“The School of Athens” by Raphael

THIS IS THE 100th ISSUE OF peace, love, happiness & understanding!!!

November 7, 2024

Coffee Shop Philosophy

The first question is: what’s the difference between “coffee shop philosophy” and “philosophy”?

Philosophy is an academic discipline, taught in universities. Philosophy professors teach students about the Famous Philosophers and their ideas. The list of Famous Philosophers is not an especially long one. It includes people like Plato and Descartes and Spinoza and Hegel. Those guys.

Coffee shop philosophy is an informal inquiry into the meaning of life, which can take place anywhere, but thrives especially in…coffee shops. And tea shops. There are no professors. No experts. All participants have equal status. The questions are immediate, not abstract. They are personal. In academic philosophy, thinking has primacy. Coffee shop philosophizing includes thinking, but also feeling. Academic Philosophy asks: “What did Kant think?” Coffee shop philosophy asks: “What do you think?”

Originally, the word “philosopher” meant “lover of wisdom.” Is wisdom confined to what the Famous Philosophers wrote? I don’t think so. Here are some of the people who are not taught in academic philosophy classes: Martin Luther King, Walt Whitman, Susan Griffin, William Shakespeare, Black Elk, Lao Tzu, J. Krishnamurti, William Blake, Fyodor Dostoevsky—all wise people! It’s a much, much longer list of people whose writings can enrich and illumine our lives, but who are not Famous Philosophers.

Coffee shop philosophy is friendly. There is laughter! There are no grades. You can’t fail. Friends get together to talk about what is most urgent to them. It can include psychology, ecology, poetry, love, happiness, death! Everything! We wonder about the meaning of our life. What are we doing here? We want to become wiser, kinder, more happy, more free. We talk about our life journeys, what we’ve learned so far, what continues to baffle us.

I took a couple Philosophy classes in college, long long ago. For more than 50 years now I’ve been avidly practicing coffee shop philosophy—alone and with others. If you keep a journal, you can have a long long philosophical conversation with yourself.

I’ve learned more about living, more about happiness, more about love, more about freedom—more actual wisdom—from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” than from any other writing. Because he’s labeled a “poet,” and not a “philosopher,” he’s not studied in Philosophy classes. I think of Walt as my friend—along with William Shakespeare and Thich Nhat Hanh and John Moriarty and Brian Doyle and many many other friends whose books fill my bookshelves and spill over onto the floor. I think of them as companions on my life journey, as fellow coffee shop philosophers.

The endless deep dialogues I’ve had with friends in coffee shops and tea shops and prisons have greatly enriched my life. For thirteen years I practiced coffee shop philosophy every week with men in Oregon prisons. There was no coffee. But there was something beautiful that I don’t know how to describe. I guess the closest word is “love.”

I love books! I’ve learned a lot from books, but we also gain wisdom from our life experience, and from sharing our experience and insights with each other. We need coffee shop philosophy! We need each other!

These days I still get together with friends for coffee and deep dialogue every week. We do it because we love to have big personal conversations about life and love and what’s going on within us and around us.  Over time, we get to know each other better and love each other more deeply. That seems like a good thing for humans to do.  

—Johnny Stallings

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Can you feel surging joy and profound sadness at the same time? How can a heart handle both at once?

Once in the habit of morning walks with the dog, the habit continues without the dog, Lolo having died about one and a half months ago. She was sixteen years old, and we’d rescued her fifteen years earlier from Home At Last animal shelter in The Dalles. They had found her wandering the streets of Shaniko, a ghost town in Oregon. Scrawny and fearful, she cowered when anyone tried to touch her; but I knew that with time and love and stability and security she would be a perfect pooch. And she was. Hiking, backpacking, snowshoeing, beach walking—she went pretty much everywhere with us. Everyone loved her and she loved everyone. The great comfort dog. Any shred of anger, depression, fear or disappointment would melt away when I touched her silky ears. So you can surely understand the sadness I feel.

So what’s with the surging joy??? Is that possible? Well, I walk out the door and am kicking through huge, magical, golden maple leaves the size of dinner plates.  They’re spinning, spiraling slowly beneath a vault of blue. Blue sky, white clouds, yellow gold leaves; how could I not feel a surge of joy?!  It overtakes my heart.

More joy: It’s a good thing to spend time deciding whether you love October or November more. A contest for best month of the year. This is good: Is it the bustling oranges and reds and yellows of the buckets and buckets of leaves filling your vision in October? Or is it the beauty and starkness of the bare, black, muscular limbs once the leaves have shed in November? After all, it’s then that you can see through  the bushy busy-ness of trees, to the hills beyond, to the mountains beyond. It’s then that you can settle into the spareness of November, settle into the cool rain patters, and the darkened mornings and evenings. I love it. 

Can I feel both, then—-joy and sadness? I decree that yes I can, and  do.

—Jude Russell

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Kim Stafford’s latest book is A Proclamation for Peace: Translated into World Languages. In the book, his poem “A Proclamation for Peace” is translated into 50 different languages, including Arabic, Armenian, Ashaninka & Bislama; Gaeilge, Greek & Hebrew; Pashto, Persian & Punjabi; Quechua, Romani, Romanian & Russian; Tagalog, Tamil & Thai; Ukrainian & Vietnamese; Yoruba, Yucatec & Zapotec. The book can be ordered from bookshop.org. Here’s the English version of the poem:

A Proclamation for Peace

Whereas the world is a house on fire;

Whereas the nations are filled with shouting; 

Whereas hope seems small, sometimes

     a single bird on a wire

     left by migration behind.

Whereas kindness is seldom in the news

     and peace an abstraction

     while war is real;

Whereas words are all I have;

Whereas my life is short; 

Whereas I am afraid;

Whereas I am free—despite all

     fire and anger and fear;

Be it therefore resolved a song

shall be my calling—a song

not yet made shall be my vocation

and peaceful words the work

of my remaining days.

—Kim Stafford, originally published in Wild Honey, Tough Salt

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I also wrote a proclamation for peace. Coincidence? Peace is always something we can use more of, so I’ll include it here:

My Foolproof Plan for World Peace

I hereby declare today to be International Love Day.

And a General Armistice.

All hostilities must cease on International Love Day.

Henceforward, every day is International Love Day.

—Johnny Stallings, from The Nonstop Love-In: poems, stories, essays & other writings

shāntih  shāntih  shāntih