I still occasionally purchase beverages at coffee shops. I don’t drink coffee much anymore and when I do I am careful to order decaf. I do drink a bit of caffeinated tea from time to time and I enjoy a good chai late. I am, however, capable of making all of the beverages I enjoy at my home and the prices of coffee shops usually don’t seem like something I want to spend. However, there is something about the culture of coffee that is attractive to me. For all of my adult life, sharing a cup with a friend has been a good way to develop relationships. In my first parish, I used to have coffee at the City Cafe almost every weekday morning. It was a good place to meet with church and community members and to gather a sense of the pulse of the community. I don’t remember the exact price of coffee at the cafe, but I know it was less than a dollar per cup. We didn’t have much extra money in those days and part of the activity was a game with cards or dice which was played at the table to determine which person would pay for the coffees served at the table. Generally I could pay for a round of coffee with pocket change. I remember that a decade later, when we lived in Boise that we used to make a joke that went something like this: “What do you do if you encounter a stranger on the street who is begging you for a dollar for a cup of coffee? You give him a dollar and then follow him to find out where you can get a cup of coffee for a dollar.”

Coffee in coffee shops these days is frequently in excess of $5. And I can still make a very good cup of coffee at home for much less than $1 even if you factor in the expensive espresso machine that I purchased twenty years ago.

Still, I love to go for a cup with our son when he has a few minutes and I often meet friends for a cup at a local coffee shop that focuses as much on the conversation as did those cafe coffee times when I was just learning how to be a pastor. I try to be careful and a wise steward with our money, but I don’t worry about every dollar the same way that I did when I was younger. I have always valued relationships over money. I didn’t choose my vocation or my lifestyle based on a desire to acquire a lot of money and I’m fairly sure that I am much happier than people who have a lot more money than I.

My son and I have a running joke about names and coffee shops. It is fairly common for baristas in coffee shops to ask you name when taking your order. Then they write your name on the cup and the one preparing the beverage calls our your name when it is ready. Our son’s name is Isaac and coffee shop clerks seem to have trouble spelling it. When he receives a cup with his name misspelled he will often take a picture of it and send it to me. We’ve laughed over “Isak,” Izak,” “Issac,” and “Izack.” It seems like just when we think we’ve seen every possible way to misspell his name someone will come up with a new one. A couple of times when he has been with me and we place a coffee order, when asked my name by the server, I give them their own name off of their name tag. When they say, “Really?” I reply, “No, but I know you know how to spell that name.” The joke doesn’t work very well, however, because my name, Ted, seems to be easy for virtually ever clerk to spell. The only spelling variation I can remember is that occasionally it gets an extra d at the end.

I’ve had a fascination with names for a long time. I enjoy reading the name tags on clerks in cafes and calling them by their name in conversation. I try to remember the names of the nurses and attendants at the doctor’s office and use them when speaking to those people. I know the names of the clerks who check me out at the local hardware store even though I know virtually nothing about their lives other than their job. One of the delights of my years working at the church in Rapid City was going down the hall each autumn and reading the names of the children enrolled in Cinnamon Hill Preschool. Every year there would be names that were new to me and spellings that were unique. Sometimes, when I meet someone new or read the name from a name tag in a cafe or store, I will ask if there is a special meaning to a person’s name or if it represents a particular heritage. Often the answer I get is that the name was just a favorite of the parents.

Somehow, however, people find ways of making their names their own. When our daughter came into our home we were on a list to adopt a special needs child. Special needs children available for adoption often are older and have already been named, so choosing a name for a child wasn’t on our list. Then, at the last minute, we were asked by the agency if we would consider adopting an infant and when we said, “yes,” we had only about 24 hours to come up with a name for our daughter. We went with the name we would have used had her brother been a girl. In those days we did not know the gender of a child before it was born, so we were prepared with a name for a boy and a name for a girl. Now, 40 years later, it seems like our daughter’s name has been exactly the right name for her. I can’t imagine her with another name. I love the choice. But it was a pretty random choice. We did not know her personality when we chose the name. I guess we were just lucky. More likely a name gets its meaning and value from the unique personality of the one who receives it.

At any rate, I continue to enjoy names and learning new names as I make my way through life. Often I even learn how to spell another’s name correctly by simply paying attention.