The Cafe Where my Soul Sighs

There's this place on Dearborn that my friends and I love. It's called Third Coast Cafe. It's small. I'd say it only seats fifty people or so. And it's generally quiet until 10 pm when all the late night conversations begin over a cup of Coast Blend coffee.

I think that's why I love it. There's an ora of togetherness. As Kyle said tonight, "where two or three are gathered over coffee there is peace." Heretical? Yes. Accurate? Definitely.

Tonight was one of those nights at Third Coast. Kyle, Josh Little and I mosied down there after dinner to read until the student improv show at nine. We ordered coffee. We talked. We ordered scones. And talked some more. We refilled our coffees. We went to the bathroom multiple times. And we talked some more. We got out our books to read. We talked more. It was wonderful.

What was wonderful was that something that happens over coffee in a corner cafe late on a Friday night. It's like time stops; no, time keeps rolling but no longer hurried with agenda. Time is savored like the coffee and conversation on the table.

There's a point in nights like this when your soul sighs; when you stop listening fully to the conversation and mentally push back from the table to savor the scene unfolded before you. You're surrounded by "your people"; the ones who understand what you're not saying and are affirming of what you are. Between each life around the table, there is a sweet knowing; an understanding of mutual brokenness and anticipated wholeness. They're the ones who know your spirit is fractured by sin and who love you enough to walk the journey of healing with you.
There's a sigh that comes with being heard. Being heard and unjudged. Being heard and welcomed more deeply into a community of the broken.

These nights climax as you each discuss Abba's teachings, guidings, musings. Each life revealed to be complexly unique, yet each revealed to be profoundly intertwined with the life sitting ac cross the table refilling his coffee. Then you all sit back and your souls sigh together. They sigh because you know each other more fully. You sigh because you are known more intimately. We sigh because we know Abba more sweetly.

I'm starting to think the broken live in coffee cafes because these moments rarely happen elsewhere and we must allow for our brokenness.

So tonight I raise my glass (of tepid Chicago tap water, no worries) to coffee cafes, to significantly broken lives conversing, and bottomless pots of coffee of $2.49.

A sweet knowing, it is; a sweet knowing.