God Has Made Everything Beautiful In Its Time

Ecc 3:11

It is beautiful how God has done everything at the right time. He has put a sense of eternity in people's minds. Yet, mortals still can't grasp what God is doing from the beginning to the end [of time].

With the ensuing move from my current domicile, I packed away most of my possessions yesterday with the plan to start moving everything pronto. Then, I was informed that the tenant in my future residence has not yet vacated. The month notice, legal in nature and several follow up phone calls, apparently failed to impress the current tenants. Legal action uttered by the Property Manager has unstuck the matter.

Thus, I have a garage full of goods, my regular coffee is buried in the rubble. I resorted to Plan B. I bought some already ground Peet's Uzuri African blend yesterday afternoon. Uzuri means beautiful in Swahili as you can read above.

For the coffee novices out there, Peet's Coffee, was the inspiration for Starbucks. The characteristic deep roast (some call it dark roast, others less enthusiastically call it "burnt") is European in style, particularly Italian. Starbucks has made a fortune, Peet's is playing catch-up. Now, Peet's is in the local grocery store here in Columbia, not exactly the paragon of culture outside of Biker Chic.

The first time I had Peet's was in Philly International Airport on the way down to my grandmother's funeral in Florida. And I loved it...and pursued it like a potential paramour. Before Peet's was offered locally, I actually searched the web to discover it was sold at stores in the Philly 'burbs where I am from and contemplated driving down there to stock up. An hour and change away. Now it has come to me. BTW, the shipping from the web store was just too expensive, so I decided against it.

I got so jacked on the cup of Peet's at the airport--it was stronger than jet fuel--I could have swum down the coast to Ft. Lauderdale and met my family in the seas where we were spreading grandmother's ashes. I remember the waves being quite rough, I think my mom almost got tossed from the boat, while my seasick prone wife was close to barfing. Rough seas on a beautiful day were a fitting picture of my grandmother's life. Extremely bright, with a strain of Schizophrenia, where she was functional, but quite funny (and not in a good way), she left a wake of madness behind her. She mellowed and moderated as she progressed through her 90's. The stroke she had apparently slowed her freneticness down to a more normal speed.  

As mentioned in prior blog posts, I have a touch of her Irish insanity in me, but only a touch. Enough to be artistic but not nuts like her. Speaking of nuts, she used to always buy us cashews when she visited, walking several hours to and back from King of Prussia Mall, by herself in her 70's. An odd bird with her own flight path.

Despite the tragedy of life, there is beauty everywhere. In some profound way it creates a schizophrenia in our souls. Rather than being able to dis' the world, there is enough signs of beauty, to keep us wondering about what the aesthetic points to. A better world where good can triumph over evil both outside and inside of us, where chaos is overcome by harmony, where hope restores the parched landscape of our man-mad hells. Man is the ruination of creation, yet redemption is promised by God, of the entire Cosmos, all creatures great and small. The coffee in the cup embeds such beauty. We all know that coffee packs a caffeine punch. But, why does it taste good, smell good, and enrapture our senses? If you don't like coffee, I just don't understand you. To each  his or her own I suppose. Coffee is not your cup of tea to mix metaphors.

As I type away on the keyboard, like a composer at the piano, I am listening to play list of sweet and melancholy songs on Spotify that are from a band called "Kings of Convenience." I got linked there by liking bands such as Bon Iver, Broken Bells, and Mumford & Sons. More than just mere sound. Convenience has a utilitarian ring to it, something quick, easy, efficient. Art itself runs counter to utilitarianism. Art should cause us to stop, slow down, reflect. To see through rather than to pass by. Eternity is in the heart of man, and Art in some profound manner captures an eternal aesthetic, a dimensionality beyond the four of this world. We peer and see a profoundness that escapes mere words. A cup that has no bottom...God Himself.    
      
"Everything is done in the time in which he wills it shall; be done, and done in the time most fit and suitable for it to be done; all things before mentioned, for which there is a time, and all others: all natural things are beautiful in their season; things in summer, winter, spring, and autumn; frost and snow in winter, and heat in summer; darkness and dews in the night, and light and brightness in the day; and so in ten thousand other things: all afflictive dispensations of Providence; times of plucking up and breaking down of weeping and mourning, of losing and casting away are all necessary, and seasonable and beautiful, in their issue and consequences: prosperity and adversity, in their turns, make a beautiful checker work, and work together for good; are like Joseph's coat, of many colours, which was an emblem of those various providences which attended that good man; and were extremely beautiful, as are all the providences of God to men: and all his judgments will be, when made manifest; when he shall have performed his whole work, and the mystery of God in providence will be finished; which is like a piece of tapestry; when only viewed in parts no beauty appears in it, scarce any thing to be made of it but when all is put together, it is most beautiful and harmonious." Gill.