Life at 3 miles an Hour

Starbucks again on a rainy morning, although I do have my sights on another space in the near future….stay tuned. I’m only really here for the view anymore. Everything else has faded for me here like the last credits of a late night movie. The coffee is not a catch. My chair is gone…and there’s only so many cheese Danish that I can consume before someone will need to break out the paddles. The community feel is gone for the most part. Take this morning for example. I stopped for gas and ended up just minutes off my intended schedule. That’s all it took for the curious space phenomenon to shift into high gear. It has always been interesting to me that while Starbucks and others like it have built an empire on creating community, when you actually come into a place, unless it’s a prearranged group, people have a specific method of insuring that they aren’t seated next to someone until absolutely necessary. Individual tables tend to be occupied, every other one, not next to eac...

In the Fall I tend to be in a sort of self evaluation mode for one reason or another. It has come naturally for me over the years. Perhaps it is watching the leaves Fall to the ground and being swept off that helps me to wonder which leaves of my past year have fallen and been blown away to insignificance, which have taken seed, and which have been taken home to a place of prominence by an eager wondering preschooler. I wonder what will last and what will will disappear, what will be remembered and will matter and what was wasted. It's important to know such things when you are in the realm of the pastoral arts. It can be a good measure of worth, whether or not your influence is lasting. Interestingly....or not, in my profession, I find it is likely the "other" things that have the greatest longevity. By other things, I mean things that are not seen as "spiritual"by the pious saints. The evidence I have for this is simply the difficulty that I have inv...

So even though everything was seemingly wrong for it this morning, I’m back here on my blog for a visit. It’s a bit like sitting down with an old friend. Which is probably just code for I need a real life. It’s been more than a month since my last post here. I’ve spent a bit more time with the main focus of my life @ my other blog. I was getting a bit stale so I felt a need to spend some time with this venue that has proven to be a friend and a support in times of transition over the years. The return of Fall has ushered in some fantastic views of the snow covered peaks across the water. This place is full of people seeming to be going nowhere fast. It’s an all stages of life day. Dad’s proudly clutching their infant daughters, old guys discussing local politics, self absorbed individuals tethered to cell phones, and the rest of us plodding along on keyboards, are assembled for one cosmic period in time. It’s a bit amazing to consider that this exact combination of people i...