Coffee and Conversations

Greetings from the heart of Texas,

I say greetings from the heart of Texas because in deep east Texas there is a growing community of eccentric people who are building a family that will last forever. Have you ever had some one stand up for you in your moment of weakness? Have you been backed into a corner by the rear ends of the world and your only way out is through the help others? When I tell you that in the heart of Texas a growing community of love and respect is building in unity, I'm not speaking of the golden era of pomp and circumstance, but of the here and now in the midst of the worst economic recession our generation has witnessed, a community is being built.

a meticulous laid tile floor covers the surface of our local coffee shop and the floor is as meticulous as the owner who is painted in terrible light amongst those who exist outside of the family within. He is particular about the people, service, and keeping every detail of his place warm and welcoming. He is determined to build community. He wants to see music and the arts succeed in this sleepy part of Texas that can sometimes be rigid and disgruntled.

"Misfits," "you know they just don't seem to fit!" Maybe misfit should be a class of people instead of a term used down grade. Declaring today that I, Jason Todd Goodson is a Misfit in the tallest order or shorter order if you are judging vertical status. The Misfits slide inbetween Lower Middle Class and Poverty, Lower Middle Class and Upper Middle Class, and Lower Upper Class and Upper Class. The Misfits reside in every category and looks just like you and me.

On any Friday or Saturday night you can enter the coffee shop and find those who are playing folk, Country, blue grass, and occasionally a karoake collage of all the songs you remember from growing up in the era of the '70's, '80's, and 90's. Just recently a young patron of the coffee shop who has a love for the theatre arts wrote an original play and pulled from the pool of misfits and created a masterpeice that should be made into a movie, the "flickerking" will be coming to a theatre near you as soon as he grabs the nerve to send it off.

When I first entered the coffee shop three years ago I did not expect to be received so well, I mean seriously why would this group of misfits accept a baptist minister into the family of community being built? Why would the meticulous owner of the coffee shop who is still struggling with faith be Jesus with skin to me and those who I grew up loving and were groomed by have nothing to do with me now? It's a mystery, maybe in the mystery God chooses to show up in the weak and feeble, those who are ok with not being ok, those who don't a grip on life, or maybe its just that He chooses to manifest himself through misfits.

I met a lady a month before Christmas who joined our Monday night meetings, who calls herself a Messianic Christian, practicing the Jewish tradition as a means for her to know God. The only thing I can figure about this sweet soul is that she lives to know God. She has no job, no money, no family to speak of in the area, she came by way of Pennsylvania because the camp she worked for fired her because she was to Jewish, that's right to Jewish, she's a misfit. One day she finds herself with a back problem stuck in the Heart of East Texas, and now I'm looking forward to her walking through the door at the coffee shop or at the house our Monday night group meets, why? Because she beems God! I want to know God! I want to know Him even if through the misfits of this world.

What is the local church afraid of when it comes to misfits? I think they are afraid of being a misfits and that they could actually learn from the weak and feeble. It's strange but isn't that Paul's statement to the Corinthian church when he says, that God's power is made perfect in weakness! The local church has created a facade, a masquerade party with hidden identities that are afraid to unmask and show the true self. Healing will come when the mask are removed and prentious smiles are turned into real life, real problems, and then will a real God show up and meet them at their need.

some thoughts from a misfit,

Jason