Can a coffee be mystical?

Father Orthoduck must admit that having a cup of coffee in the morning after one wakes up can be a bit of a mystical experience. Sitting with a cup of coffee at the computer while reading the morning e-mails or sitting at the table just relaxing in the morning and trying to come to full wakefulness can be both a relaxing and a waking experience.

Nevertheless, Father Orthoduck was a bit boggled by the advertisement for a company called Mystic Monk Coffee. They have a web site which touts coffee roasted and ground by mystic monks who wander the hills in brown habit and hoods while drinking coffee and praying, or at least so their pictures appear to imply. But, let me quote from their website:

Mystic Monk Coffee is roasted by the Carmelite Monks, a Roman Catholic monastery in the silence and solitude of the Rocky Mountains of northern Wyoming. The monks live a hidden life of prayer and contemplation in the pursuit of God. The monastery is inundated with young men who seek to leave everything to pray for the world, in a tradition at least a thousand years old.

Okay, while Father Orthoduck understands that part, he is not sure that he understands what a life of prayer and contemplation has to do with the coffee being mystic. But, apparently coffee roasting goes back a very long way, for the website says:

Monks were the first coffee roasters. Coffee is a product perfected and loved by monks from its beginning. When a monk of old heard the anguished tale of a shepherd who had sleepless goats, he himself discovered growing on shrubs the berries, which had such a wonderful effect. Delighted at his find, the ingenious monk boiled the beans in water and drank the resulting coffee. He found in his discovery a hot drink that could keep his eyes awake even amidst the midnight vigils and unceasing prayers of the monastic life.

Well, Father Orthoduck decided to do some checking. And what Father Orthoduck found is what Father Orthoduck remembered:

The energizing effect of the coffee bean plant is thought to have been discovered in the northeast region of Ethiopia, and the cultivation of coffee first expanded in the Arab world. The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen in southern Arabia. From the Muslim world, coffee spread to Italy, then to the rest of Europe, to Indonesia, and to the Americas.

Now there is no doubt that the Sufis are a very mystic sect of Islam. But this is a long way from a Christian monk. In fact, part of the reason that the Spanish and, eventually, the Latinos of the New World, drink so much coffee is that parts of Spain were under Islamic occupation for over 700 years. The word coffee itself, and the Spanish cafe, come from the Arabic word for the drink. I think that the good Carmelite monks need to go to their father-confessor.

But, this did give Father Orthoduck a very evil giggle. He wishes to announce to all those good American coffee drinkers that they are faithfully drinking an Islamic/Arabic drink every day (remember, the Sufis are a sect of Islam). So, here is to intercultural relationships!