AfterWords | Holding Aloft Our Lamps

A short read
by Maggie Brownsworth

I recently had the best cup of coffee of my life.

No kidding. Hands-down best. To the point where I felt obligated to return to the counter and share this verdict with the barista.

You may not be surprised to learn that this steaming cup of caffeinated goodness was purchased at a small café outside of LA (one that felt way too cool for the likes of me). Mameya is a Japanese coffee spot that somehow brews beans as both science and art.

Tall barrels hold coffee from around the world. A gradient of beans depicts a scientific-looking spectrum of roast options. Handwritten signs in colorful chalk describe blends with words like “earth tones,” “almond,” and “honeydew.” (Don’t ask me how coffee can evoke honeydew, but I believe the experts. And need to try that one next time.)

And then there’s the back wall.

It was the first thing my family noticed when we walked in—tidy stacks of coffee-cups-turned-art, so many that they cover the entire length of the wall. Each paper sleeve brings to life an unsuspecting subject: a tractor, a hockey player, two gray bunnies surrounded by carrots, children playing with a whale-sized koi fish. (Do they know their happy world lies on the curve of a coffee cup?)

My twin sister, the Orange County resident we were visiting, explained that a coffee-loving artist had turned his used coffee cups into mini works of art, gifting them back over the years, one by one. A blank cup returned hours later, embellished.

Long after landing at Hartsfield-Jackson, I keep coming back to the beauty of that unexpected art gallery. It was arresting—my grandmother and I would have spent an hour studying the wall had we not been whisked along.

Each cup, an offering. Another glimpse into someone’s vast imagination. Cups filled and sipped and drained to fuel the next creation.

This Sunday, Jill Carattini preached about Matthew 25. She spoke about remaining awake and attentive to God’s presence. I love what she said about holding aloft our lamps, despite the darkness and delay we face, to light the way for a coming Bridegroom as He calls the world to an unfolding feast.

There’s lovely mystery here—a wedding banquet already inaugurated in our midst, though we’re still repeating, What’s the delay, Bridegroom?

For me, Jill’s words were a much-needed invitation to slow down, listen a bit more carefully, look around a little more closely, and linger with abandon. To be present to God’s presence, right here, right now. If Gerard Manley Hopkins is right (as I suspect he is), and “Christ plays in ten thousand places,” I want to be awake enough to glimpse Him and His quietly expanding kingdom.

The gold leaves dripping from the oak by our driveway. My coworker’s gracious conversation-making, laced with laughter. Coffee sleeves turned art with patient attention.

I can miss out all too easily, hurrying along to manage my to-dos and worries and gripes. Welsh poet and Anglican priest R.S. Thomas’s words from “The Bright Field” come to mind:

Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

That “turning aside” sounds to me like the divine wisdom of radical presence Jill spoke of.

I don’t know about you, but disappointment dulls my senses. I’ll fall asleep again and numb out from the beauty of the people and stories and life happening all around. This year, my husband and I experienced a few disappointments that felt heavy. The questions I return to include (but are not limited to): What’s the delay? and Where are You in this?

As Jill described so well, we can (mis)perceive God’s presence as an absence. Like the bridesmaids who scatter into the dark night in search of more oil, we can abandon the wedding at hand, grasping for security in fear of scarcity.

It can feel like God is hiding from us… even when He’s drawing near, closer than we know.

Henri Nouwen once confessed, “I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but, instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding.”

Am I the one hiding out, stepping into the night because the false god of my imagination is absent?

Friends, perhaps an oh-so-tender voice is whispering: “Where are you? I’m right here, closer than your very breath.”

Just under our noses, fully with us in our coat drives and commutes and coffee dates. With us in silences and waiting. With us in cups of bean juice poured and exchanged with smiles—emptied, reborn, and given.