Blog

Seeing Dragons in Mooreeffoc: How a Coffee Room Can Help You See What is Really There
As you walk in the doors of Drinklings Coffee House in Wilmore, Kentucky you’ll see a spotlight lit calligraphed parchment hung above the chimney which reads the following: eeffoc moor. The picture sits starkly opposite to a mirror on the...
Finding Healthy Rhythms in The "New (Post-Covid) Normal"
But our world needs that “ebb and flow” as part of our “new normal.” It needs it in this post-Covid world. Ebb and Flow doesn’t build skyscrapers. It doesn’t make one a Fortune 500 CEO. It doesn’t lend itself to celebritism, instagramism, or even bottom line productivity. But it certainly will lend itself to a more joyful, contented, and meaningful life of reflection and interest. And that would be refreshing. 
Room 143: The Mister Rogers Lesson
I would also venture to guess that for Mister Rogers, the 143 kind of love we need is not a love that is exclusive to the hearer. 143 is a two way street. There is an "I" in that sentence as much as a "you". There is a giving as much as a receiving, for the giver is changed as much by the giving of love as the hearer is changed by the receiving of love. 
Fellowship: The Commonality of Coffee, Bread, Fire and…Hobbits (and why Community is not Enough)
What do coffee, bread, and fire all have in common?  Well, lots actually. For one, there is a limit to their goodness. Too much coffee and you’re getting the jitters. Too much bread and bring on the bloating. Too much...
Why Coffee for Imagination
It goes without saying that one of the lures of modern coffee shops is the potential for such places to synthesize creativity and coffee together under a single roof. Arguably, there are no other modern day American parallels in terms...
Moving from “Coffee with a Mission” to “Coffee for Imagination and Fellowship”
The rebranding, re-missioning, and re-imagining comes in part due to some lessons we learned during our first two years of business which were designated, respectively, by a grand opening year with the typical challenges and by Covid 2020 in which our main prerogative was to simply survive. 
The Decisions We've Been Making Lately
In part one of this two blog series, I discussed some of the fundamental questions that have been going around our organization for the past several months, noting that Covid-19 and its effect on organizations and, in particular, entrepreneurial pursuits,...
The Questions We've Been Asking Lately
The answer came: we are nothing without our community and that our proximity to that community is fundamental to answering the question of “who do we need to be?” A Drinklings 3.0 was called for and this time the central identifying element to the business was not “the coffee”, it was not “the place”, it was not even “the mission”: it was the community. 
J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories (Part 1)
J.R.R. Tolkien is almost always evasive. I have a feeling that's not a sentiment he would enjoy. Like many of those that partook in the tradition of late 19th and early 20th-century British literature, Tolkien desired clarity: not clarity in the sense of merely being understood at a subjective level but clarity in the...
Covid and Culture - (No. 3) - Learn to Mute the Sound
In the last blog, we overarchingly discussed the fact that, notwithstanding the fact that this particular crisis is a global health pandemic, we do have a rare opportunity to look in the mirror and ask some hard questions about how...
Covid and Culture (No. 2): Evaluating How We Do Life
This is a time where individually and collectively we should be productively asking certain questions: what is essential? what needs to be changed? what beliefs do we have the need to be dispensed with? where do we place our security and trust? what would make us better individually and collectively? how should we re-prioritize our commitments and concerns? 
Covid and Culture (No. 1): Awareness over Anxiety
The recent outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic has rocked our world. With over 17,000 global deaths and projections into the hundreds of thousands or even millions, the anxiety over what we should be looking for, how we should be handling...
Can Coffee Fight Off Coronavirus?
We ask the question everybody wants to know: can coffee fight off the Coronavirus?
G.K. Chesterton on "The Gossip of History"
The modern innovation which has substituted journalism for history, or for that tradition that is the gossip of history, has had at least one definite effect. It has ensured that everybody should only hear the end of every story. - G.K. Chesterton, St....
Faith in the Midst of a Bright Sadness
John of the Cross referred to this as a "bright sadness." Faith in the midst of darkness. Joy in the midst of a life characterized by loss and pain. 
Why 'Not all who wander are lost' Doesn't Mean What You Think it Means.
If there's anything that one could say about J.R.R. Tolkien it might be that he represents one of the 20th century's most notable iconoclasts. A British WWI Veteran who found his way into the philological world in linguistics, Tolkien's legacy...
Six Resources for Better Understanding Global Refugee Problem
On the eve of our event The Refugee in which Medine Keener and Jacob Guot will be joining us for a conversation and talkback on the global refugee problem, we wanted to highlight some resources that we recommend for better understanding...
Coffee School 101: A Tale of Two Coffees
When somebody comes into the Drinklings coffee shop and orders a cup of coffee, there’s usually a general exchange that takes place: Me: “How can I help you?” Customer: “I’d like a coffee please.” Me: “Sure! What kind?” Customer: *Blank...
Immigration and a Window on the World
Forget the concept of “fake news” for a moment. Our country and our world has a problem with false perception. It is true that media and headlines often create narratives which feed into the way that we perceive the world...
Diversity is NOT the opposite of Unity
so in doing this assignment, my mind kept going back to Acts 15 and the Gospel's insistence that in the Kingdom there should be "neither Jew nor Greek" (Gal 3.28). I thought it ironic that at a university in which we are identified as "Christian Social Workers" that identity was being taught around descriptions: "I am first, and THEN I am neither Jew nor Gentile, etc
5 Ways Drink Coffee Through The Summer
What Are Some Ways To Drink Coffee When It's Ridiculously, Crazy Hot? If anyone hasn't noticed, it's getting hot outside. At least where we are, it's not just "hot..." It's hot, humid, nasty--that kind of hot where you feel like...