{"id":82,"date":"2020-08-30T16:28:32","date_gmt":"2020-08-30T21:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/spiritualcoffee\/?p=82"},"modified":"2020-09-04T21:22:31","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T02:22:31","slug":"spiritual-coffee-and-the-path-toward-wokeness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/spiritualcoffee\/2020\/08\/spiritual-coffee-and-the-path-toward-wokeness\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Coffee and the Path toward \u201cWokeness\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a id=\"6ifxTageQ51f4v2qPGIUHA\" class=\"gie-single decorated-link\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1041568346\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'6ifxTageQ51f4v2qPGIUHA',sig:'8GeFS2wA24kM2eXajNMl4ulSzm1UoeBvtc8VSYwPsJY=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1041568346',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" async><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m launching this blog at <em>Patheos<\/em>, titled \u201c<strong>Spiritual Coffee,\u201d<\/strong> at the tail end of summer of 2020. As some have noted, it\u2019s been a summer like no other in living memory. There are still among us survivors of the invasion into Normandy, France in 1944; survivors of the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau; and survivors of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.history.com\/topics\/world-war-ii\/japanese-american-relocation\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">America\u2019s home grown internment camps<\/a> at Manzanar, Topaz, Heart Mountain, and elsewhere. But for most of us: this summer of 2020 has been a unique time of anxiety, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.com\/books\/291532\/acedia-and-me-by-kathleen-norris\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">acedia<\/a>, and often loneliness. How do we \u201cwake up\u201d from the nightmare of Coronatime? And who\u2019s to say if we are all not feeling a little trapped ?<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with the easiest part: coffee is what gets me going in the morning. It\u2019s a stimulant: it helps wake me up.\u00a0 And since we are living in an age valuing \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiked-online.com\/2019\/08\/05\/a-short-history-of-wokeness\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">wokeness<\/a>,\u201d or being \u201cwoke,\u201d evidently some of us are asleep and need some help.\u00a0 This value gives the sense that we better wake up, and smell the coffee.\u00a0 Coffee opens the doors of perception, and I want those doors flung open. As Walt Whitman wrote:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnscrew the locks from the doors!<br>\nUnscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Coffee helps me do that . . . . and I\u2019m not the first <em>Patheos<\/em> blogger to announce the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/holyrover\/2014\/08\/15\/the-spirituality-of-morning-coffee\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">spirituality of coffee<\/a> as a general principle!<\/p>\n<p>And what about the \u201cspiritual\u201d? Nowadays, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/fact-tank\/2017\/09\/06\/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">many people claim to be spiritual<\/a>, but hardly anyone knows how to define the term. I know this for a fact, because I regularly teach a class titled \u201cspiritual lit.\u201d\u00a0 When I ask students on the first day how many consider themselves to be spiritual, most hands go up.\u00a0 When I ask them to tell me what it means, no hands go up.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s different for everyone,\u201d is about the best that I get from my students. Or, \u201ceveryone\u2019s entitled to their own opinion,\u201d which is a nonsense phrase that is surprisingly big on campus these days. Given its notorious complexity, we spend a semester trying to expand on that concept, thinking about how it relates to our lives.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the term \u201cspiritual\u201d is a translation of a common term in the New Testament, primarily in the works of St. Paul.\u00a0 The Greek word that is translated in most Bibles today as \u201cspiritual\u201d is <em>pneumatikos<\/em>, and becoming spiritual turns out to be a quintessential goal throughout Paul\u2019s teachings. (This may also be a surprise.) A spiritual being is one who is driven by the spirit, in the same way that a sailboat is driven by the wind. Paul describes a spiritual person as one who listens to the Spirit, walks by the Spirit, and is led by the Spirit. How are you doing so far?<\/p>\n<p>Basically, a \u201cspiritual\u201d person suggests that our lives (and brains) are to be completely attuned to and fully driven by the Spirit. In theological jargon, I am speaking of a \u201ccosmic pneumatology\u201d with a dash of \u201cpanentheism\u201d: a profound way of thinking about all of creation as permeated by the Spirit. Can a blog be \u201cpermeated by the Spirit\u201d? Is a blog included in a \u201ccosmic pneumatology\u201d? We\u2019ll see, and I\u2019m sure opinions will vary. But that\u2019s the plan.<\/p>\n<p>In this blog, I will simply try to model in my writing what I am calling the \u201cspiritual life of the mind.\u201d What if we have lost touch with the elevated language in the New Testament about the transformation of our brains by the power of the Spirit? And what if part of our calling is to reach for and attain a serious, joyful, God-breathed life of the mind? Because in Ephesians we are told that we have been \u201cblessed with every spiritual blessing\u201d (1:3).<\/p>\n<p>Lofty goals, no doubt. To attain them, we need all the coffee we can get, in this worthy pursuit of being \u201cwoke\u201d to the Spirit, and how the Spirit is continuously at work within us and within all of Creation. As the great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs\u2014<\/p>\n<p>Because the Holy Ghost over the bent<\/p>\n<p>World broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings!<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I love the \u201cah!\u201d\u2014don\u2019t you? Hopkins seems fully \u201cwoke\u201d: and wants us awake, too.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly: my musings here on \u201cSpiritual Coffee\u201d are meant to provoke, prod, and inspire my readers to continue this journey that is the life of the Mind, in the hope that by our sympathies and meditations we can show ourselves to be worthy of the One Great Mind Who, as the ground and source of all Being, is truly \u201cWoke\u201d and always \u201cbrooding\u201d over us.<\/p>\n<p>Pass the cream!<\/p>\n<p>featured image: Photo by <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@joshua_j_woroniecki?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Joshua Woroniecki<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/s\/photos\/steaming-coffee?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images I\u2019m launching this blog at Patheos, titled \u201cSpiritual Coffee,\u201d at the tail end of summer of 2020. As some have noted, it\u2019s been a summer like no other in living memory. There are still among us survivors of the invasion into Normandy, France in 1944; survivors of the death camps of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4428,"featured_media":132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,25,28,19,10,22,13,16],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coffee","tag-gerard-manley-hopkins","tag-internment-camps","tag-pneumatology","tag-spiritual","tag-walt-whitman","tag-woke","tag-wokeness"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spiritual Coffee and the Path toward \u201cWokeness\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Embed from Getty Images I\u2019m launching this blog at Patheos, titled \u201cSpiritual Coffee,\u201d at the tail end of summer of 2020. 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