“What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.”
– Thomas Merton
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Lauds (of Coffee)
These 3 sentences above come from my self-adopted contemplative grandfather, Thomas Merton.They ring so true for me that they were the basis for my thesis paper in graduate school.
Why?
Well, for me, they represent an embodied response to one of my essential life questions – how does contemplation intersect with day-to-day life?
So there is this contemplative rhythm in some monasteries of the Christian tradition called the Divine Office…or the Liturgy of the Hours. Today’s episode is going to be the first of a series I’ll be doing on the reimagining of the Divine Office into my own personal reflective interpretations as a contemplative in the world. The intention is to mark each of the Hours but in a form very different from their regular practice behind monastery walls. In other words, this is what a contemplative rhythm looks like in my particular life.
This should be fun as a grand and playful experiment…with that in mind, for my first reinterpretation I’ll be starting the hours called ‘Matins’ & ‘Lauds’, so for the sake of us all, here is how they are traditionally defined:
Matins: a service forming part of the traditional Divine Office of the Western Christian Church, originally said (or chanted) at or after midnight, but historically often held with lauds on the previous evening.
Lauds: A service of morning prayer in the Divine Office of the Western Christian Church, traditionally said or chanted at daybreak, though historically it was often held with matins (Matt-Tins another service of prayer) on the previous night.
So after putting my own reflective spin on Matins and Lauds, I couldn’t decide whether I should call it Lauds of Coffee or… An Open Love Letter to my Beloved Wife. I chose the one that brought less attention to my wife.
I make you coffee every morning. You know this and I know this. But you don’t know how I go about this divine ritual, do you? It begins each evening before bed as you brush your teeth. The sound of bristles in running water is my invocation. I putter over to the kitchen and pull the coffee beans from the cupboard, grab the scale and measure out exactly fifty grams of coffee. The scale and beans are put away. I locate the hand-crank coffee grinder, and begin my least favorite aspect of this rite.The hand grinder receives the beans in a domed cell, and a few make their escape as I jostle them into the holding space. Each night this challenge presents itself. Can I transfer these caffeinated beans to their holding cell without any escapees? One or two usually slip my attention amidst the commotion. I track them down and guide these free spirits back to their cells for their transformation. I turn the hand crank. Grinding the beans by hand feels pretentious, but I do it anyway. Oh the tyranny of having to grind coffee beans the night before they are brewed! The awful chant of grinding beans grates against the melody of my intention. Know dear one, that if life was perfect and I was perfect I would do this in the morning before you and our beloved daughter awoke. Alas, the bustled activity at the first light does not allow for such luxuries. So I grind at night. It takes near sixty cycles of the hand c rank to complete the breakdown of the beans. I open the doll-size drawer of the hand-crank grinder to see the transformation from whole beans to a granular collective. I empty the little drawer out into a small glass jar. I screw the lid of the jar on. I find our thermoses (hopefully clean) and put them on the kitchen counter. From the faucet I fill up that red plastic contraption that supposedly filters our water. When did I last change the filter? Have I ever? No matter, that will have to wait. Our bed is calling. The rite remains unfinished, but the scent of ground coffee lingers over the sleepy evening into the hope-filled morning.
Awake, O Sleeper!
Awakened by our daughter’s calling to the breaking of the day, she is tickled by new sunlight. Another magical hour of possibility. I put on my vestments, a bathrobe and spectacles. I take her to the kitchen, time to get the coffee started. I pour the filtered water into that fancy kettle that you thought was so funny that I just had to have. Lighting the burner, fancy kettle goes on. I fill up a second, though not-so-fancy, kettle with tap water. Light a second burner, second kettle goes on. The dueling kettles. The Kiddo chatters about monkeys, breakfast and waking you up.
Let Mama sleep. We’ll wake her later.
I pour her some cereal which she may or may not eat. The not-so-fancy kettle whistles at me — pay attention! I pour this now boiling tap water into our pour-over coffee vessel to heat up the glass, and if I’m honest, give it a slight cleaning. The thermoses get their hot fill next. Lids go on.
Num-num. Our daughter says.
This is a code word for banana. Though there is no etymological basis for num-num meaning banana, I scuffle over to the bananas. I pull one off the bunch, cut it in half and offer it to her. Her eyes dance, as if she only half believed I would fulfill her num-num wish. I check the fancy kettle, still heating up.
The Kiddo is getting frustrated with the banana peel, but refuses my help. That stubborn independence she gets from you, or is it me…no matter, I relish it. Back to the fancy kettle, bubbles are rising. I turn off the burner. I return to the coffee rites while singing ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ as requested. She chimes in with, ‘What you say?’ right on cue. I empty the water from the coffee vessel (now slightly cleaner) onto any lingering dirty dishes in the sink. The filters are stored below the counter. I don’t like the recycled ones, the bleached ones seem to make better coffee. The science behind that escapes me, nonetheless I grab a recycled filter, arrange it in it’s place and grab the grounded beans from the night before, unscrew the lid and pour them evenly into the coffee filter. They await the near-boiling baptism to transfigure them from granular potential into the nectar of the gods.
I grab the fancy kettle with it’s precise pour spout, and when partnered with my astute marksmanship, aim the water in circular motions making the coffee grounds flower. A coffee grounds interpretative dance of a hot air balloon filling to find its shape. I wait and watch as the the water settles the grounds into a concave shape. Waiting for the transformation from beans to brewed tries my patience. I am restless in the arena of coffee.
“Cow’s milk?” She wants milk.
The water seeps it way through the grounds, the essence retained and the quality deepens. Dripping through the filter, the coffee line rises in the glass container. The Kiddo waits at the fridge with hands gripped on the door trying to pull it open with all of her might. At two, the magnet of the fridge door proves to be beyond her strength. I open the door, she scurries into the cool air and grabs the milk and puts it on the floor. She hustles to her stack of glasses and locates the perfect receptacle for cow’s milk. A pink plastic cup. The cup is placed on the table, she crawls onto your chair and points to the milk carton on the floor. My task has been given. I grab the milk, open it and begin to pour into the pink plastic cup. She puts her hand underneath the milk jug to guide my apparent unsteady hand. When satisfied she lets go and takes a big gulp.
‘So cold!” she shouts, bringing her balled fists to her cheeks. And then takes another swig.
A break in the action, I pivot back to the coffee. Again, I pour water from the fancy kettle in a circular motion over the moist grounds. I’m not quite drowning them, but I am filling them up with more than they can bear. The steady drip continues into the glass vessel. When was the first time I made you coffee?
It must have been 2008. Do you remember all of those glorious breakfast spreads we used to concoct before we were married, before we were dating, before we were us? Those memories are movie sets I visit at times such as these. I can see us clearly on that old checkered floor in the kitchen at the Plex. I wonder, don’t they know they are falling in love? Can I tell him to hurry up and marry you? The stubbornness of that stubbled man so unsure of commitment, his capacity for love or how love might transform him. Maybe I knew more than I realized. The questions were worthwhile, but it took time for me to see that the answers could only be lived into. Embodied. Breathed. My anxiety arose around the risk of commitment, for what if I were called to test the edges of my capacity for love? And I was petrified of the sweet wounds of love. I preferred the cheap veneer of infatuation. A preference which blinded me from those hidden caverns of love that teach the subtleties of the heart to see in the dark. When I thought I had all that I could bear in love, I found that love compels me to bear more, serve more, surrender more, and run my finger over the wounds of love. Who was it that said, love without sacrifice is theft? (I’d love to hear the story behind it).
It is not only the depths of my being, but in the shallows of my personality that this surrender takes part; I have found myself free to see my foibles as the aloof goof that holds imaginary arguments with you, doesn’t refill the soap dispenser, sulks when he is upset and is a bull about locking doors. And you love me still. So another layer is peeled. In your presence, my vulnerability grows and my exposure to my depths and shallows are laid bare. Can I continue this way? To expand in the shape of our love? I see this question revealed in you too, you know.
You have taught me the fidelity of love (I wonder what I have taught you?). This act of making you coffee is one of my practices in service to that fidelity. This process takes longer than an electric coffeemaker or walking to the coffee shop just a block away. But I like the idea of you starting the day with a creation of my love for you, whether I feel like it or not. The image of you heading out to your classroom with a roomful of students filtering in and you holding a mug containing the hand-grounded, precisely poured over, slow brewed coffee that was born out of abiding love, particularly for you. Keeping your hands warm and eyes open.
I am running out of time! It is almost time to wake you up and the coffee is close to done, but not quite. I pour another round of hot water from the fancy kettle onto the grounds. This should be the last one.
Wake Mama up? She asks
One minute.
O-kay
The coffee is slowly dripping to its natural fulfillment.
The drops stop. The coffee is done. I empty your thermos of its hot water bath onto the dirty dishes in the sink and refill it with the night black coffee made with you on my mind.
Let’s go wake up, Mama.
The Kiddo jumps into my arms, bouncing up and down and she anticipates waking you with a kiss. I plop her on the bed right next to you. She crawls up to your face, you are obviously awake, but to her, you are in a deep sleep. She saddles up right on top of you and…
Muah.
Good morning you whisper
She giggles.
Morning love, I say, Coffee is ready.
Favorite episode yet!