Away

In a recent sermon, Mark Driscoll spoke briefly on the social phenomenon that coffee shops have created. People gather under one roof, to sip caffeine, plug into an ipod and read a book, thumb through a magazine or to bury themselves in a laptop… to be among the illusion of company, but wanting to remain without. Together to be alone, perhaps.

I’m at a coffee shop, not an overpopulated Starbucks, but a chain coffee shop nonetheless… sitting among only a few people, wanting to be alone, but I suppose not too alone. I’m hoping to ease the heaviness in my soul, as I have done so many times before, through a series of words, but as always not sure that I have all that much to say.

It’s warm enough today for me to sport only a t-shirt (and jeans silly) and I find the cover of shade to be a welcomed companion. It’s a fabulous day, a preview of spring and I feel an urge to make most of the day, and equally that sitting in silence might just achieve that…but I’m not sure. I think I'm looking for something...I always am.

Sometimes I dream of running off to somewhere much quieter than here. I’d like to find myself far from the crackling of motorbikes, the screech of halting SUV’s and the voice of a rising metropolis, straining to be heard…away from all the clamor of television and movies, and the constant stream of three minute pop songs about love lost, sung by whiney adolescents…I want to get far away from the prodigious conglomerates of our free market economy, that provide the infrastructure for millions of busy families headed nowhere fast. I want to get away from all the hollowed promises of happiness offered by the manufacturers of sodas, furniture and over priced clothing…I want to escape from the pride of tall buildings and the placid, suburban communities, populated only by carbon copy floor plans; away from man made lakes and the ambient glow of power grids; I want to get away from all the other wandering, faceless people who often serve only as a reminder of how alone I am… I want to get away from all the suffocating ideas circling my mind… the noise that seems ubiquitous.

and I want to find quiet, a moment to rest...a moment to breathe.