We Can Talk at Starbucks

My oldest daughter doesn’t believe in God anymore, so she says. She told me this recently at Starbucks.

Starbucks is the place we go to talk. The house is the place where we do the daddy/daughter thing. I enforce tough boundaries, which is my job, and she pushes hard against them, which is hers. Sometimes we get into passionate arguments about this, which can be a strain. But when I take her to Starbucks, it’s like we become two different people. We sit down and she starts talking. She talks to me about everything at Starbucks.

So I like taking her to Starbucks, as you can imagine. It’s our thing and we both know it. I’ll say, “Let’s go to Starbucks,” and she’ll give me the thumbs up. It means “Let’s talk.”

We were sitting there sipping our hot drinks recently and I said, “So tell me how you and God are doing these days.”

She got a sad look in her eyes before she spoke. She never hesitated, apparently never even considered hiding this from me. She put a mock-frown on her face, which is a way of indicating that you are serious about what you are going to say. Then she shook her head slowly back and forth in the way people do when they want you to know they regret having to say something, but they must.

“Don’t believe in him. I want to. I really wish I did. I’ve tried to believe in him, but I just don’t.”

I’d say about a hundred thoughts rushed into my head in that instant. But the thing that pushed its way to the surface was a warning thought. “Be very careful with her. Listen to her. Don’t speak.”

How and what we humans think about God is usually enmeshed with what is going on in our lives at any particular time. God language is deeply rooted in our psyche and perhaps our collective unconscious, if you believe in that sort of thing. I'm not sure I do, but it certainly seems to explain a lot. That’s why even those who do not believe in a diety might still yell, “Jesus Christ!” or “Oh my God!” in a moment of anger, passion, or fear. The language of God is deep and old and practically inescapable for most people.

When someone is giving you their theology, their God words, you should listen hard and be very gentle. The time to deliver your God words is when you are asked.

You see, I’ve taken this journey that she is beginning. This God stuff is my specialty, you might say. Like if a brick layer’s son was talking about building his first wall. And if I’m not careful, I’ll rush in with my answers and my story. If I’m not careful I will overwhelm her with my own journey.

And this is her journey. I will willingly and passionately share my own journey with her, when the time is right. God help me with the timing on this. She needs enough of me and not too much.

So she talked and talked and talked. She cried and so did I. As I listened, two things were very interesting to me.

First, it’s her inability to feel God’s presence that is making it hard for her to believe. She said, “I don’t really care that I can’t see God. I’ve already figured out that our senses mislead us. There are a lot of real things in the universe that we cannot see or touch or understand. I don’t really need to see or touch God to think that God might exist. But I don’t feel God inside. Things don’t seem real to me unless I can feel them.”

I made a mental note to follow up on that, because I don’t really understand it. It sounds like her mother. I, on the other hand, coming out of a lot of experiences with emotional religion, don’t trust my feelings. I always needed to understand the idea of God. That’s what I was always looking for in the old days.

Second, she loves church. She said that she really likes our church and certainly doesn’t want to stop coming. She said she likes my sermons and that they really make her think.

And so she will continue to be active in our church. She’s keeping her eyes and her heart open. She would like very much to believe in God and hopes that God might make himself or herself feel real to her someday. Maybe very soon.

I was so happy to hear that she likes church. It seems to me that she stands in a place that is exactly the opposite of many people in our culture. I meet people all the time who believe in the existence of God, but who are so wounded by their experiences with church that they drop out of the practice of Christianity because they see nothing but hurtful and abusive behavior in it.

This is my daughter, my baby girl, who is growing up and thinking and experiencing and searching. This is my daughter who is passionate and engaged and searching. This is my daughter.

She sat in my lap and let me read baby bible stories to her when she was very little. She sat on the blanket with the children of our church when she was a child. She gave her life to Christ in Vacation Bible School one year. She has grown up in the company of gentle people of faith.

Because the roots of faith that we have given her were born of a gentle and authentic Christianity. I trust that she will find her way in time, and further, that all of this will be her journey and her story. It will all be good.

Because I love her mind and her passion. You should see her. She talks about God more now that she doesn’t believe in God than ever before. She goes around her high school asking people what they think about God. She told me that if a boy can't tell her what he thinks about God, she's not interested in him. She's looking for a boy who is a deep thinker.

And because she and I have Starbucks and we talk to each other. How she honors me with this. Can she possibly know what that means to me, that she wants to talk to her father?

I don’t suppose she will until the day that she sits with a son or daughter of her own and asks, “So how are you and God doing these days?”

I agree that Grellis made excellent and thoughtful observations. There was a definite sense that his daughter was trying to get through to him but failing.

BibChr writes:

I guess I have mixed feelings; I know the blind panic I anticipate I'd feel in my heart in the same conversation. He mostly seems to be concerned with patting himself on the back for having such a great relationship with his daughter, and being so mature and mellow ...

I had exactly the same feeling, and look with particular suspicion at this bit:

But the thing that pushed its way to the surface was a warning thought. “Be very careful with her. Listen to her. Don’t speak.” ... When someone is giving you their theology, their God words, you should listen hard and be very gentle. The time to deliver your God words is when you are asked.

I think that he probably does not listen much at all. He may be someone who dominates every conversation with his own emotional needs and shifting dramas.

To me, his self-congratulations had a rather familiar ring, because, alas, I have a background with alcoholics in my family. I can remember as a teenager going to counselling sessions, and listening, for a hour uninterrupted, while adult relatives talked about the importance of listening, of communicating, of relating to others rather than judging them. They would talk endlessly about it, pluming themselves on their sensitivity, yet apparently oblivious that they were preaching, and not listening at all. If anyone interrupts them in that mood, they can suddenly turn nasty, so soon no one does.

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