Reading Francis

Why should you read this book? This is less of a rhetorical question than it sounds, and I hope you’ll let me know if you figure out a good answer. But let me offer that my purpose in sharing this is to tell a bit of my story in hopes that you might share some of yours in return.

The longer I live, the more certain I become that one of the most important and holiest things we can do is to know others and be known in return.  A lot has been written about the epidemic of isolation and loneliness in our society. Here’s my contribution.

When our daughter was working a couple hours away, we would go visit her frequently, and we got to know the area around her apartment complex pretty well. We used to have breakfast (and sometimes lunch) at a coffee shop right next to her place, and most of the time, the place was full of customers who came from her complex, college-age kids who worked where she did. It was crowded, but almost palpably lonely. Each person sat at their own table, staring at their phone, in silence. Very rarely, they might be talking with someone on video chat, but mostly, they were just scrolling alone.

I’ve seen this phenomenon in other places, but I think the fact that these were all 20-somethings at the start of their lives affected me more powerfully. I have worked in places where, at lunchtime, the parking lot is full of people eating lunch alone in their cars, but as sad as that makes me, I can understand as a fellow introvert that, if you work in a busy office, having a designated time out to recharge is a really valuable thing.

There’s something much more poignant to me about sitting alone in a public place. Maybe the dynamic is the same — that the kids’ apartments are crowded by extroverts and their work was in customer-facing roles that were a draining barrage of people — but something about spending time alone in a public cafe that is designed for conversation just feels sad.

During that season, I thought, maybe someday I would start a practice, a ministry, of showing up at a cafe like that with a sign that says something like “What’s going on?” and then sitting and waiting for anyone who wanted to have another human being to talk to. Though I am an introvert who gets exhausted by big crowds and is useless at cocktail parties, there is something about one-on-one getting to know another person — their hopes, dreams, fears and daily grind — that feels like what we are here to do.

On reflection, this shapes how I go about my daily life in ways that make people really surprised to find out that I’m an introvert (as is my wife). Because we are creatures of routine, we go to the same places day after day, and we both have developed the habit of recognizing the people around us as protagonists of their own lives rather than just extras in ours. In very simple and basic ways, we express interest in the baristas and wait staff at our favorite places. I acknowledge to the people that I see at the pool that I notice when they are there and when they aren’t. I look for ways to let people know they are seen, because it’s easy in our world to feel invisible.

When I started posting reflections on Facebook many years ago, it opened a door that has led to some wonderful virtual examples of this sort of life-sharing. I don’t think that’s why I wrote them, per se, but sharing the thoughts that came to me with my Facebook friends in case they were helpful to anyone else has had the magical effect of enabling co-workers, former classmates, and other acquaintances to feel comfortable opening up about their lives. 

Among the people who tell me they read my Facebook posts, the ones who mean the most are those who are on the periphery of faith. Many of them have given up on the Church (or believe the Church has given up on them), but my hope is that they haven’t completely given up on God. My hope is that these posts of mine have offered a lifeline, if not to membership in a faith community, at least to the possibility that God is better than the worst of those who proclaim Him.

Recently, I started using an app to help me learn Italian that allows people to have 1:1 chats with mutual language learners. While the primary purpose is to offer feedback from a native English speaker to someone learning the language, while they correct my deficient Italian, the reality is that the content of those chats — how are you doing, what is your day like, what do you do, how’s your family — often lead to deeper sharing about trials and joys in the here and now.

That made me realize something about the dream I had of a cafe ministry; it’s not limited to a particular place or time or platform. The world is our cafe. Consider these pages as my answer to your “What’s going on?” sign. I look forward to hearing yours in return. Email me at AbandoningTemples@gmail.com.