Cool your jets: I swear I’m not trying to stir the pot here by posting a coffee song on an LDS website. Nevertheless, I must note: years ago, at BYU, I earnestly read the entirety of The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, and was caught off guard to learn the way Elder Pratt and friends escaped from jail during the Missouri persecutions was by grabbing the big ol’ pot of coffee that was delivered to them daily, forcing the door open during the hand-off, then making a brazen run for it.
To be clear: Pratt and co. weren’t being given coffee as a form of religious insult (like, say, serving pork to a Jew or Muslim in jail), but simply as courtesy; even amidst the worst sort of mob violence, it would’ve been a cruel and unusual violation of the 8th amendment to deprive the inmates a morning cup of joe. And Pratt and the apostles didn’t interpret the coffee any other way! There was not the least hint in the text that Pratt or anyone else for that matter ever complained about being served coffee! Oh, they complained bitterly and righteously about the cold, the murders, the theft, the libel and slander and all these gross and flagrant violation of all their rights, but never the coffee. The Word of Wisdom in 1838 was still just that, a “word of wisdom, given not by way of commandment,” and wouldn’t become canonized as the Lord’s health code or what have you for another century.
Not that you should be drinking coffee anyways; global coffee consumption is actively decimating the rain forests and worsening the climate crisis. Please, if you ever leave the Church for whatever reason, I beg of you, continue to not drink coffee, for environmental reasons if none other (as though we needed a better—as though God Himself didn’t need a better).
No, the point of us posting this song isn’t to proselyte coffee consumption, but due to its repeated chorus line of: “We can start over again.”
It’s a song about finding the gumption to start over when nothing in your dull life feels worth starting over–indeed, when nothing in this cruel world feels worth starting over for. (And this song came out in 1999! Post-Cold War! Pre-9/11! Compared to today, things were mostly fine, relatively speaking!) As the lyrics themselves warn, there are still people out there who will hurt you for who you are. But still, you start again anyways.
We must all start over again, constantly, repeatedly. That is what it means to repent. “Come Let Us Anew” is a hymn of ours, and is the raison d’etre of the weekly sacrament. And New Years–as arbitrary as the turn of the calendar might be–is as good a time as any to do so.
That is, “Coffee and TV” is a New Years song, on par with Auld Lang Syne or Last Year’s Man.
So come let us anew. That we might always have his spirit to be with us. We can start over again. Happy New Years.