On Drinking Coffee with Dave

I had the privilege the other day of hanging out with my senior pastor Dave. We talked church business and also shared our lives a bit. I will be apprenticing under Dave for the next to years to learn the delicate art of pastoring.

God is a big fan of variety, and has brought Dave and I from two different worlds. Dave is a southern Illinois farmboy with just the slightest accent sculpting his words. I am a "third culture kid" who moved so much he is from everywhere and nowhere, and speaks with all the accent of CBS news anchor. Dave came up through the blue collar world and has been educated while on-the-go in his ministry career. I, son of privilege, was able to attend seminary on the west coast and read books about what Dave was experiencing first hand. I have much to learn from him.

At the end of our day, we had a cup at the local coffee shop. From the moment we order, I can tell we're in my world, not his:

Josh: a split-shot grande Americano with room, 

Dave: a small decaf. 

The barista has spacers in his earlobes that would be the handles if his head were a bucket. I complimented one of his several tattoos the other day and got a free refill out of it, "Nah man you're cool."


Even though he meant I was cool for the charge and not for my waning aura of hipness, I took it to mean both. If I deny the spark of joy I got from this, I'd be lying. Ten or fifteen years ago, though, I lived for a nod from bucket head and co. After spending my teenage years having my manhood questioned because I didn't play football, I was overjoyed to find the coffee culture. Here were my people, at long last, all of us writing poetry in our journals!

Since then, I've had my split-shot Americanos in Madison, soho, Portland, Venice beach, and the epicenter of coffee chic, Vancouver. Now I can size up the room pretty quickly for the usual suspects.  In the corner is he of the long ironic beard hoping someone notices him reading Kerouac/Thompson/Eggers/Coupland. Across the room is the girl with the stars tattooed on her forearms wearing plaid chucks she found on "a European website most people haven't heard of." Next is the busy but hip mom sipping her soy latte as her three kids-- Jayden, Ayden, and Hayden--frown into their ipads. Finally there's the aging Gen X-er with a messenger bag, Bon iver tshirt, zipper boots, and stubble made to look unintentional. The last one is me BTW, as the kids these days text it

Dave and I find our seats, weaving around blazing MacBooks and extra hot skinny lattes. He smiles at the people who haven't bothered to give him eye contact and says, without irony, "I like this place." And amidst all of us waifs of humanity trying to out-cool each other, Dave looks like he is made of granite.

Qohelet, the shadowy author of Ecclesiastes, reminds us that there is "nothing new under the sun." Twenty years ago, I would have looked very strange without pegged bugleboys and a pair of Oakley blades. Twenty years before that, a set of bell bottoms and a Pink Floyd t-shirt would have been the order. Even this painfully unique caffeinated world I discovered in college will one day be cliche and nothing new. One day my kids will roll their eyes, "Dad, do we have to listen to Kings of Convenience again?"

When I first discovered this reality of entropy, I was tempted to despair. I've finally found my world, and even that is imperfect? Even the splitshot Americano culture will show its tired, bored humanity one day?  The alternative will become the mainstream and the avant garde the old guard. Alas! I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. That's Eliot, btw.

I think of my tiny church, a few dozen people who've been through a lot together. This room scans differently: here an African American woman who has endured prejudice I can't even imagine; there a disability recipient who knows what it means to live check to check. A Vietnam vet who was a helicopter gunner at the age I was a college sophomore; a nonagenarian with a spark in his eye far brighter than mine.

Something in me knows that now these are my people, and that they each have a role in this church family and in this sacred and sad and beautiful world. And even though I come from a narcissistic self-addicted coffeeshop world that thinks itself utterly out of the norm, there's a place for me. In my best moments, I've grown tired of the exclusive club and am glad to have a seat at the inclusive table.

Paul, of course, had a lot of very intricate theological things to say about this. But it's late and I think Shel Silverstein will suffice, a vision where even the hipster snob is allowed in the door...

"An Invitation" by Silverstein

If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If you're a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!