Welcome!

Hey everyone! Thanks for stopping by.

To start off this little adventure, let me start by giving some background on the project.

Almost three years ago I embarked on an adventure called "Seminary". Since then I have done many wonderful and some mind numbingly dull things with my life... from amazing classes to crappy jobs. I've served coffee, organized seminarians, taught snobby students about the SAT, and for the last six months or so I've been working as a "Starbucks Partner - Barista". Prior to getting this job I spent a little over a month looking for work. I had promising interviews, only to be let down when jobs turned out not to be available, or a better candidate came along, and so on. Starbucks has been a company that I have been wary of in the past. Running in activist circles, starbucks is not the beverage you want to show up with to a meeting, rally, consensus process, etc. But they were hiring, and I had the skills they were looking for, and in a few days I was employed. I only had to maintain 20hrs a week and I would even get health benefits (which, if i had a partner of any gender, they would have too).

The first few days of work there were frustrating. Coffee shop work can feel very unfulfilling especially in contrast to wrestling with difficult theo/ealogical concepts, anti-oppression work, and call to ministry afforded to me at school. So I decided if I was going to keep my job, and not feel empty at the end of each shift, or worse, like I has just spent my precious time working for a company that perpetuates problems in our society (while still being a good company to work for in a lot of ways), that I needed a new outlook on the job. An outlook that wasn't just "this is my crappy job that helps get me through school and provides health insurance and therefore I am justified in doing it." I needed something that provided my work with meaning and importance in my life. So I came up with the idea of treating my job as a spiritual practice. I mostly kept the idea to myself. Not as a secret or anything, it just never really came up. So I plugged away at my job, trying hard to live my faith in my interactions, and life went on.

A few months later I had my portfolio conference at school. For this event I had two faculty members, one student and one community person present to talk with my about my work at seminary and my goals for the future. Prior to the conference I had given each of the a packet that represented my work so far, and what idea I was interested in continuing to pursue. It was during that conference that I mentioned my "Starbucks as a Spiritual Practice" plan, and it was suggested that it would make a great blog.

That was in December. Now it is February. But it is of course, not to late to get such a thing started, so here I am.

Hopefully this blog will give me an outlet to process the spiritual work I am doing at my job, and a forum to articulate what that means for me. Also, I would love to engage in dialog with others about this experience, so please feel free and encouraged to comment on my posts. I look forward to it.

In Faith,
KTM