About Ms. Talitha Kumi

Cape Verde Fogo Island Starbucks Reserve Coffee leaves a questionable first impression.  Like a sun-burnt old woman squatting on an city sidewalk wearing a mumuu and a leather jacket while chain-smoking, you feel like you should run away but strangely, you want to get closer and ask her life story.  I drank this straight off the Clover machine and I’ll confess – that first taste was perplexing.  One colleague tossed her cup immediately and declared, “Yeah, tropical fruit and floral? I’m not getting that.”  But I found that this coffee tastes better at every phase of cool down. Wait to get past the first impression and you’ll be richly rewarded.

Just like with people, you have to know where this coffee came from to understand it.  This coffee is a survivor.  Sure it’s from a volcanic island, but we’re not talking about cushy mineral rich soil, lush green vegetation, and high altitude rain.  No.  This coffee comes from the school of hard rocks and black sand.  Don’t expect it to be simple or gentle when it’s survived multiple near death experiences.  Relentless trial by volcanic fire was first recorded in 1680.  Since then, ten eruptions have been recorded with the most recent one in 2014.

This single variety of coffee has managed to exist on this archipelago off the coast of Western Africa for over 300 years.  Isolated in the middle of the Atlantic in an extremely dry environment it’s a unique and pure varietal.  It’s bold as old age, and as concentrated as royalty.

It’s a privilege to drink this coffee not just because it’s elite and low yield.  The truth is we wouldn’t have this opportunity without the intervention of human services. This coffee would have been orphaned and extinct without the tender loving care of coffee aficionados who saw the potential in these coffee crops.  Thanks to subsidy programs supporting investment projects in developing countries, this unique coffee has made it’s way to the United States.

When you hear “tropical fruit” don’t think of juicy, fresh, black currants. Think bold and hearty bananas.  When you hear “floral” don’t think soft and pink.  Think endemic, medicinal plants. However, even a person with true grit can’t front forever.  If you commit to the end of the cup, you’ll get that sweet, full-bodied bouquet.

Which brings me back to the cup.  Some people wake up looking fabulous and runway ready.  Others have bad breath and severe bed head and need a minute to adjust.  Cape Verde Fogo Island Starbucks Reserve Coffee falls in a different category altogether.  I liken it to the Judgement card in the Tarot deck.  Birth is a violent process.  Resurrection is equally jarring.  That first minute of being thrust into existence take some adjusting.  But then you realize you are no longer shackled to the hard physical form.  You’ve been released – brewed to your full potential.  The floodgate opens and you tell your life story in a smell and a sip.  You’ve reached your life’s purpose and you rest to be savored and enjoyed.

One of the best ways to enjoy a cup of coffee is on a Clover, a proprietary brewing system that belongs to Starbucks.  There are 4000 machines in North America and I drink my coffee here.

I’ve been an adult reader of YA fiction for many years. I’m fascinated by pop culture, social movements and intellectual trends. With great reluctance, I read the Twilight series long after the first film came out. I read it mostly because I wanted to know what was impacting an entire generation of young girls and their mothers and grandmothers.

I knew early on that 50 Shades of Grey started off as Twilight fan fiction, but when it broke records in terms of book sales, once again I felt my need to understand culture take precedence over my personal preference in books.

I’ve been known to mouth off about how much I despised Twilight. No book should be over 1000 pages unless you’re prepared to write beautiful prose. Twilight was repetitive, long-winded, and boring. Bella was everything I hope young girls won’t be. Devoid of personality except in relationship to her man, she was a damsel in constant distress. It was a big deal that she didn’t have premarital sex, but in the end Bella was willing to change everything about herself and pay any price in order to get with the guy.

In comparison, 50 Shades of Grey didn’t seem so bad. At least the heroine had an opinion and made some decisions for herself. There was some hype about bondage or BDSM but there really wasn’t much of it in the book. There would be a hint of it and then the book would retreat. What was the big deal?

Both Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey are romance series. Sure, they are at different levels of heat and have a different target age range but ultimately they are trying to satisfy the need for love and romance. When Twilight hit it big, I wondered what impact it would have on young girls. Now that the first 50 Shades of Grey film is about to be released, I’m starting to think less about the book’s influence on culture and more about culture’s impact on books.

The blockbuster success of these two series in terms of reach and profitability has made me reconsider my own benchmark of quality. Instead of literary depth or character development I’d like to go back to the basics of romance and the deep heart longing of over 100 million readers: do these stories tell some truth about love?

St. Paul tells us that when we want to behold something of the divine, we can only see it “as in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12). I believe these two series reflect some truth about love even if it is a cloudy picture through a mirror.

We want to be loved despite our failures and brokenness. We fuck up and test the boundaries — how far before we are abandoned? We want to be submissive because we want to truly trust. If we surrender, will we be taken advantage of or will we be respected and loved? We want an abundance of good things and that manifests itself as a trope: wealth. We want true freedom that comes from wholeness — from being intertwined with another. With that freedom comes the ability to lose control — that’s the benefit of being tied down. You have an anchor. And sometimes we want to be in control to know that we too are trusted.

Millions of words used in love poems through all of human history can’t capture it. Forget about 50 Shades of Grey. Every gradation of every color of the rainbow can only be a clouded image as seen through a mirror dimly.

Cape Verde Fogo Island Starbucks Reserve Coffee leaves a questionable first impression.  Like a sun-burnt old woman squatting on an city sidewalk wearing a mumuu and a leather jacket while chain-smoking, you feel like you should run away but strangely, you want to get closer and ask her life story.  I drank this straight off the Clover machine and I’ll confess – that first taste was perplexing.  One colleague tossed her cup immediately and declared, “Yeah, tropical fruit and floral? I’m not getting that.”  But I found that this coffee tastes better at every phase of cool down. Wait to get past the first impression and you’ll be richly rewarded.

Just like with people, you have to know where this coffee came from to understand it.  This coffee is a survivor.  Sure it’s from a volcanic island, but we’re not talking about cushy mineral rich soil, lush green vegetation, and high altitude rain.  No.  This coffee comes from the school of hard rocks and black sand.  Don’t expect it to be simple or gentle when it’s survived multiple near death experiences.  Relentless trial by volcanic fire was first recorded in 1680.  Since then, ten eruptions have been recorded with the most recent one in 2014.

This single variety of coffee has managed to exist on this archipelago off the coast of Western Africa for over 300 years.  Isolated in the middle of the Atlantic in an extremely dry environment it’s a unique and pure varietal.  It’s bold as old age, and as concentrated as royalty.

It’s a privilege to drink this coffee not just because it’s elite and low yield.  The truth is we wouldn’t have this opportunity without the intervention of human services. This coffee would have been orphaned and extinct without the tender loving care of coffee aficionados who saw the potential in these coffee crops.  Thanks to subsidy programs supporting investment projects in developing countries, this unique coffee has made it’s way to the United States.

When you hear “tropical fruit” don’t think of juicy, fresh, black currants. Think bold and hearty bananas.  When you hear “floral” don’t think soft and pink.  Think endemic, medicinal plants. However, even a person with true grit can’t front forever.  If you commit to the end of the cup, you’ll get that sweet, full-bodied bouquet.

Which brings me back to the cup.  Some people wake up looking fabulous and runway ready.  Others have bad breath and severe bed head and need a minute to adjust.  Cape Verde Fogo Island Starbucks Reserve Coffee falls in a different category altogether.  I liken it to the Judgement card in the Tarot deck.  Birth is a violent process.  Resurrection is equally jarring.  That first minute of being thrust into existence take some adjusting.  But then you realize you are no longer shackled to the hard physical form.  You’ve been released – brewed to your full potential.  The floodgate opens and you tell your life story in a smell and a sip.  You’ve reached your life’s purpose and you rest to be savored and enjoyed.

“Without freedom we would not be spiritual beings. “ – Meditation on the Tarot

Many years ago my parents crossed paths with a well-known Buddhist monk, famous for his psychic and prophetic ability.  To prove his legitimacy he told my mom she had a red mole on her left breast.  She didn’t even know about it until she checked afterward.

He prophesied for a select few, but his main words of wisdom were this: the choices we make influence the future far greater than any prophecy.

This makes sense when we visualize time on one plane moving forward in one direction.  A set of events leads to an outcome.  But divination by nature and definition operates outside of the linear notion of time and space.  The future is foretold in a unique moment in the present and the future is herded into existence based on the present course of events. The train has left the station, so to speak.

In stark contrast is the alternative – the moment right after the aforementioned “present” where any number of deviations or choices can alter the course. Prophecy gives one outcome but free will makes for infinite possibilities.In this truth, Buddhist monks and Christian theologians are aligned.  There are many things that we cannot control, but the power to control ourselves should not be underestimated.

What if we could control not only ourselves but our circumstances and the world around it?  This dominion over all existence sounds like the definition of God. Can there be a display of power greater than this?

There is indeed one move that could best this level of omnipotence.  The answer is sacrifice. The ultimate display of power is to relinquish it. You can only give away what you truly possess.  In the Christian worldview, God is all powerful.  But rather than ruling the world and treating creation like pawns being moved on a chess board, creation is gifted free will.

In the Tarot, the Emperor card represents authority and power. In a unique way, no one embodies the Emperor card like Jesus Christ the suffering King.  The Emperor card, a father-like figure full of masculine energy sits on a throne resolute and confident. In Spiderman Uncle Ben tells us, “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is true for The Emperor. While everything is under his dominion, the burden of responsibility and decision making rests on his shoulders.  The Emperor is no fascist dictator.  This is not absolute power that corrupts absolutely and stems from a place of ego, self-gratification and narcissism.  The Emperor is a true king, one who loves his subjects/country/tribe/community and rules with wisdom and generosity along with authority and power.

In the Emperor card, we see controlled strength coupled with wisdom and compassion. It is this delicate balance that makes me think of the Emperor as a suffering king.  Because suffering is your destiny if choose to relinquish power and reign over a free society.  On a cosmic level the One True and Living God exhibits authority, power, and love by giving us freedom.

“Is mankind therefore solely responsible for its history? Without a doubt—because it is not God who has willed it to be as such. God is crucified in it.” – Meditation on the Tarot

When we think about the Emperor card or Jesus Christ the suffering King, what lies behind this level of sacrifice is love. It’s why God chooses to live life alongside us rather than play chess.  There is the risk and reality of suffering, but it is surpassed by the width, height, and depth of infinite love.
Fate exists when we interact with other people who also have free will. There will always be circumstances and situations you can’t control.  But you have power over your response and your choices. The example that God sets for us is to control less and love more.

Has there been a time when you’ve had to love by letting go?
Have you experienced feeling loved because someone trusted you?
What difficulty has fate/life brought upon you recently?
Can you love yourself or others through this experience?

Death and life, sacrifice and celebration, west and east. The first quarter of the year is encouraging us to look beyond surface contradictions and see the single message of hope for our lives.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of the Christian season of Lent. A time of fasting and sacrifice leading up to Easter. People know that there is death in life. But what Christians understand is that there is also life in death.

It’s in this same spirit that we approach January 1 or Lunar New Year. New years mean new beginnings. As Seneca said back in 4 B.C., “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” To start over, something must die.

What things need to die in order for us to start over? And if we want the “do-over” have we really considered the cost? After all, we live in insta-culture where “better, faster, stronger” is equivalent to effortless. But if we desire change in our lives, it requires effort and sacrifice.

So what is the cost? In the Marines there is a saying, “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Exercise is the prime example. No pain, no gain. You attain a strong body if you’re willing to force it into submission through movement that causes pain. So if we desire, change, improvement, glory — what suffering must we endure?

I think the answer to this lies in our relationship to death. To start over we need to let some things die. Those metaphysical deaths share many similarities with physical death.

There is a finality to death. When you close some doors in your life, it is cemented shut. If stay by the graveside mourning, it means you’re not walking away to start over.

Walking away from the graveside can be simultaneously grievous and peaceful. The grief undiminished is put on the backburner for the sake of the main hustle which is life!

Grief, even diminished, stays with you and is a part of you. In this sense, what you buried continues to live but hopefully you put it on the right shelf in your heart so that it still helps you live.

These contradictions are the heart of spiritual disciplines. This is why there is no glory without suffering. This is not a sinister statement. I’m not proposing a dualistic view where evil is necessary in order for there to be good. What I am saying is that we are imperfect beings in an imperfect world, but there is a God who is gracious and loving and is patient through our imperfections and powerful enough to help us overcome them. It is in the “overcoming” that we see God more clearly, put to death our suffering and experience glory. We know how this narrative ends. After death comes Resurrection.