Little loves

Boil water

Measure 25g coffee

Grind medium-fine

Set filter in pour over

Wet filter & carafe

Add ground coffee

Start time & begin 50g pour // 00:30

Stir grounds & water

Begin 150g clockwise circular pour, finishing around edges // 00:30-00:40

Begin 200g clockwise circular pour, finishing around edges // 01:00

Slightly lift pour over & let fall to settle bed of grounds // 01:15

Remove grounds, swirl carafe, & serve // 02:30

There you have it. After years of careful research & development, you now know my Hario V60 Coffee pour over method. In full transparency, much of my method draws from an Aussie named Matt Perger, a world renowned barista champion (yes, that exists). Making a proper pour over is one of my little loves. On this day known for dealing in the artifacts of love, I will share some of my little loves, those small interests on my mind's forefront for a season residing long after the season passes. I intentionally do not use the more common term hobby. Perhaps your mind jumps to hobby horses or Hobby Lobby, however I consider hobbies to occupy times of leisure & pleasure. The little loves I speak of here often demand effort beyond that of leisure & intrude into the territory of pain, struggle, & hope. I call them little loves, you may call them what you like.

Believe it or not, my first little love was history, specifically, the American colonial & Revolutionary War eras. I confess, Mel Gibson's The Patriot functioned as a sort of catalyst! But once sparked, this love found kindling in a living history park less than an hour from my home. Here, I discovered the beauty of immersion. I met re-enactors scattered around a park, each camping out in a particular sphere of American colonial life. There was a candler, a butcher, a backwoodsman, a pastor, a tavern-keeper, Benjamin Franklin, & most importantly, a smokehouseman. With good fortune I discovered the smokehouseman worked with my dad, and he offered to teach me the trade so I could also become a re-enactor! The next year, wearing authentic clothing from James Townsend & laden with a years worth of historical research, I became a colonial smokehouseman's apprentice. I consumed history book after book. I saved up all my money to buy a flintlock rifle. I learned how to sew & researched pewter button-making methods. I was immersed.

Years later, the beauty of immersion arose again in another little love: philosophy. My close friends gathered at Books-A-Million, both the only remaining shop in the Aiken mall & the only coffee source open past 6 p.m. Yet in one of the long aisles, sandwiched between teen fiction & half a shelf devoted to poetry, I picked up Plato's Republic. I didn't get it. At least, not at first. I aspired to think well, and I soon believed that if I understood Plato, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, & Nietzsche I would unlock the answers to life's profundities. Yet philosophy did not teach me Plato's answers. It taught me to think like Plato. It teaches one to be immersed in the mind-world of men & women long dead, to see the world in their eyes & still remain yourself. Chesterton said philosophy is thought that has been thought out. It turns out to properly think thought out is to be immersed in the world of the thinker. Here, you enter Nietzsche's world of struggle, Plato's cave, Gadamer's horizons, & Hegel's.....well, I still don't get Hegel.

Where in Aiken I lived less than an hour from a history park, in Colorado I resided less than an hour from a Celestial Seasonings tea factory. Thus I was raised an avid tea lover & coffee despiser. And before my coffee conversion, Dunkin Donuts was my only coffee context. Thankfully I eventually saw the light. Emanating from my freshman RA's room one autumn afternoon sat coffee from Immaculate Consumption & a brand-new Chemex pour over. The radiance of a properly brewed cup of coffee is only outshined by the conversations which occur as a result. Thus began gradual conversion from Mr. Coffee coffee with creamer to coffee without creamer to French Press to a glorious home in the Hario V60 pour over. It is not hyperbole to say I spent years learning the little love of brewing coffee. Looking back, I learned a deep & abiding attention from this little love, attending to the time, the quality of the beans, the consistency of the grind, the purity of the water, the nuance of flavors, & the care of giving a friend a damn good cup of coffee.

In the fertile soil of coffee grew a fourth little love: writing & communicating. As a Myers-Briggs INTJ, my mind connects dots literally all the time. I instinctively know that things are connected, but when pressed on how they connect, I found myself floundering. Thus, under the inspiration of great writers & the mentorship of wonderful communicators, I began to cultivate the little love of finding a landing. If my brain naturally loves seeing the forrest, the discipline of writing & communicating required me to think about where I wanted to go & how I would get through the forest. It is a joy to review a freshman paper, my first sermon, or last year's Essay-A-Day challenge writings. I'm beginning to see the fruits of painful effort to sort through an experience, text, or topic & offer a clear, helpful landing in word or writing.

You may be asking, "Why little loves? Why is he merely recapitulating his favorite hobbies under a different guise?" To begin an answer to this question is out of my depth, such that I must appeal to a well-known source. 1 Corinthians 13 as a text, even out of context, serves as a beautiful exhortation for any occasion. It's deep connection to both weddings & the life of the Church makes it a remarkable & fitting landing for today's essay.

In short, my little loves are those activities which at their best draw me into the grand love spoken in 1 Corinthians 13. My little loves teach me patience & the kindness. Though desiring to master a little love, I ought not be envious of its masters nor boast in my own skills. My little loves draw me into joy when others also see the beauty of history, philosophy, coffee, or just talking about something worth talking about.

A wise man once divided everything men & women do into two categories: use & enjoyment. A dear professor, seeing a potential problem in the words of this wise man, nuanced these two categories into caregiving & veneration. We show love in both these deeply human ways. To love philosophy & history is to treasure the sources of knowledge we week & venerate them enough to immerse our thinking in their ways. To love coffee & communicating is to care deeply about the people we make coffee for & converse with, perhaps rightly venerating them as made in the Image of God. So this Valentine's Day, take measure of your little loves. Treasure them to become more than mere hobbies. Let love be immersive, attentive, & with purpose. Allow little loves to draw you into the gift only a love can give so that, one day, they may draw you up into the depths of Divine love.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. No I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, & love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."