Between the Walls of Coffee and Stories

There’s something sacred about this coffee shop we find ourselves in over and over again. 

The tears spilt in stress over words to be fit perfectly on a page. 

A public space so full of vulnerability, like I've never known.

Safety amongst strangers. 

I’ve met community between these walls. 

Old women asking me, a twenty year old they’ve never met, for help on their computers. 

A warm greeting between myself and a classmate, seeing each other for the first time outside of class. Seeing more glimpses of who we are. 

Meeting again over coffee and tea and discovering what makes each other get up and live each day. 

A theatre as ministry class spilling in, accepting the gracious gift of coffee, and crowding around chairs and sofas to create our own safe, sacred, circle within this boisterous building of life. Deep conversations on art and faith. Reflections on our show. On grace. On Beauty. On forgiveness. On failure. On our good God and his abundant love. 

Shelves of children’s books holding worlds of truth depicted through the simplest, yet truest images and stories. 

Plants personified on bookcases. 

People pouring out stories and struggles and coffee and laughter. 

Light spilling through the windows and casting shadows on the chairs. 

Golden light seeping into our faces or gloomy rain sparkling on the glass. 

There is a hum of chatter and life throughout. 

Other moments are full of such stillness. 

We are the only ones here. Committing words to paper in the final hours of the shop’s day while baristas silently bring in chairs and wipe down tables. 

We spill water all over the place creating an extraordinary mess. 

But extraordinarily the mess turns to laughter and we mop it up with tiny napkins, sopping wet towels, and whatever else we can find while the baristas are hard at work. 

Something about cleaning up our own mess in this place makes me feel part of something bigger. This coffee shop is not just full of transactions but relationships. 

Jokes and life stories are exchanged between baristas and coffee drinkers. They make our drinks and we set them gently in the black bins before we leave, waving goodbye, as though to an old friend.

Children roam the floor, giggling masters of the space, grabbing at cards and falling on their bums only to get back up again and reach for something new. 

They catch our eyes and we smile back, missing our own siblings and the children of our church families. Reminding us of the babies we held weekly who will feel a whole year older when we come home. 

Prayers are shared between friends, whispered over the hum of talk.

It all becomes swirled into the space, the heartbeat of the coffee shop, in and around the people. 

Years ago, I walked into this space, a prospective student. Filling out my college application and wondering if I would ever call this coffee shop my home. 

Today I walk in and order my usual, I make conversation with the baristas, I know their name and they know mine. 

A few years ago, I walked into this space, a scared freshman with the strangers I lived with, trying to get to know one another and find good coffee. 

Now I sit with friends who have become sisters. 

A few years ago, we gathered awkwardly, trying to find our way in a strange town, a big school, and a world full of people we don’t know. We swapped small talk and gorged on ice cream. 

Now we sit quietly doing our work because we exhausted all small talk years ago and filled this space with our fears, our laughter, our struggles. Now we need only sit in the presence of each other. 

We’ve filled this space with acting self-assessments, school centered mental breakdowns, whispered profanity and heart wrenching anger. But we’ve also filled the space with encouragement, hugs, shared tears, abundant laughter, and prayers.

We’ve spoken the deep words of encouragement and the stressed ramblings of our inner fears before and we know when we need to, we can do it again.

 

But for now, we sit quietly, resting in this space, letting God hold us, sipping our coffee, and working away on our various projects and job applications. 

This space is sacred not because of the walls or the coffee. Though the various elements of ambience create a special space. But it is precious because of the exchanges of genuine connection between strangers and the even more beautiful connections between people who have been shaped together, time and time again, within these walls of coffee and stories.