What's Your Dream?

Recently I was in Maryland, sitting at a Starbucks hoping for traffic on the north bound 95 to clear a bit so I could continue my trip from Virginia to New York. It was going to be several hours before the evening rush hour would end, so I was reviewing my email and working on various projects in the busy little coffee shop.

After a while, I became aware—audibly—of two people sitting behind me. They were talking to each other in tones that conveyed a clear affection for one another. Person A was asking Person B about B’s aspirations, about their dreams. It was hard to make out the details, and at this point they hardly matter. What attracted my attention was the deep concern that A expressed in knowing B. In fact, A kept pressing B “come on, is that what you really want?” B seemed either reticent, or unsure (probably both.) Person A was keen to know what made B tick, and A wasn’t about to let B avoid the issue.

My attention to their conversation ebbed and flowed over the 45 minutes or so that they sat behind me, and eventually I heard chairs scrape the floor and they left together. I did not turn and look, so I will never know what A or B looked like. But I do know that there existed between them that most essential and rare of all elements, real human compassion and understanding.

It made me stop and ponder. I’m eaves-dropping in a public place, and in front of me and everyone else in that room these two were engaged in loving one another, right out in the open. Person A and person B were really exposing themselves and their care for each other to public scrutiny.

Jesus did that. He was willing to show his love for people even though it exposed him to criticism by others. Once there was a woman who had been caught in flagrante delicto abed with a man not her husband. This was frowned upon pretty severely at that time. She was dragged to Jesus and accused. In a famous bit of what turned out to be sand painting, Jesus turned the tables on her accusers, and when they were all gone, he asked her “where are your accusers?” She shrugged her shoulders and told Jesus she didn’t know. He shrugged his shoulders and said “I don’t accuse you either, you are free to go. But do this: live differently.”

Do you see he did? Jesus ran off her accusers, and then asked her what she thought. She wasn’t sure what she thought. But Jesus pressed her to “live differently.” This was loving the woman. She was meant to be humiliated and subject to scorn, and in a very public way, Jesus in effect was saying “use this event to transform you life”.

Real love has two parts. One part is not accusing. The other part is asking the person to live outside their current paradigm. To do it all differently. Most of us get the first part, it’s the second part that is tough to handle. That’s the part of love that most of us don’t get. Its hard, its takes guts. You don’t find it in many hallmark cards. “To my favorite Uncle: You are loved. Don’t worry that you ruined by birthday by being drunk and puking on the grass. Oh yes, one more thing; You are loved so please live differently.”

Some of us do get the second part, telling people to “live differently” but we don’t do it while we are living the “not accusing” part. To NOT accuse someone you have to know them. You have to know what they’ve done so you can not accuse them. You have to know what they are made of. Jesus knew exactly who this woman was. It wasn’t that he didn’t know or couldn’t imagine. He knew very well what she’d done. But he didn’t accuse anyway.

“Tell me your dreams” has to come from a place of knowing, so you can tell someone “stop holding out, I know you have dreams.” Loving someone is hard when you know who they are and what they’ve done. When they stop being dream people and start being as human as you are.

And to love them where others can see. Wow. That’s hard. But it’s not impossible. I know this, because I heard someone doing it, right there, out in the open at Starbucks.

Brand Loyalty

Even the most causal reader of this blog would not have missed that I have a certain preference for Starbucks brand coffee and the establishments from which they purvey their particularly piquant version of America’s favorite hot beverage. Nothing against Pete’s, or the Coffee Bean, or Seattle’s Best, or all the little boutique purveyors of the oily brew, but Starbucks is my considered choice. This preference of mine has given me pause to ponder about why anyone develops brand loyalty. One would think that these loyalties are naturally developed on the basis of the quality of the product offered, or the fine level of service. But I think more often than not, those obvious criteria are not what drives a man to stake a claim of loyalty toward this particular coffee or that particular nerve tonic.

A particular man may in fact have a marked preference for Plumptree’s Vitiminized Nerve Tonic. Now don’t get me wrong, Plumptree’s may be a fine product, but the man’s loyalty is more likely engrained in habit “They sell it at the health-food store right next to my favorite liquor store” or in tradition “My mother always had a supply of Plumptree’s on hand” or aesthetics “The packaging looks calm and reassuring” (a good thing for a product such as Nerve Tonic) rather than an attribute of the product itself.

The product may in fact be a putrid gelatinous mass from which no sane person would willingly inhale fumes, much less ingest when mixed with prune juice as seems to be the preference of some. But the power of habit, tradition and aesthetics can drive our man to do many things that seem on the surface crazy. By the way, he may well have a stock of Plumptree’s, he probably declaims its many qualities when the subject of Nerve Tonic comes up among his friends, but I’m betting he’s not actually consumed any of the stuff in years. He’d be smarter than that.

He may find out later that his Mother always had a supply of Plumptree’s because she never used it either, and so it sat prominently in her cupboard, right next to Aunt Tilly’s fruitcake which was sent Christmas of ’67 along with a re-used Christmas Card (still taped to the fruity brick) with cardinals and holly covered in glitter.

In my case, I started going to Starbucks because every location had a T-Mobile Hot Spot, a wireless internet connection. I have an account and during gaps between meetings, I can easily hookup and check my email. But I felt weird walking into the joint spreading out over a table and chair with self and stuff and not purchasing anything, so I designed to assuage my guilt in purchasing their cheapest product (admittedly “cheap” here is a relative term) a black coffee. Their black coffee is a pretty stringent affair, and only the stout-of-heart take it on without some form of warm-up calisthenics.

You see, Starbucks coffee beans are roasted so dark, that in the coffee business, their nickname is “Charbucks.” It is occasionally difficult when drinking their coffee black to discriminate between a cup of their coffee and a warmed up cup of the black drippings off my charcoal burning barbeque which collect in the grease trap after it rains. Over time I’ve learned to love that acidic concoction (the coffee, not the barbeque flotsam). And now, the habit is engrained, and I find myself calmer when I’m on the road and I know where the nearest Starbucks is located.

Funny thing, since those early heady days, I’ve armed myself with a blackberry, so my need for email updates aren’t so pressing. I can see it all pour in over my phone. I don’t have to hook-up with the internet to know which client is frustrated and angry. But I still go to Starbucks.

Some people pickup religions in the same way. They go because of habit, tradition or aesthetics. They don’t actually consume the product, but they like the comfort they get from that form of repetition. Other people come to get a connection, with a romantic interest, or because they were in crisis, or because their close friend was there. Along the way, while connecting, they’ve picked up the habit, they’ve learned to drink the strong brew, and now wouldn’t quit for anything.

In Christianity, it seems like Jesus wasn’t interested in our comfort. The faith in many ways is offensive to those not a part of it even though in the west we’ve done a lot to make it palatable and comfortable. We’ve forgotten that Jesus called us to serve. We ought remember who we are, and that we are loved anyway. Confident in that knowledge, we can know who others are and love them anyway. Jesus didn’t ask us to be a chaise lounge, a place where people can recline and take in the Son. No, He said we were his body. An organism, living an vibrant, ready to move, to reach out, to touch, to caress, to love.

Now if you are looking for comfort, if you are looking for scope for your aesthetic need for ritual or beauty and if in that search you bump into the body of Christ, you will probably be put off a bit. You might be looking for the foamy comfort of a latte, and find instead, strong and black, the crippled body of Jesus, doing what it can to engage the world around it.

Of course, if you are someplace comfortable, if you love your particular brand, you have to ask yourself “is this the coffee I should be drinking?” Or maybe more importantly “what draws me here, what is at the root of my brand loyalty, and should I be here at all? What do they serve here? Do they serve here?” And while you ponder that, may I suggest that you slurp on a Starbucks?

The Sounds of Silence

I was standing in line at one of my “mobile office” Starbucks. It’s a place where I often meet the folks I collaborate with. It’s right off the I-5 Freeway in Burbank. Every Starbucks has a tone, a feel, a little sub-culture. This one is often quiet, almost contemplative, though there are frequently a lot of people there they’re all doing what I’m doing—meeting and working and catching up on their email. In that quietness, standing in line waiting to place my order, I began to tune into the music that is ever present at Starbucks. The familiar sounds of Paul Simon’s guitar began to waft through the air.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

Ah yes. Darkness. Our old friend. And like everything in life, immediately the song wasn’t the song, just like the issue isn’t’ the issue and the pain isn’t the pain. I began to think about how frequently I run to the darkness when the light hurts my eyes. When a friend says a truth so obvious that a total stranger would see it: “you are over committed” and I am immediately defensive. When my beloved wife says “I want to be with you, and when you are gone, I miss you” and I won't admit that I’ve let the urgency of life upend my values, and I’m playing on the wrong side of the ball. When a spiritual leader says to me “I worry that you have your fingers into too many important things” instead of admitting that there is a kind of arrogance in my being ready with a prompt opinion on every matter, that I don’t and can’t know everything, I lash out and say that it’s not my fault if I’m the only one who prepares mentally for the issues of the day.

The barista in front of me--with raised eyebrows--broke my rumination and said “What can we make for you today?” I wondered if it was the first time she had spoken. Probably not. I blushed and ordered my grande drip no-room.

I found an empty table near an electrical outlet (a requirement if I’m going to be there for more than say an hour), sat down and plugged in. The coffee is always too hot to drink for the first few minutes. I fill cooling time with plugging-in and logging-on.

My hard drives spun up and Art Garfunkle’s bell like voice blended with Paul Simon’s. They sang on:

“Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

I looked around. Everyone there was working away, talking quietly with a colleague, or reading, or typing or writing. They had nothing but silence for me. Again, the song wasn’t the song, the issue wasn’t the issue, the light wasn’t the light. I realize that what most people don’t want is words that teach or arms that reach. They want to be left alone. They are happy in their own silence, happy in their own darkness. Occasionally, they get stirred up, they have a crisis, something goes wrong, and they break out and begin to wonder “is this it?” but most of the time, they aren’t keen on the being engaged. And here’s the horrible part. Neither am I. “What I really want is to be left alone.” I don’t like meeting new people; I don’t like engaging people I don’t know. I’d rather not think of them having complex lives like I have, having frailties as debilitating as the ones that I have…because if I don’t think of that, I don’t have to worry about engaging them.

Jesus was really good at engaging people right where they were. He stood in front of the temple during a festival where these large clay pots full of oil would burn and cast this yellow glow over the people in the courts. As they were lit, he stood in front of the crowd and said “I am the light of the world.” Talk about using the materials available to you. Later, when people were concerned about what to eat, Jesus said “unless you eat me, you can’t live, regular food won’t sustain you.” These statements really confused people. The light isn’t the light? The food isn’t the food? Jesus is? Today, if Jesus were here, he might stand up in a Starbucks and say “If you really want to charge up your life, you have to drink me. A vente quadruple shot Cappuccino won’t make a dent, you have to pour ME into one of those white cups and keep sipping.”

If he did, it would confuse people. But some of us would scratch our heads and think “there is something about this that rings true, I can’t exactly put my finger on what it is….” And in the moment of wondering; when we admitted that we knew that we didn’t know, the truth of it would come crashing in on us. That’s how the sounds of silence work. We are searching, we are reaching, even in our hiding we are keeping watch out of the corner of our eye for that glint of the light that is THE LIGHT. All of us are looking. Many of us substitute the truth for something that we’ve formed that looks vaguely like the truth.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

Help me to walk away from the things that aren’t the things. The stuff that isn’t the stuff, the love that isn’t the love. Help me to hear the sounds of silence. Help me to see that Jesus is completely relevant at this moment. Yes, he once was a great moral teacher, but that’s not all. He is, today, our link to the whispered words. He has poured himself into the white cup with the green logo.