Been making a humble Thursday morning practice of popping in the coffee shop down the road before work.
Just to stand in line for a cortado and sit for a few minutes.
In between the standing and sitting, I always seem to find something to fill my cup.
This past Thursday there wasn’t much of a line, so I stepped to the front, ordered, and skooched to the left to wait.
The waiting area’s directly in front of where the barista prepares the orders.
I’m careful not to stare.
But I do try to catch a glimpse when they’re doing the pouring.
I find all artful pourers mesmerizing.
The person working Thursday is new-ish.
Been there maybe a couple months.
Don’t know her name.
Just her smile.
She began with the requisite two shots of espresso.
Then moved to the milk.
I’m always curious to see if a barista trusts in gravity and surface tension to do their jobs … and fills the cup beyond its edge.
It’s always magic to me to bear witness to how the molecules grab on to one another, and keep each other from flowing away and spilling.
I find a hope in that.
Like nature’s just waiting for us to learn from its example.
I’ve noticed that some baristas favor the control of holding the cup in one hand to bring the spout closer … while others place the cup on the counter to keep a steady target.
The delicacy of the draw gets me every time.
The mere idea of painting with a brush that only ever gets so close to its canvas.
Seems prayerful to me.
Any distance between source and vessel requires a measure of faith.
I’ve learned that the precise amount required has little to do with how great or small the distance.
Hers was one fluid motion into the countered cup.
But then, she did this thing.
Post-pour, she reached for a spoon.
I watched as she used it to gently skooch some of the foam where she wanted it to go.
My immediate thought was that maybe things initially didn’t turn out the way she wanted.
As she skimmed the surface, she cupped her empty left hand parallel to her right … as if protecting a flickering match from the wind.
Her left hand had no practical purpose, other than maybe just to let the right know it was rooting for it.
By which I mean it may have had the most important job of all.
Satisfied, she put the spoon down and ushered my cup forward to let me know it was ready.
“I’ve never seen anyone do that … with the spoon,” I confessed.
“I do it all the time,” she said. “That’s my move.”
So, she had made no mistake.
She just wasn’t done moving mountains.
I asked her her name.
“Jaye,” she said.
“We’ll call it the ‘Jaye,’” I said.
“Aww, thank you,” she smiled, also a signature move.
It was only then that I looked down … to see that she had used the spoon to crack a tiny heart open.
By which I mean she used the spoon to crack my tiny heart open.
Whenever I am asked to meet with a new employee, I always start with the most important question.
I mean THE most important question.
I preface it by letting the person know that I’m about to ask them the most important question that they will be asked that day.
Possibly, the most important question they will be asked all week.
I let them know in advance that the question is cosmic in its scope.
Then I hit ’em with it.
“What is the greatest pizza of all time?”
I then take a minute to make sure they fully understand the question’s magnitude.
“In your expert opinion, across the hundreds of assemblages of crust, sauce and toppings you have experienced in the entirety of your illustrious, pizza-eating career … what is the GOAT?”
As they deliberate, I invite them to give thought to why.
What is it about it that makes it the greatest of all time?
The ingredients?
Where or how the ingredients are sourced? Is it the style? The type of crust? The manner in which it’s prepared? Is it the individuals who make it? The ambience in which they experience it? The location where it’s located? Is it the company they experience it with? Perhaps it’s the time in their life that they first encountered it?
Over the years, I’ve asked the question at least a hundred times.
Everyone answers differently, but they all have one thing in common.
The way their face lights up when they tell me.
You should see how such love lives on their faces.
__
So, I’m waiting out a Sunday late-morning flight delay at the Kansas City airport yesterday.
Young fella sitting next to me sees me holding a small print of a cat in a cowboy costume that some friends (who know me well) gave me that morning.
Asks me about it.
I tell him.
Then he asks me where I’m going.
I answer and, out of politeness, ask him the same.
He tells me he’s going to Paris for 82 days, to intern for a ‘church-planting’ organization … scattering seeds in France.
Couple minutes later, he’s asking me if I know Jesus, and whether I’ve accepted him as the only way to salvation.
In so many words.
I mean, soooo many words.
Meanwhile, the voice in my head starts audibly exhaling in discomfort, “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” while rubbing the bridge of its metaphorical nose.
I’m just a guy admiring a print of a cat in a cowboy costume here.
Meanwhile my concerned neighbor is talking all about sin and eternity … with much conviction.
Which I respect both the act and substance of.
He’s going to make a great intern.
Says that our days are not guaranteed. Anything can happen.
“This might be the last flight we ever take,” he says, gesturing to the door to the jetway.
I don’t disagree.
He mentions that Jesus is coming back.
Soon.
I suppress the urge to mention that history is littered with a lot of humans who over-estimated their gifts for guesstimating that particular arrival time.
He starts peppering me with a bunch of questions.
And keeps pressing me for a verbal … like a flight attendant prompting an exit row passenger.
Meanwhile, all I can hear is Paul whispering in my ear “… with gentleness and respect.”
I genuinely don’t want to be disrespectful.
For all I know, God might be eavesdropping on his intern.
I also don’t want to get deep … meaning the granularity of it.
But I do want to get deep … meaning the heart of it.
And I know that if I choose the latter, he’s just going to want to further litigate the former.
But I couldn’t help myself.
So I answered him … by saying that I have a wise friend who knows more chapter and verse than I ever will.
And that the wisest thing I have ever heard him utter isn’t a Bible verse.
When someone asked him a question he didn’t have an answer for, my wise friend said that he wasn’t sure.
And added, “I’m OK with God knowing more than I do.”
Which pretty much sums up my faith right now.
It’s taken me a while to get to this cruising altitude.
I can’t tell you exactly how close I am to any destination.
There are lots of clouds when I look up.
I’m not even sure how accurate my heading is … as I tend to overestimate the scale of things.
I’m just trying to hold things steady enough to eventually give me a better vantage point.
Which is no small accomplishment, given my fear of heights and poor sense of direction.
But I do have some people in my life right now who are generous in sharing their coordinates with me. More experienced navigators who have logged a lot more miles, spent more time with the map, and seen a lot more of the world than I have. Best of all, they are generous in sharing the detours and emergency landings they’ve made … in hopes that I either avoid, or at the very least, take different ones.
God bless bound-for-Paris Josoo (“rhymes with ‘tofu’” as he introduced himself), but I don’t think I gave him the exit row answer he and his pilot were hoping for.
But his soon-to-be-summer employer should know that it wasn’t for a lack of intention on his part.
After a few minutes, I needed to detangle, so I got up to stand where the boarding lines were about to form.
I confess to you that I hoped that neither God nor United Airlines sat us next to each other on the plane.
But sitting and sifting here, though … I kinda’ regret praying for that.
Because I just thought of something I wished I would’ve asked Josoo.
I would have asked him to talk to me about love.
About love that rejoices in truth.
A love that always protects.
Always trusts.
A love that in spite of everything … still hopes and perseveres.
I’d ask him to talk to me about love so Great.
Love that never fails … even when all other prophecies cease, all tongues still, and all other knowledge passes away.
A love whose planes never run late.
___
By which I mean … I would have liked to ask him The Most Important Question.
At least the most important one anyone would ask him that day, if not over the next 82.
I would’ve asked him about the greatest pizza of all time.
I’d take a good minute to make sure he fully understood the question.
So I could learn what, in his expert, pizza-eating opinion makes it the greatest … out of all the hundreds of combinations that he’s experienced in his illustrious, pizza-eating career.
Just so I could see how love lives on his face, and feel how it lives in his heart.
Trust me … I would rejoice in learning of his personal relationship with pizza.
Which would expand my humble understanding of how crust, sauce and toppings can go together.
And all I know for certain is that he would answer the same question differently than anyone else I’ve ever asked.
And that, by the end, I would likely be hungry to experience pizza the way he experiences pizza.
And if the Spirit was really moving within me, I might even ask him his perspective when it comes to anchovies.
Not to convince him, mind you.
Just to see if we had any common ground there.
All of which to say … I’m no theologian.
I’m content knowing that if there is a God … she probably looks at me the same way I look at prints of cats in cowboy costumes.
But it’s hard for me to imagine that she cares all that much that I don’t like crust.
My wife Karry doesn’t mind.
I let her have mine.
Heck, maybe it makes God happier to see us sharing.
And I would never deign to speak for her, but I imagine that if God made us in her image, then she probably autonomically smiles when she sees how our faces light up when talking about the greatest pizza of all-time.
Heck, she’s probably just waiting for us to ask her The Important Question.
So she can reply, in so many words, “Have you ever tried it with the Jesus sauce?”
So that we can see how a love that hopes all things … lives on her face.
While scrolling my Monday in-box last week, I was gifted language for something I have felt but never had words for.
When I stumble across such treasure, I try and make a point to write the word down in my journal.
I think of it like picking up seashells along a beach.
The word came courtesy of Creative Mornings, whose January theme came courtesy of their Tehran chapter.
I’ve copied their explanation here. Don’t think they’d mind.
کورسو or Koorsoo (pronounced Koor·Soo) is a Farsi word meaning a glimmer of hope.
“In our darkest hours, when everything seems to have dimmed, sometimes a light remains—not bright, not certain, but real. That is Koorsoo—a faint glimmer of hope that dares to survive. Koorsoo is not about triumph or clarity; it is about the fragile yet unwavering light that keeps us going. A glance, a memory, a word—small things that prevent collapse. It represents the quiet resilience of those who continue in spite of the weight, who believe without guarantee. In a world that often normalizes despair, Koorsoo is a rebellion—soft, but profound. It reminds us: even the smallest spark matters.”
My Monday morning — by which I mean my January — needed that reminder …
… almost but not quite as much as I needed caffeine driving up Main Street Thursday morning before work.
Anymore, I find my days need some back-up … which is among the reasons I collect seashells … metaphorically keep them in my pockets … so I can run my hands over their contour to remember, to remind myself.
Sometimes when I get to the small coffee shop when it opens, the sun’s still low enough in the sky to bathe the interior bright.
After giving my eyes a couple seconds to adjust, I noticed their humble logo reflected on an interior wall, crisp as a projection.
A fragile yet unwavering light.
I asked Fiona if they knew when they built the place that the sun would reflect like that, or if that was just a happy accident.
She wasn’t sure, but said it’s her favorite thing.
If we only knew how our light reflects sometimes.
After paying for my double cortado to go, I handed her a little extra cash for a pay-it-forward.
Spoke aloud the names aloud of a handful of humans who had recently reserved some kind thoughts in their day for me.
If we only knew how our light reflects sometimes.
Sitting here with my Sunday morning … a new month turned over … still needing reminders … still collecting sea shells … still remembering the importance of sharing our koorsoo with the world around us.
My normal custom for an early-in-the-week Jim letter is to save it to open on Saturday morning.
To give myself something to look forward to.
And to make sure I have the space — temporal, physical, soulful — to savor the treasure inside.
My friend Jim’s a wonderful poet. His letters are always accompanied by a few of his recent poems.
He happens to be in his 90s now.
When I grow up, I hope to someday write as well as Jim does in his 90s.
At his age he senses the nearness of death. As a former pastor he also senses the nearness of being called Home.
Having lived so long, having lost his wife, Mary, to dementia a couple years ago … he keenly appreciates the preciousness of days and time.
And stares it all down with a poet’s heart.
Has made a practice of sifting the everyday for meaning and for magic.
And somehow makes it all rhyme … figuratively and literally.
“Poetry is persistently plaguing me at night, and when, half asleep, I kick off the covers, I force myself to get up, write down a phrase, or a line or two, so precious that I just can’t chance to let it wander away.”
For the record, I’m a little over half Jim’s age, and when I kick off the covers at night, it’s to get up to pee, not scribble down epiphanies.
Jim inspires me so much, in both the act and the substance of his letters and poems.
We’ve carried on a correspondence for a few years now.
I’ve noticed a common refrain in his letters. A lament.
He’s always longed for his poetry to be published … so it can be remembered.
In a post-Thanksgiving letter, he wrote, “Doggerel, following me like a lost puppy, and when on Google yesterday, I found a host of famous lines of Tennyson … I asked, ‘Will anyone remember even one of mine?’ as if I’ll care after my death.”
But only a line later … “Sunday morning sun brightens the tarnished attitude I bring to life on these usual dull winter days.”
I can attest that Jim’s poetry is beyond worthy.
When I wrote him back, I asked him if he would mind if I shared his poems with friends.
And for once, when his reply arrived in the mail, I didn’t wait until Saturday morning to open it.
Something about the urgent pause of a New Year’s Eve suggests a break with custom.
“YES, you may share whatever comes from me. That is the greatest tribute that I know of … of my attempts at poetry … to be liked enough to share.”
In thinking how I might best serve your precious attention in this moment … I can’t think of any better gift to share with you than Jim’s gifts shared with me. Of his noticing in a sparrow’s visit a kindred spirit. His allowing a newborn sun to surround in warmth all that’s old in him.
So in this space between the holidays, between our no longers and our not yets, may we greet whatever lies ahead as if it were a Sunday morning sun.
May we approach it with the wisdom, persistence and awe of a 90-year-old poet still sifting this broken world for its good light.
May we ever be so alive to what moves us that we have no choice but to kick off the covers and call it by name, so we can share our magic words with the world around us.
May we always (always) have something to look forward to.
If you are so moved, you have Jim’s permission to like, share and comment. I promise to reflect your good light back to him.
Letters for Maggie 