Starbucks Rendevous

“Your ancestors will come into the Lodge; not the Lakota ancestors, but your own ancestors will come to be with you, to counsel you,” said the well-groomed Caucasian man to the Hawaiian businesswoman sitting at his Big Island Starbucks table. Before this statement, the two had been talking business deals, internet search engines and websites for the last hour and a half. They seemed to be client and consultant. Now, the conversation had changed: “We come together for a sweat lodge every Sunday morning,” he said. “We pray for grace and peace in the world and in our own lives. Come sweat with us if you like.” The woman seemed stunned for a minute. But she was intrigued and asked the man to continue.

He went on to describe his yearly participation in traditional Lakota sun dances on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. It seems that he was no Indian wannabe, but a human being seeking guidance wherever he could get it.

Now they both spoke softly. “Yeah, I’m an atheist still, I guess,” he said almost apologetically. He talked about a father-scientist who had ingrained in him a cynical determination to accept nothing on faith alone. Then the man spoke of his discovery of quantum physics and its ‘unquestionable similarities’ with indigenous and mystical wisdom teachings. This new scientific paradigm was shaking up his inner world. “That’s nuclear physics, man,” he said to the woman, “not some new age voodoo.”

She made a quiet and spot-on observation about his personal dilemma. “You hit a nerve,” he responded to her suggestion that perhaps he was struggling between what appeared to him the irreconcilable domains of faith and reason. Then their conversation trailed off for awhile. I mused to myself, ‘Maybe his scientific father is coming back as an ancestor spirit from the unseen world to speak to him in the sweat lodge, to help him avoid the mistakes he had made in splitting apart science and spirituality?’

The business meeting turned ‘meaning of life’ conversation continued as they spoke of Jung, Heisenburg, and Pauli; religion, science and the Tree of Life. The man and woman at a Starbucks rendevous ended their conversation, exchanged cards and disappeared into the night. But they had gotten my attention for a few minutes, and my appreciation.

Two excited people at a little café in Hawaii spoke of changing attitudes and trends which may someday change the world. First I resisted listening in, struggling to stay on track with my writing project. Then I got an inner push and surrendered to the moment, finally memorializing in cyberspace the thoughts of two unknown people among millions of people who are envisioning a new and better world. A world where the scientist and the mystic acknowledge that they are looking through telescopes and meditation visions to find the very same Mystery.

And I lifted a quick, silent prayer to my own ancestors. We can all use support in that Search.