free and unfettered limbs. There is no other way for you to follow the Lord except by carrying it, for how can you follow him if you are not his?

Acting as prayer

As I prayed psalm 88 tonight, I began to think about how praying the psalms is sometimes like acting. Psalm 88 is the psalm of a very sick person who feels God is angry. I am not that person, but praying with that person requires that I enter into that character.

Perhaps acting is a spiritual activity, as we enter into a character and feel with that character we touch new places in ourselves where that character has meaning. As we offer those places to God, it becomes prayer.

Ah the psalms my old friends...

So good to spend time with you again!

This week in the psalms, especially in connection with the liturgy of the hours, has been refreshing. How have they stayed with me? I think phrases do come back. It is like they become helium molecules in my head, bouncing around filling me. I can almost feel them now under my scalp. Each time I sat down with them, the psalms were a Sabbath retreat for me. Engaging Muller this week made that even more pointed. How has this changed the way in interact with people? Here is a story:

Just tonight the couple that is staying with us got some bad news. Becky's sister's recently ex-boyfriend committed suicide tonight. As they were on the phone dealing with their family, I turned to the office of the dead and prayed the evening prayer. I was quietly directing the prayers to the couple in the other room. I found that afterward for hours that I was mourning. The prayers were emotionally intense and continued that way. I was mourning with those who mourn thanks to the grace found in praying the psalms.

On the seventh day

Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest by Wayne Muller

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Summary
Wayne Muller’s thesis is that Sabbath is good. He explores the fundamental need for rest, its origin in creation and its placement in major world religions. There is a fundamental rhythmicity to nature, Muller contends, and that is no accident. We are created to need rest; therefore Sabbath is created for us. As this is a natural truth, Muller finds much support from other faith traditions, with similar rest practices.

Believe
Muller rests heavily on the creation account for his assertion that Sabbath is fundamental to all of nature. God finished the Creative work on the seventh day; in taking his rest, God created peace and rest for the world (37). He also points out that there is an ongoing quality to the Hebrew grammar – that God began to create, an action that continues, as Muller asserts in a circular motion. He sees creation and recreation in cycle (36). Another key theme Muller draws throughout the book is the goodness of creation. From the creation account he echoes God’s declaration that all God made is good. In this Muller finds much in which to rest. There is a fundamental goodness in us; Muller contends that, traces back to the goodness of its Creator. Call it what you will, inner light, hidden wholeness, Buddha nature, imago dei, there is something there that if we slow down we will touch the divine.

Doubt
Muller’s view of the inherent goodness of man is difficult for me to believe. There is the fall, as we evangelicals understand it, which stands in the way of seeing all as good. (I still have much to engage with the Eastern Orthodox view of the fall.) Also in his unbending exhortation for us to enjoy the good around us now, he negates a fuller future rest to come. His “what if?” questioning (79) leaves one wondering if Muller has a belief in an afterlife at all. He seems to argue with Hebrews where it says “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”

Synthesis
I have little problem with Muller’s references to other religions. I am in agreement with his premise that Sabbath finds its root in creation. If it is indeed that foundational I would expect to find expressions of it in all religions. Those expressions can be edifying to us, especially for a practice we have so thoroughly erased from our culture. I hold to the evangelical view of the fall and the eschatology of the biblical apocalyptic literature. This, however, does not restrict me from agreeing with Muller that the earth, and all creation bear the stamp of the divine, especially we who were created in God’s image. It is then possible (while perhaps paradoxical) to find the goodness and glory of God, even in marred creation.

Application
Muller joins a conspiracy this week to return me to a renewed joy of rhythm in prayer. This week my family and I enter into intentional community with a couple that will be moving in with us. This has given me pause to think about the structure of our community (which we call The Parsonage). Inspired by this and the praying of the psalms in our retreat in everyday life, I have made praying the Liturgy of the Hours part of our communal life. Today I had a chance to introduce the practice to these new Christians. I also have enjoyed the monastic tradition of rest period after lunch. Our twitter account reminds us of our need to rest!


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