The practical purpose of drinking a cup of coffee is to wash the biscuit down. Its ethical purpose is the intimate communion of, say, cowboys (they do exist!) standing around the sullen campfire in a drenching rain, water curling off Stetsons, over slickers, splashing on the rowels of spurs, as they draw the bitter liquid down their throats into the moral belly of their comradeship.
          The political purpose of coffee at the campfire, is the making of Americans—born on the frontier, free, frank, friendly, touchy about honor, despisers of fences, lovers of horses, worshipers of eagles and women.…
         The ultimate purpose is spiritual. For a boy to drink a can of coffee with cowboys in the rain is, as Odysseus said of Alcinous’s banquet, something like perfection.
                                         -John Senior , The Restoration of Innocence

          I shoveled a path to the church doors this morning with a wind chill of -16. I felt alive. I told the pastor before processing into Mass: "I'd be a lot happier if I worked with my hands more."
         He then proceeded to share with me this horrifying story about the persecuted priests in WWII being found out by the quick-check of whether the man had soft or calloused hands. I don't think I need to clarify that if they had soft hands then they were suspected to be a priest.
         Lucky for me, I regularly and pointlessly move heavy things up and down in the air like an idiot in a saran-wrapped gym. So, I have calluses. Holy martyr priests, pray for me. Please.
         All this is to say that I crave the real, the really real.
         I love to exult in my happiness at being forever safe from at least one of the major ills of life - that of being a boy at school. -C.S. Lewis
        Mr. Lewis took the words right out of my mouth. But often I feel I'm still in school, or, if you will, in a Saran-wrapped world, an air-conditioned comfortracion camp.
        Yes, I know that reality can't be reduced to drinking a cup of coffee out of a can with cowboys around a fire under the stars.  But I do want real calluses and a real fire.
        Such is the grace I felt after shoveling snow before dawn with a -16 degree windchill.
        And I pray—really pray—for more of it.