The Kenosis of a Coffee Machine

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 ...