marie and i left the confines of urban seattle this morning for a few days to get away.  often we will do this instead of taking one big vacation a year, and we love to find quaint little towns.  marie is taking the time to attend an addictions seminar on a native american reservation outside of la conner, wa.  i am spending the day in la conner reading, writing, and just generally relaxing.  so we’ll be at a b&b and then on friday we’ll head to the hills for some hiking and then head back to seattle friday night.  la conner seems to have a great feel to it with a lot of small shops, restaraunts, museums, and antique shops.

i am writing from a coffee shop/bookstore that i found called the next chapter.  as i walked in around 9am a group of old men were sitting around a fire and pulling out articles and talking about consciousness and subconsciousness.  i wanted to join them, but it was clear that i was vastly out of my league with these brilliant men.  i ordered my americano and sat in another corner to continue my reading of god is not great and working on my review of hitchen’s work.  it was hard to read as i was also dropping eaves on the group of old men listening in to their rich conversation.  after they left i took a short reading break and went about browsing the books near the comfortable chairs where they were sitting.  i was noticing books by caputo, tillich, derrida, and kierkegaard in the philosophy section.  i began thinking that i should grab a couple of these since i was here.  but i continued to move down the wall and noticed a section with mclaren and the typical list of emerging church type books.  as i’m reading the titles by claibourn, scandrette, pagitt and others i am seeing my own bookshelf at home was well as my amazon wishlist.  it was clear that i couldn’t just pick one or two books when i could have walked with an entire box full of works that i’ve been wanting to get and read for some time.  then as i moved into the spirituality section i recognized my set of phyliss tickle’s divine hours and a lot of henri nowen, as well as one of my professor’s books paths to prayer by dr. patricia brown.  what i did not notice however was the kinds of books that i would have found in the family christian store or lifeway.  curious about this i engaged in dialogue with one of the owners about how it is that they came carry only these kinds of christian books, how long the store has been open, what that group of old men was about, etc.  it turns out the owners described themselves as emergent postmodern christians, one of them graduating with an m.div from trinity in chicago and also hosts of a small christian community that meets in their store on a regular basis.  they hope to be a resource for the kinds of pastors that are in the area and they also seem to host a lot of students from regent, who like to get off campus up in vancouver and come to la conner to stay, research, write, etc.

all this to say that it was great to find a place that felt so warm, welcoming, and inviting to spend my day of reading and writing.  i think that when people think of opening a coffee shop as a space for conversation, this place is the ideal image of what that might look like.  it was a joy to find kindred spirits in a quaint little town an hour north of our home in seattle.