And thus, because each human being is vested with a soul, built to conform and resonate to the image of God the creator of all things, each transaction with another is far richer than might be expected.  And that is why I chose the restaurant business as the form of interaction that would perhaps keep a roof of some sort over my head, along with enough independence to write and take walks in nature.

I quickly, immediately found out, as I was a shy barman nervous if not set up and well stocked, that people were deeper and far more interesting and complex and wonderful in a godly way, each person like a separate species as we might define the difference between the beaver, the woodchuck, the squirrel, the chipmunk, the field mouse, the mole...  Each person, when you stood and listened, was real.  And so you could never reduce any business transaction to simply that, there was too much going on, incredible witnesses to surviving, even if they just drank Budweiser, lived in some poor small studio apartment, let their old hair get too long, didn't even sleep in a proper bed, like old Fred, an accountant for one of the telephone companies whose wife had passed away...

Further more, what followed, was that any restaurant or gathering place was a success to the extent that it could be a sort of missing monastery.  What did the monks cook up today, as far as specials?  Everyone had worked hard, and now it was to come and pray and have a little bit of wine.  Customers, by participation, became the monks themselves, and so they felt that they themselves had come and did it, made the stock, split the wood to make the fire, selected the meat and carved and put together...  just as they had made the wine as if it too had come out of themselves...



I grew up in a monastery, now that I think about it.  It was up an old country road, simple in design, and my father and mother led the monastery, and there was me and my brother.