Productive suggestions for the wildly disruptive coffee shop "talker"

• Look up the word logorrhoea
• Learn sign language
• Breathe
• Eat a banana
• Consider the benefits of a tonsillectomy
• Consider a career in telemarketing
• Take a vow of silence
• Host a community forum where others come willingly to hear "your life story"
• Avoid microphones
• Make a grocery list
• Do a crossword puzzle
• Check your blood pressure
• Check the weather
• Count coffee beans
• Tip the barista
• Read that book in front of you

Summer bounty

.........


The rows were worn by footsteps. I batted my bowl next to my side, hunting and tasting. Strawberry Swing soundtracked my thoughts as I glared into the sunlight: "Which spot is best?"
My arm itched and I wasn't planning to get my knees involved. A lazy balance suspended over the green sprawl was the aerial method used to pick from the lot. I shouldn't have been that careless: the strawberries were free after all.

Much of the little I know about farming is consistent with life--its droughts, bounty, loss and life. Maybe that's why Jesus wrapped his parables in the rich, solid language of earth and its seasons. 

Zora Neale Hurston once said, "There are years that ask questions and years that answer." 

I love the idea and yet I cannot figure which is more thrilling, knowing that a question has been answered or that the answer, though hidden for a time, exists. This is the glorious chase of wisdom. The marvel that fills my head as I read passages from Proverbs 8 is born of words like these:

"While as yet He had not made the earth or the fields,
      Or the primal dust of the world.
        When He prepared the heavens, I was there.."

I, wisdom? Personified wisdom.

"When He marked out the foundations of the earth, 

      Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman;^[b]
      And I was daily His delight, 
      Rejoicing always before Him, 
      Rejoicing in His inhabited world, 
      And my delight was with the sons of men."

Wisdom dancing, clapping, sounding off joy? What an event for my eyes to attend to. I wish to understand what it means. I wish to have a little for myself too.


I looked at the strawberry lot and smiled with a bowl half full and a stomach at ease. This was a good yield for a cold summer. Though not all the berries were sweet, delight was in the hunt.

Not all things lovely are always in plain sight. They must be sought, dusted off and treasured. My bowl bounced at my feet as our car turned off the rutted path and onto highway. They probably wouldn't make it into jam and I was glad not to preserve them. The full glory of their moment had come. I was just there to appreciate.

........