Texas Faith: A cup of coffee and other holy rituals

Every faith has its rituals. Hopefully these help put us in the mind of being with God and make us more present in our prayer.
Our lives have their little rituals too.

In a recent article,Rabbi Patrick “Aleph” Beaulier wrote about the ritual of a morning cup of coffee.

The coffee is a pleasure certainly, but it is also a moment set aside, at best, for a little peace, perhaps silence and reflection. These moments apart are important to our lives as people of faith, as people who are trying to draw ourselves nearer to God. We have our rituals in our religious ceremonies too, often freighted or filled with symbolism and intended, in their own way, to draw us away from the run of our thoughts and into the peace we hope faith will bring.

How can our little daily rituals bring us closer to God? How can we make sure that, in everyday moments, we are building our path to the divine?

(This question was inspired by panelist Cynthia Rigby.)

DARRELL BOCK: Executive Director of Cultural Engagement, Howard G. Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership and Cultural Engagement, Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies Dallas Theological Seminary
A daily time of reflection in the Bible is a way to reflect on God through those who have walked with him in former times and have experienced his presence. Those who write lived in different times, often under difficult circumstances, but they persevered in life because they walked with God. Add to this the interactive time that comes by praying about the reflections Scripture degenerates and you have a practice that others have described appropriately as a spiritual discipline. In the regularity of time int he Word and with the fresh perspective Scripture often brings to a walk with God, one gets access to ideas that draws one closer to God.

JIM DENISON: President, Denison Forum on Truth and Culture
According to surveys, 45 percent of Americans would prefer to skip Christmas. The financial stress and time pressures of the holidays cause many to survive rather than celebrate the season. But daily spiritual rituals can help us retreat from the chaos for life-giving moments of centering calm.

Jesus rose “very early in the morning, while it was still dark,” and met alone with his Father (Mark 1:35). He prayed during the day, in the evening, and occasionally through the night.

Following his example, I believe it’s important to establish a spiritual routine. Pick a time early in the morning to meet with God, and a place that is free from distractions. Read Scripture, offer praise and thanksgiving, intercede for needs, take time to listen to the Spirit. Consider this an appointment with the Lord, and protect it.

Then make time during the day for quiet and spiritual focus. The Jews typically set aside three times a day to meet with God (Psalm 55:17). Even under severe duress, Daniel “got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God” (Daniel 6:10). So should we.

In the same way a power drill must stay connected to its source, we must stay close to the One who empowers us. Brother Lawrence’s “Practicing the Presence of God” has been a bestseller for four centuries because it speaks to our deep need for communion with our Maker. Pascal noted a “God-shaped emptiness” in each soul; St. Augustine observed that “our hearts are restless until they rest in him.

Fr. JOSHUA J. WHITFIELD: Parochial Vicar & Director of Faith Formation and Education, St. Rita Catholic Church
Be it a baptism or a brit milah, ritual ushers us into both the stories of faith and the stories of our communities. For example, when I baptize a beautiful newborn baby—without saying too many words at all—I immerse that child not only into the waters of the baptismal font, but also into the primeval waters of creation, the waters of the Red Sea and story of the Exodus, as well as into the death and resurrection of Jesus. But not only that, I also immerse the child into the history of his or her own family. Often a child will wear a baptismal gown, generations old, symbolizing the traditions and bonds of the child’s own family history. We also ask the saints to pray for the child, bringing to mind the mystery we call the “communion of saints.” The rituals of baptism evoke all of this at once almost wordlessly. Even before we get to any sort of theology, the power of ritual to make so many references so economically explains much of the enduring power of the innumerable rituals of faith. This is part of the enduring beauty of humanity.

But, of course, rituals belong just as much to life outside the perimeters of organized religion as within. Sometimes we call them habits or customs—sometimes, more accurately we call them addictions! For me (and this is a rather common ministerial malfeasance), I am simply useless without my early morning “coffee time”—simple coffee, simple reading, and simple silence. For me, it’s nearly a sacred time, spiritual really. It’s a time of awareness of the senses—the taste and smell of the coffee, the sight and touch of the pages, the sound of the house and of the waking day. It is very much a habit, benignly an addiction. But it is also, in a genuine sense, something in service of the sacred. Just as religious rituals bind us to the narratives of faith, family, and history so too do the daily personal rituals of life tie us to the reality of the beauty of the present moment. The little rituals of our lives—when they don’t become fetishes—are able to bring us nearer the vibrant color of life, the rhythms of the earth, and the pulse of our environment. And this why such little rituals are sacred, precisely because they help us see reality. Such rituals slow us down and help us focus. This is the deep spiritual wisdom found in the many faiths of our common earth.

Think about that next time you sit down to your cup of coffee or do your gardening. Give thanks that you have something—some little unique ritual—to slow you down. You’re more likely to find wisdom and strength there than almost anywhere else. And if countless others are to be believed, you might even find God—the same one who said, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46: 10).

CYNTHIA RIGBY, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary
As a theologian who is an addicted coffee drinker, I often kid that I believe caffeine IS the Holy Spirit. When I was ordained as a minister I pledged to “serve the people of God” with “energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.” I find that coffee boosts at least the first three of these, and maybe even the fourth. I pour the beans in the grinder, and feel my energy rising. I sit down at the computer with a steaming cup, open my homepage to the front page of the newspaper and feel my mind begin clicking into what is going on in the world. I take a sip, and start to imagine not only surviving the day, but thriving in relationship to what might, actually, be possible.

And maybe in this way my coffee helps create a space love can locate and fill. Because in having enough energy and focused intelligence to imagine what is possible, I see the world differently. I see it, I think, more in the way God sees it. I love it, again – with coffee cup in hand – even as God so loves it again, and again. New again every morning, the Bible says. Maybe God wakes up to a big giant golden cup of very smooth, ultra rich Kona.

Remembering my coffee time, I worry about how much pressure there is NOT to create the energetic, intelligent, imaginative spaces necessary for renewing love. Our inboxes are full – so crammed with more and more stuff (“Black Friday!” “Cyber Monday – One Day Only!,” “Cyber Monday extended ‘til Tuesday!,” etc.) that we are compelled to check our email even at traffic lights. Even deleting email to make space takes up a precious life energy that might have been used to envision something new.

Reflecting on that first hour of my day, I wonder: what would happen if I inverted the way I lived, making “coffee time” the center, and fitting all else around it? Right now that time is essential to me surviving everything else that comes at me, from an hour after I hit “brew” ‘til the moment I hit the bed at night, exhausted. But what if I could find a way to keep that energetic, intelligent, imaginative, and loving center at my core, and at the core of my day? What if I – what if WE – fit everything else around “coffee,” instead using “coffee” to survive everything else?

I think the answer is: everything would be different. I’m told the answer is: all things would be made new. I wonder if this looks like: “peace on earth, goodwill to all”? This Christmas season, maybe I’ll drink more coffee. I’ll think, I’ll imagine, I’ll love – again. I’ll try to give transformation a fighting chance.

MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for Pluralism and speaker on interfaith matters, Dallas
A good cup of Coffee or Tea in itself is not divine, but it has the ingredients to offer that blissful moment that connects us with ourselves. There is nothing like it.

I just finished drinking a cup of tea and what a joy it was! Every now and then I give myself a 100 for making that perfect cup of tea. Tea is about color, taste, looks, texture, cup and the whole shebang! It gives me the same joy that my grandson expresses when he walked a few steps for the first time.

Indeed a good cup of Tea is divine if we make a ritual out of it, and that is how the ritual prayers have evolved; to dedicate the time and bring peace to oneself.

A few minutes of meditation or a prayer unclutters the mind, and a few minutes of silence restores the mind whether on believes in God or not. It frees us from momentary chaos and prepares us to be collected and help us refocus on what is important to us. It is good to be free.

To get the maximum benefit out of Tea on a daily basis, we have to dedicate a few minutes to sipping it instead of rushing it. I have watched a few friends who say, “I have to drink this cup to get my day going” and dash to the car and resort to expletives if someone cuts them off or slams the break ahead of them. Where is the joy in it? How much time does it take to sit down and smell the coffee? It takes no more than 5 minutes but the return on it is immense.

I compare this to rebooting my computer. When everything slows down due to multiple programs running on it, we get frustrated to wait to see the words appear on the screen after typing… even if it were a split second it is not worth the frustration, reboot it, and see how it functions!

Those of us, who can free ourselves from tension, pain, anxiety, apprehension, hostility, malice, pressure, stress, strain and conflicts, are showered with blessings of peace and joy. The Spiritual freedom is indeed the greatest achievement in one’s life and it sticks to you if you practice dedicating time to everything you do including drinking a cup of Coffee or Tea, it is worth it and you deserve it, just do it!

WILLIAM LAWRENCE, Dean and Professor of American Church History, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University
There are rituals. Then there are customs, habits, routines, practices, ruts, and (in extreme, perhaps troubled, situations) obsessions.

What makes something a religious ritual is that the activity expresses a connection with systems of beliefs and with communal affirmation across the generations. Through rituals, the community and the individual feel empowered by their connections to one another, across expanses of time and distance, in ways that bring strength or hope.

Not all rituals have to be repeated by individuals. Christians, for instance, have practiced a ritual called Baptism for thousands of years. But all Christians agree theologically that Baptism, if properly practiced, occurs only once in an individual’s lifetime. What makes it a ritual is not the repetition in personal or private devotion, but rather a single time for one person practiced repeatedly within the community.

Merely sitting in silent solitude for some extended period of time does not constitute a ritual. For a Christian ascetic who lives in a desert and spends much of the day in prayer, it might. For a prisoner placed in solitary confinement (as a POW, a convicted felon, or a political hostage), being in an isolated spot can be debilitating and destructive. But religious rituals have brought healing and hope countless times to individuals and groups forced into solitary settings. One group of Christians, imprisoned in the 1940′s by the Nazis, had been deprived of anything that might link them to their religious traditions or practices: no Bibles, no bread or beverage that might allow them to experience Holy Communion, no opportunity for raised voices in reciting psalms or singing together. Yet they devised a method whereby one of them employed the gestures associated with taking the bread, giving thanks, breaking the bread, and giving bread to one another, replicating the ritual of Holy Communion. It was a device for spiritual survival.

A cup of coffee early in the morning is a regular part of my day. Yet it is not a ritual. It is merely a morning beverage. But a cup of wine in a Christian Holy Communion most certainly qualifies as a key element in religious ritual.

WILLIAM McKENZIE, co-founder of Texas Faith and editorial director at the George W. Bush Institute

Rituals are very important, or at least they are to me and my obsessive self. Ever since college, I have found one or two restaurants that I like to go to once a week, take a newspaper and read over my meal. I don’t do that every day, but I do it at least once a week. My family even teases me about my devotion to my spots.

Similarly, in our spiritual lives, rituals are important. And I am not just talking about those we may observe in a house of worship. I mean, finding the time to center ourselves for the day. “Centering” has always struck me as one of those, ugh, 1970ish words, but the concept really matters. We need moments, practices, etc. that ready us for the day.

For me, those include quiet times in the morning to pray, think, reflect. Currently, that happens while driving on the freeway after dropping my son off at school. A freeway is the last place I would expect to find such time. But I am a captive in the car, cannot look at my phone or talk to anyone else. So, I have come to love those moments of silence between his school and the Bush Institute.

I would say that I have a devotional reading every day, but that is not true. But, like those restaurant trips, I try to include them a few times a week. Now, I am reading a set of reflections from the late Oswald Chambers, and they really help frame the day.

So, yes, rituals matter. They create a way to order the day, which, as we all know, often defies order.

AMY MARTIN, President Emeritus – Earth Rhythms
When I wake in the morning and go outside, my first thought is that I live on a planet. I remind myself that it’s where I live, on a spinning sphere of rock zooming around a star, which is zipping around the center of our galaxy, which itself is hurtling through an infinite universe. That is God’s ‘hood. The divine exists everywhere, and we are always at its center.

Join me in letting that be your focus in the morning, even just for a moment, when you feed the birds, fetch the paper or take out the trash. Stop and look up! Does it not make our triumphs and turmoils seem conflated? Does not the majesty of such a divine manifest — this infinite celestial fusion endless creating and recreating itself and forming the atoms that make us in the process — teach us humility?

Leave this world of human travail. Seek the source. Step with me into the light each day and stop our business for 60 simple seconds. Let us look at the Sun and understand that it is our star, at the perfect size and distance to give us the perfect warmth and light. Then feel the Earth beneath our feet that provides air and water essential to life. Know that we, as upward-standing human beings, are the connection nexus.

Stand beneath our star and breathe in with me. Feel your tailbone move slightly downward, tapping into the gravity that tethers us to the world. Pause your breath for a moment and feel in that emptiness the pure potential of life. Breathe out and feel the magnetism emanating from the molten iron core, pass through the Earth, through our bodies. Those magnetic rays infuse us as they shoot out past the stratosphere to form the magnetosphere shielding our planet from the immense amount of cosmic debris the universe flings about. At that moment, know that you are home.

NITYANANDA CHANDRA DAS,ISKCON Kalachandji’s Hare Krishna Temple Dallas
In the Bhagavad Gita Śrī Krishna states in the ninth chapter that the art of doing everything for His sake is the perfection of yoga. In fact this is the perfection of life. To be 24 hours a day engaged in consciousness of Krishna, God. Our daily habits play a huge role to cultivate this consciousness. Upon waking a bhakta first chants the Lord’s holy names and bows with his head down before even leaving the bed. Followed by an early morning shower to not only keep the body clean but to refresh one’s consciousness. Kirtan and prayers begin at the temple at 4:30 am followed by a 2 hour session of meditation. Then again there is kirtan at 7 am followed by a class on the ancient Śrīmad Bhāgavatam. The bhakta follows a similar program in the evening as well, creating a sandwich of transcendental experiences.

Speaking of sandwiches this brings up another related topic. Everyone has to eat but food is not simply something for the belly, food is often a practical means to express love. Who better to love than the supreme loveable, Krishna? God is the root of everything, by watering the root all the leaves can be satisfied. Therefore the bhakta does not eat any food that cannot be first offered to God with love. Thus they abstain from eating animals. So not the act of eating can be a spiritual engagement but even the shopping, the cooking, and prep work as well. This is the art of Bhakti, to learn the ancient and blissful science of doing everything in the service of God.