Coffee with Jack and Tollers: A Drinklings Blog

Coffee shops have long served as “third spaces” between home and work—but in an isolated, distracted world, connection alone is not enough. Explore the idea of a “fourth space”: a place that cultivates fellowship, imagination, healing, and meaningful human presence.

It has been more than a year since Morning Coffee with Jack and Tollers was last put out. A lot has changed over that time, including a new career (running Drinklings is not the full time gig), a new house,...

Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future. - Victor Hugo

Knowledge of the fact differs from the knowledge of the reason for the fact. - Aristotle “Why are you the way that you are?” - Michael Scott to Toby Flenderson   Deconstruction is a popular buzzword in many circles today,...

MLK's letter should continue to be the prophetic manifesto for those who seek racial justice and equality. It will not due to discount it as only relevant to a situational past any more than it will due to discount the Pauline epistles as only relevant to their context. "So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be."

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. - G.K. Chesterton

Someone (somewhere that I cannot recall) once said, “If you want to really understand something, you have to kill it first.” There is something to be understood by killing something. But we rarely, if ever, have the power to resurrect it back to life once we’ve killed it. I think all of us recognize at the end of the day we much prefer the cat alive and with all its mystery over the cat dead and comprehended. 

This reflective article explores homelessness through both personal experience and a Christian lens. Drawing from work with formerly homeless veterans and the biblical account of Jesus as a child refugee, it challenges readers to reconsider their assumptions about homelessness, mental illness, social status, and human dignity. The piece invites deeper compassion for those on society's margins while asking what it means to follow a Savior who identified with the displaced and vulnerable.

Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you do. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. - C.S. Lewis

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...

What can Mister Rogers teach us about hospitality, kindness, and the spaces we create for one another? A reflection from Room 143 on presence, neighborliness, and the quiet power of genuine welcome.

Tolkien’s famous line, “Not all who wander are lost,” is often treated as a celebration of aimlessness. This reflection explores its fuller context—and why meaningful wandering requires purpose, deep roots, wise guides, and a destination worth pursuing.