Summer Coffee

August 19, 2013

It is Monday and there are no folk at the Farm.  After a summer of Learning and Serving groups it seems a little lonely.  Well, being an introverted sort, maybe lonely isn’t the right word.  But there is something about walking out of your home each morning with a cup of coffee and having the opportunity to a conversation with someone(s) from a landscape other than your own.

One wonderful aspect of those morning conversations is the theological blend.  Conversations range from the morning sunrise (the theological tie is never a surprise), to fracking (well, a theological tie isn’t surprising here either), to family (okay, theology just arises in most every conversation!).  To start the day with another human being who I often hadn’t met until just a few days ago, with a cup of coffee, sitting on a wooden bench, watching the landscape wake up, and have the opportunity to talk about the life of our landscapes, our families, our friends, our churches, and our spiritual relationships is, well, just cool.

The summer is so different from those winter mornings when I sit with a cup of coffee and a book, inside the house, by myself, at hour when during the summer the land has been in light for hours, next to the woodstove.  Those mornings are wonderful and enlightening.  Yet they are often mornings that would not happen without these summer coffee cup mornings.  For these summer mornings often bestow my winter reading upon me.  One such reading that came up, last week, as we talked about subjects like the Christian Doctrine of Discovery and economic justice is the book The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowel.  But it isn’t always just books.  There was a time when we were talking about economics and the perceived need to always have a growing economy, which leads to convincing people to believe a normal life is to constantly strive to move up into the next and bigger house, and, of course, to always buy something.  This conversation led to the suggestion of watching the short video called The Story of Stuff.

The summer isn’t over.  There are many barbeques ahead with neighbors and friends.  There are those folk who are traveling the country and who will drop-in because they have visited the Farm as a member of a workgroup years ago or who have been told by someone to just stop by, walk the farm and maybe have a conversation.  Good days to come, but those regular morning coffee talks with folk who bring varied experiences and insights to the Farm and our lives will be missed.

© David B. Bell 2013