September 2025

By the time this issue is sent, we expect to be in Santa Fe, New Mexico, seeing the sights and sampling the local cuisine.

In this issue, we share some thoughts from earlier issues (in 2013 and 2020) about savoring and celebrating God's gifts of food and drink.

Each day begins with a blessing. Today, it was raspberries: firm and juicy, both sweet and tart.

Old Testament scholar Thomas W. Mann,* citing Psalm 104, writes, "Food is the primary manifestation of God's grace." The psalmist praises God, who makes "the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart." 

Mann goes on to say, "Food is the most essential component of God's blessing, the gift of God as creator to all creatures." He then adds, "Enjoying ordinary food - its taste, smell, and feel, in addition to its nourishment - is the most primitive form of gratitude, and of worship."

Each day begins with a blessing, a taste of God in each bite. Yet how seldom we savor this blessing. In our fast-food society, eating is often treated with no more sacredness than a stop at the gas pump. We grab and go, grab and go, without savoring the tastes and smells, without acknowledging the cattle or the wheatfields that sustain us, without offering our appreciation to the faceless farm workers and produce-handlers who bring us God's blessing, each day.

Each day begins with a blessing. Today, it was raspberries: firm and juicy, both sweet and tart. Yesterday, we ate steak, leftovers of a wonderful anniversary dinner. Tomorrow, we will be blessed again.

--Bill

*Thomas W. Mann, "Not by Word Alone: Food in the Hebrew Bible," Interpretation 67/4 (Oct. 2013): 351-353; emphasis his).

Coffee au lait – with New Orleans chicory -- was my first experience of coffee. I was already a teenager in high school when this friendship developed, a friendship with coffee. It was served after breakfast, in a cup with the saucer on top to keep it steaming hot. After graduation, out of sight out of mind, other beverages took places of prominence.

Then one day about 25 years later, in the midst of miserable dark days, I began to find hope and meaning for my life in a cup of coffee. In some inspirational book I was reading, the author suggested being present to your cup of coffee. Hold it firmly with both hands. Gaze at the lingering steam arising from the earthly brownness. Invite the scent to tickle your nose. Focus on this richly brewed beverage as you take the first sip. And savor. Be still. Be present.

That simple ritual is one I practice still, another 25 years later. My only coffee of the day, a mid-afternoon pause for fresh brewed, pour-over coffee is a pause to be present to myself, simply with no other agenda. Enjoying the cup of coffee is the singular event for recollection of who I am and whose I am. A moment to just be.

Some coffee pauses give me time to remember the coffee growers of Guatemala whom I met in 1997. I remember the scent of beans as I walked near Lake Atitlan among the coffee bushes after a fresh rain. I remember the ashy scent of roasted beans grown in the lush soil around Volcanoes Toliman and Atitlan. I remember the friends we made last January in Guatemala, friendships formed and deepened over coffee.

Coffee is a friend, not a beverage. Coffee is presence, not an event. Coffee is ritual, not a happening. Coffee is an encounter.

-- Jan

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