This, an excellent quote from coffee aficionado Peter Giuliano appears in God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee:
“Fundamentally,” Peter told me, “my interest in coffee is aesthetic. My family is from Sicily,” he explained. “I was brought up by my grandmother, who didn’t speak English. I learned rom her that life is short, brutish, and cheap and that misery lies in wait for you. What interests me in coffee is the beauty of it. The beauty of the moment that coffee can create.” (p.234)
Throughout the hardest ups and downs of life in the past few years, coffee has been a consistant comfort. For a while I was afraid my love of coffee might simply a hedonistic pleasure or maybe even a chemical dependence. Though there surely a bit of both of those things involved, my heart said there was something more. A really good coffee is more like looking at a beautiful piece of art or reading a profound story. It’s like a piece of fallen creation that has been redeemed. It is a good thing in both the eyes of God and man. We as men just have refined techniques of preparing and brewing it. It is the Lord who made the fruit, beginning a long time ago somewhere in Africa. Like any of his creations, it has a purpose. Be amazed.
Along these lines, Doug Wilson has been posting a lot lately on creation and food, God and beauty in cooking. He mostly riffs of of Robert Capon’s quirky book, The Supper of the Lamb. Some of these are really worth reading.