Drinking coffee & sharing stories

Yesterday after dropping of my 4 year old at her school, I went to a café with 2 other dads from this school. Both are artists. One is a French-born documentary producer (married to a woman from Niger). His daughter was in class with my older daughter for 3 years and participates in one of my wife's weekly English clubs. The other is has roots from Algeria & does calligraphy as his profession. He recently gave us a beautiful calendar of his work.

I really enjoyed hanging out with these 2 guys. It was the 3rd time that I've done so in this cafe, although it's been a couple of weeks now.

All sorts of subjects came up during the course of our freeform & non-agenda discussion. One was the difficulty of immigration, including the exploitation of people from the global South trying to move to the "rich" North. I couldn't help thinking about the works against human traficking that I know of and how these guys would probably be interested in helping as they could.

I don't think any of us were trying to impress each other. There was lots of laughter.

I couldn't help but thinking that this is what the T@ngible Kingdom approach is all about. It's going where people are, sharing life, and trying to be "whimsically holy." M@tt Sm@y and Hugh H@lter point out that whimsical holiness isn't as much about avoiding what we can't do as much as it is about discovering all the things that we can do.

While walking back home, another neighborhood friend & school mom said that she saw us "3 muskateers" going into the café. Her husband sometimes participates as well. I'm glad that she noticed that I was with them & even considered me as 1 of the 3 muskateers.

The documentary maker may not regularly be coming to the school after this month, as they have moved outside of Paris & his daughter will start elementary school in their neighborhood. He mentioned having a bbq at their home. I hope that we can maintain seeing each other after school ends. I think that the TK project that we hope to set up would facilitate getting together.