The Cafe At Two Rocks

The cafe at Two Rocks

When Lisa worshiped with us for the first time a few weeks ago, I placed my accustomed phone call to suggest that we meet for coffee so I could learn about her journeys of life and faith and tell her more about St. John’s. Hearing people’s stories is one of the greatest joys of ministry, so I always wait eagerly for a reply.

Lisa wrote quickly to say that she’d gotten my voice mail message. She suggested we meet the next morning, a Friday, “at Stbx. in the Lowe’s Center.”

John sent back a friendly message saying Lisa’s proposed time wouldn’t work because he conducted a church service each Friday morning. He mentioned other possible times and added, “Sorry! I don’t know where the Lowe’s center is or what Stbx stands for. It’s my age!!...God bless. John.”

Lisa had undoubtedly heard that some pastors were out of touch, but what was with me? Granted, the Lowe’s reference was a little obscure, at least if I wasn’t into home improvement. (I’m not. Just ask Kathy.) But even a non-stockholder ought to know what Stbx means. Lisa was beginning to think that I lived in a monastery or maybe a cave under the St. John’s altar. Even at this point in the correspondence, a person would be excused if she went looking for another church. But Lisa’s kindness and patience held fast. She wrote, “Stbx is short for Starbucks and it’s the one in the Lowe’s shopping center in RSM.”

One more aspect of the reply bugged her. She had heard me make a big deal about our new weekly fellowship ministry, but I didn’t even know where it met. It was obvious I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in my own church. She wrote, ”I think it’s where St. John’s has Happy Hour on Fridays.”

She asked if I was free the following Wednesday. The next reply she received fell into the category of one step forward, one step back. Her befuddled prospective pastor said that he’d be free anytime after noon. That was progress. But then he added, “So it would just be getting wherever RSM is? Let me know what time and the where and we will be on to meet. It will just be how long it takes to get there from Yanchep. Blessings. John.”

“Yanchep” might have been a hint that Pastor John really was living on another planet, or at least another continent. Lisa’s reply is my favorite in the whole thread: “RSM is Rancho Santa Margarita. I think Wednesday at 12:30 wld be great. If I’m late it’s because I’m coming from Yanchep to the Lowe’s Stbx.”

John was the first to punt to Google. “I think we have got each other confused with different people,” he wrote. “I am in Yanchep Western Australia and Rancho Santa Margarita is in America. If not and you’re in the same Yanchep why not meet at the Lagoon or the café at Two Rocks?”

My address is revjht@msn.com. Lisa had written to revjt@msn.com and reached, it was now obvious, a different Pastor John. When she shared the e-mail thread with me, Lisa suggested that the title of my next sermon – or Vaya article, I hope she’ll allow -- might be “the Misfortune of Misunderstanding.” Because it entailed waiting for understanding and connection, it’s a great Advent story. Lisa’s gifts of patience and good humor despite Pastor John’s moments of cluelessness and John’s own unstinting, cheerful hospitality are all essential virtues for dealing with those we love at Christmas. So good on them both!  

This post first appeared in the Vaya Con Dios, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.

The Scones Of January

By 7:15 a.m. on the 11th day of Christmas at Starbucks in Yorba Linda, there were no fruit cups left, nor any yogurt with honey and granola -- just 5,160 calories worth of scones.

Reciprocity

Happy ponytails to you, at a Yorba Linda Starbucks on Holy Wednesday

The Book On Throwing The Book At Clinton

As a GOP congressman from a Democratic-leaning district in the San Gabriel Valley, Jim Rogan essentially announced his retirement when he agreed to be one of the managers of President Clinton's impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate in January 1999. After Clinton was acquitted, the White House and DNC placed Jim's name at the top of their list of ripe targets in the 2000 election. He lost to Democrat Adam Schiff.

Think what you will about the impeachment. Jim thought of it an opportunity to do his duty even in the face of certain political doom. After serving in the Bush administration, Jim has settled into his work as a Superior Court judge while he and his gracious wife, Christine, and their two ebullient daughters (not to mention Sparky), have settled into life in Yorba Linda.

At Starbucks today, he told me his long-awaited second book, Catching Our Flag: Behind The Scenes Of A Presidential Impeachment, is about to be published. It's based on detailed notes he took of every meeting and conversation in which he participated as one of the 13 case managers. If there's a record for the fastest a Washington VIP has ever turned to his name in an index, my guess is that it will be broken by Sen. Lindsey Graham, the most nationally prominent of the 13 managers, on May 3, the pub date of Catching Our Flag.

God Rest Ye

We church friends were in a Rancho Santa Margarita, California Starbucks the other evening, in the midst of our weekly "Tuesday Tuneup." We do lectio divina at 5:30, break for a cup of joe, and return to St. John's for an hour of Bible study. During the coffee break I felt that, in the light of the season, I was discoursing too insistently on the sorts of matters that Marley's ghost describes as belonging to the worldly mind. High time for a home-town random act of culture as a troop of Girl Scouts (two wearing reindeer antlers) stood up and started belting out Christmas carols without so much as a howdy-do.

Cable News. Not.

Hat tip to my Facebook buddy David Schwartz for this Washington Post op-ed by Ted Koppel, who bemoans the rise of TV niche journalism (much of which, isn't). David learned about it from our fellow former Andover journalist Gary Lee. Two excerpts:

Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.

And:

The transition of news from a public service to a profitable commodity is irreversible. Legions of new media present a vista of unrelenting competition. Advertisers crave young viewers, and these young viewers are deemed to be uninterested in hard news, especially hard news from abroad. This is felicitous, since covering overseas news is very expensive. On the other hand, the appetite for strongly held, if unsubstantiated, opinion is demonstrably high. And such talk, as they say, is cheap.

As Koppel makes clear, because they make relatively little (if any) money, news divisions have always had a tenuous hold on the loyalty of network executives. So it probably should've been predictable that network news would be further eroded when someone figured out how to make money offering news (or "news") on cable.

There's an imperfect analogy with our dying newspapers, whose display and classified ad revenues have been sapped by the Internet, which in turn still offers most newspapers' hard-won and well-reported content for free. That can't be sustained much longer. How much does it cost the New York Times to keep a bureau in Beijing? A million dollars a year? More? And they'll pay for that with my free page views of the coverage? Not for long. After that, for fact-based insights about what the word's newest superpower is up to, we'll be relying on the Hackosphere, whose own overhead has been dramatically reduced thanks to free wireless at Starbucks.

Koppel argues that the market is now in control of the news business. If that's the case, I'd bet that three-quarters of the American people still want, and may even be willing to pay for, solid, unbiased, well-reported journalism. So there's some hope. On the other hand, we also want pragmatic politicians.

Baiting The Barista

A Columbia University English professor with a venti ego gives in to epic tall-mindedness.