A Great Cup

"An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered."

― G. K. Chesterton

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Dear Kate,

Every morning I make coffee with a moka pot, and only until last week after getting a grinder quiet enough to not disturb any human or beast in the wee small hours, I would hand grind the beans too.

It is a creative process, taking things apart and putting them back together, with a small brush goading the pulverized berry pits to the funnel where they will be baptized with fire and water to ascend to a collective call, and afterwards cleaning each part with varied vigor, mindful of the fragile silicone gasket which is aging beyond her years, tilting the coffee collector at a particular angle to run water off and minimize calcification, examining my tiny guardian fairy that is the safety valve, dab-drying the plate and gasket and bottom of collector to quickly marry them again lest anyone becomes lost and useless as an individual.  And now doing something similar with my new grinder.

The daily ritual is sacramental: sacred-minded.  It makes me aware of what comes before me (the pot's design is exactly the same since its invention in the 1930s), what's happening to me, around me, and for me at the present time and space, and my call to pass on, to re-tradition what the sacrament reveals, things lying beyond what I can name and touch now, transcends my understanding, questions my feeling but validates it too.

Time and attention and a longing heart, the true ingredients.  I ask for a great cup of coffee but am given much more.

Yours, Alex