Epiphanies For Breakfast

I’ve spent a good portion of my life in diners. Diners that fill up before noon and don’t empty until eight. Diners with bottomless cups of burnt coffee and waitresses who roll their eyes when I ask for more creamers. Diners with wait staff who know me, not by name, but by the stories I tell more so than by the tips I leave.

On Sundays, I walk down to the Sinclair Broiler. Sometimes I go in fellowship with housemates or friends visiting from out of town. Often, I go alone. I go to carve some sacred space out of my week, chiseling away with a coffee spoon clanging against ceramic walls.

In this sacred space, I mull over my week, my life, and the stress coming Monday. I think about heartbreak and order French toast. I think about loss and change my side order from bacon to sausage. I miss people and make a show of nearly finishing my cup so someone will rush over to fill it. I put my life together—only some of it, never all of it—into stories that help me make sense of who I am.

I think about the people I belong to. I know that’s uncomfortable language, but rugged individualism leaves me empty. Without God, only people and ideas remain to sweep me up. I happily choose the warmer of the two. I would rather belong to particular people than to causes, movements, cities, and nations bound to forget me.

I belong to friends-like-brothers in St. Cloud, Duluth, Virginia, and Texas. I belong to parents living in the suburban flatlands. I belong to a little girl, my niece, who cannot stand without holding my hand. I belong to the waitress checking on me one more time before she ducks out back for a smoke.

While she’s gone I scribble today’s diner sermon on a napkin hiding a wad of chewed gum folded over in its corner. I write about the only two things I’m learning that seem to make a damned bit of difference anyway: humor and love. Humor to sustain me when the living gets lonely. Love to push me when the living gets complacent.

Sustain me to what end; push me to what end, I’m not sure. All I know is that a bill written in Sanskrit has arrived. It’s time to toss my crumpled napkin on the dirty plate and leave an even ten under the coffee cup. I’ve had my fill of epiphanies for breakfast.