The Kenosis of a Coffee Machine

Taking a break from Substack until September.

Dear Subscribers,

I’ll be taking a break from Substack until September. Thank you for being here with me. The joyous struggle continues, but I will not be in your inboxes for a while. After that last post on Rain and the Rhinoceros, it hit me that I need to be less like a rhinoceros and more like a monk in a cabin in the woods.

I see thinking-in-action through writing as a kind of spectator sport, but it’s also part of my job and vocation. From a cursory glance, it looks like I have written 36 posts here since June 2024, and another 6 over on Perspectiva (do sign up now if you haven’t), which means 3-4 posts every month, and most of them, hopefully, are not too shabby.

While there are times to keep going, there are also times to stop. I need to free myself from the compulsion to create and from (over) sharing with others, which is the heart of the business model that keeps this arena going. I also hope for some deeper rest to reconnect with my path, which I’ve felt a little adrift from in recent months. I need a little more listening and observing and maybe more reading, but a little less writing.

Before I go, I’ll share a comically theological way of looking at it.

In the Riding House dining area at St. Giles in Dorset, where The Realisation Festival takes place, there is a good coffee machine. It does not look too fancy, but Nick tells me it was carefully chosen, and I could feel that. If I had known I was going to write about it, I would have taken a photo and noted the name of the beans, but you’ll have to use your imagination. What I can say is that it requires an appropriate amount of maintenance, and I never minded looking after it. When the lights flashed and the pouring wouldn’t start, I saw the machine like a crying infant that probably had a legitimate need.

I was on site for a whole week, and I became so familiar with this source of stimulation that I began to identify with it, and to wonder what it might be like to be a coffee machine. I was even reminded of the Flann O’Brien novel about people becoming their bicycles. If you don’t know the comic (and cosmic) significance of the question, “Is it about a bicycle?”, I envy you the discovery of the dark, surreal comedy in The Third Policeman.

So is it about a coffee machine? Well, sort of. Every so often, someone presses a button, I find I cannot respond, and my enigmatic lights start flashing, but sometimes they are only visible on the inside.

Producing another hot caffeinated beverage only becomes possible if I am afforded the necessary space inside myself, which means the liquid tray has to be poured into the sink, and the crushed bean biomass has to be composted. It is satisfying to do that work, and lovely when someone does it for you, but only after that space has been cleared is it appropriate to return to the coffee machine and ask it to fulfil its dharma.

I am not sure of the metaphors there, but I notice that it’s a kind of kenosis, a theological term for self-emptying. Kenosis is apparently what God does in a continual act of creation - a pouring out of love for the world. Kenosis is also about the self-emptying of the personal will to make space for divine will. I’ve been feeling the need to do that for a while, outlined in what I think is my best-read post, Put the Mind in the Heart.

We cannot offer every figurative coffee machine a year’s sabbatical in the Maldives, but they all need periodic respite. I am writing this for myself, of course, who enjoys drinking the coffee that the machine is asked to make. But what if I am also the coffee machine?

Those of you I’m due to speak with, I’m happy to see as planned - the break I need is mostly from the keyboard. I am grateful to all subscribers, especially paid subscribers who help to keep the show on the road.

I intend to be back in the autumn. Here’s a photo of me looking forward to it.

I hope you all have wonderful summers.

Warmly,

Jonathan