2 posts tagged “spirituality”
One of the great things about February is that it is the month when you finish the books that came at Christmas. For me, this has meant coming to the end of Sara Maitland's wonderful 'A Book of Silence'. Maitland is a Catholic, a novelist and short-story writer and a committed feminist. She also went to Oxford with Bill Clinton, which has no relevance to her book but since she manages to mention it, I don't see why I shouldn't.
We were able to spend this past week in Copenhagen, working with leaders from the International Baptist Convention. This is a network of around 70 churches, all working with the English language in international communities across Western, Central and Eastern Europe. It was good to spend time with 'fellow-travellers' - people engaged in church-building in the multi-national setting of Europe's cities (see posting 'towards a metanational church'). But it was also good to spend time in Copenhagen, and to discover some of the cafes offered by this great capital, where coffee and conversation really matter. We found three cafes of particular note. The pictures are 1.2mp phone shots, so please forgive the quality.
The Cafe Royal is new and attached to the exhibition shop of Royal Copenhagen porcelain, one of the city's oldest and most noted companies. The Royal has been widely described as the most beautiful cafe in Europe. It is bright and white, and lovely in that fine and elegant way that the Danes do so well. http://www.visitcopenhagen.com/press/latest_news/royal_copenhagen_opens_the_royal_cafe
A second great discovery was the Paludan Bogcafe (Book Cafe). Floor-to-ceiling in books second-hand and new, this combination of old wood, old paper, old ink and good coffee was almost perfect. Even without the Hammer-and-Sickle flag hung up to mark a particular promotion this month, you could easily imagine students gathering here not only to study but to plot and plan revolutions. I picked up a collection of the poetry of Gerard Manley-Hopkins - appropriate somehow to this timeless environment. http://www.paludan-bog.dk/
Our third, slightly less serious discovery was a cafe that was so proud of its quality that it proclaimed the words 'good coffee' on its awning. Except in Danish this comes out as god kaffee. We re-named this the God-cafe, and it raises a very intriguing question. Why has cafe culture become so important to the culture and spirituality of Europe's contemporary urban landscapes? Why do we so easily sense God's presence in 'third place' gatherings? What is it that good cafes offer to us that is so vital to our health and growth?
The answer, I believe, is that these cafes bring together two aspects of life that are crucial to us, and that offer open windows to the divine presence: they offer a place to pause, and they offer conversation. Pressing the pause button; engaging in human interaction - these are activities essential to life and growth; activities immortally summed up by Sri Lankan Ajith Fernando as 'lingering and thinking'. What might our church life look like if we made more space for cafe-conversations? If lingering and thinking were as important to us as 'planning and doing'? What are the 'third places' that God is waiting to meet you in?
Take a look at this fascinating review of an American book, 'Celebrating the Third Place':
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/books/books.php?id=3882
