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Home / Cafe Culture / Coffee Talkby Tim Schenck The following is an excerpt from the book What Size Are God's Shoes? Kids, Chaos, and the Spiritual Life. (C) Morehouse Publishing, 2008 I never used to drink coffee. I made it through college, the Army, work as a political campaign manager, a coffee-drinking wife, seminary, and one child. The combination of two children under the age of two and full-time work in parish ministry, however, put me over the edge. It's not as if I'm addicted now or anything. Really. I just can't imagine getting the day kick-started without a steaming mug of coffee. My Thursday morning sermon-writing ritual revolves around coffee. Or, more accurately, caffeine. Some church-goers need coffee to stay awake during the sermon. I need coffee to write the sermon. I'm not sure why this is, but I wouldn't want to subject anyone to the fruits of decaffeinated preaching preparation. After searching for a couple of years, I finally found the perfect coffee house in which to write sermons. Coffee Labs Roasters in Tarrytown, New York, was founded in 2002 and I discovered it soon after. The name is actually a play on words. The logo incorporates an image of the owners' labrador retriever – hence "Coffee Labs." And since they roast their own beans (free trade, of course), it is also a coffee "laboratory." The best part, aside from the coffee, is that it's a dog-friendly establishment. So Delilah and I head down to Coffee Labs every Thursday morning. I write and she gets all sorts of attention. Everybody knows her name; I'm simply tolerated as Delilah's faithful companion.
One of the reasons I go out to write, besides the caffeine inspiration, is the need to get away from the distractions that hound me either at home or the office. I don't need perfect silence to write; I'm not a medieval monk working on an illuminated manuscript. I even welcome some distractions. The key for me is that they're not my distractions. So hearing the white noise of conversations or background music is fine. And I hardly even notice other people's children wreaking havoc around me (there's a great sign at the counter of Coffee Labs that reads: "Unattended children will be given a shot of espresso and a puppy"). As long as it is not my cell phone ringing or my children demanding my attention, all is well. My one regret in being a java-come-lately is that I can't drink it black. Even my wife Bryna makes fun of my "warm coffee ice cream." I admit I need the "fixin's" to fully enjoy the experience even though adding cream and sugar makes me feel slightly less manly. What trucker stops into the 76 Truck Stop in rural Mississippi and orders a light and sweet French vanilla? But regardless of what kind of coffee you drink, there's nothing worse than getting grounds in your coffee. You look forward to taking that first sip and suddenly you've got small, black grains stuck to your tongue or lodged between your teeth. It's usually a problem with the filter. Perhaps it got folded over just slightly when you placed it in the coffee maker. Easy enough to do in that pre-coffee morning haze. But if a coffee filter strains out the grounds from our coffee, we need to do the same thing with life's distractions. We need to filter out some of the incessant messages that bombard us and keep us separated from the divine presence in our lives. We have more control in this regard than we think but it takes real discipline to self-filter our lives. Often these distractions quietly weave themselves into our lives. They won't hurt us in the short-term – just as ingesting a few coffee grounds is more annoying than anything else – but they're things that continually distract us from keeping spiritually centered. Like becoming hostage to our email or watching three hours of television before bed or never turning off our cell phones. These distractions can become like low-grade fevers; not debilitating but just enough to keep us from fully living. Things that don't require 12-step programs but that, when abused, hinder our quality of life. This past Lent I gave up checking my email after 6:00 pm at home. It had gotten to the point where I could not disconnect, literally or figuratively, from the office. I know I'm not alone in this compulsion. People now refer to BlackBerrys – those handheld devices that allow you to check email anywhere, anytime – as "Crackberrys." No one is so important that they need to check email in bed. Coffee aficionados will be glad to know that my New Year's resolution was to limit the flavored coffees. I'm now drinking Ethiopian Harrar and Mexican Chiapas and various Guatemalan blends. I definitely get more respect from my friendly baristas – and that's worth its weight in organic coffee beans. About the AuthorThe Rev. Tim Schenck is rector of All Saints' Episcopal Church in Briarcliff Manor, New York and the author of the "What Size are God's Shoes? Kids, Chaos & the Spiritual Life" (Morehouse Publishing), from which this essay was adapted. |
