UPDATE: This Coffee Tale honors my daughter Leah’s only teacher from grades 1-8. Chandra is Leah’s third parent and the one who guided Leah and her classmates as they learned letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, stories, and essays. She walked the through new teeth, advanced math, puberty, social media, and all the other fun stuff kids and teens dive into during such formative years. Leah moves on to high school now so I am re-running this Coffee Tale that briefly shares Chandra’s drink along with a few parts of her complex personality befitting a yoga teacher, daughter, mother of five of her own, and mother of thirty or so in her class, and of course, mother of a few dragons <– She won’t get that reference because she’s got no time for our TV obsessions.
-Myron
Coffee Tales: “Chandra”
Written by Myron J. Clifton
Chandra drinks Peet’s decaffeinated coffee with extra cream. I tried Chandra’s drink recently and here is my review.
This drink is a drink of acceptance. A drink that is present for your moments. This drink reminds one to…pause. And to think. And to think into one’s truth. It is elemental and simple, with hidden complexities that subtly helps one to slow down and recognize one’s own inner strength.
This drink toys with you, though. At first mention one is taught to recoil at the very thought of decaffeinated coffee. Why would caffeine be removed from coffee?!
As with many discoveries, decaffeinated coffee was an accident of fate, in the early 1800’s in Germany when coffee beans fell into salt water but retained the flavor but lost almost all their caffeine – the drinkers who tried the salt water coffee no doubt noticed their coffee did not “work.” The Germans took that to mean: “Let’s take the caffeine out on purpose and market it that way!”
I can’t imagine that workers tired from a long day in, say, the coal mines, wanted decaffeinated coffee but one never really knows.
But a secret of decaffeinated coffee is that there remains small amounts of caffeine – just 1-2% or so. And this matches with the small number of people who purposely select decaffeinated coffee, estimated to only be 2% of coffee drinkers. But perhaps those 2% of people drink coffee not for the caffeine that awakens the mind and body; maybe those rare folk who drink this rare coffee do so because their minds and bodies are already awakened.
Like Chandra.
To drink this coffee in the company of others is to blend in with societal expectations while simultaneously remaining apart so that one resides in one’s own truth. To accept a tiny amount of caffeine that tempts the drinker to take more, but which only reinforces one’s decision to rely on strength that is granted naturally from plants and vegetation from Mother earth, and to especially gather energy from the music of a dancing Moon whose light reminds daughters of their connectedness to the Oneness.
Like Chandra.
I will drink this drink again when I need to remember my inner energy and to tap into the connectedness that wants to come forward in joy and in calm; when I need to breathe, and quietly chant and merge words, sounds, melody, and perhaps a little magic to reach an honest position that reveals truth inherent in us all.
I will drink it to remember a teacher who took in a shy child and allowed her to be shy, to be hesitant, and to be thoughtful before acting and talking. To remember how she challenged Leah with her strong hand and feminine touch that was authentic in its confidence and loving in its sternness.
I will gently sip Chandra’s drink when I recall her “suggestion” that on hindsight was an “order” to me to join the Parent Guild, as a way of reprogramming my own school experience to heal my inner child.
And like Chandra, enjoying a cup a decaffeinated coffee with extra cream, I will smile knowing that what we put in our bodies undoubtedly affect and inform how we feel and who we are, and more importantly, it is what is already in our bodies that produces the greatest, happiest, and most long-lasting healing to our eternal selves.
And I will remember to enjoy this drink and accept that all we have is mind and thought that seeks to be with the Oneness. And that Oneness is everything and it allows energy, thoughts, sound, music and just enough magic to help us get to our meditative state which is our Zen.
Om Chandramasē Namaha
This then is Chandra’s drink.
© 2019 by Myron J. Clifton. All Rights Reserved.
Dear Dean 