There is something beautiful about borrowed time—moments that don’t belong to anyone, not quite. The kind of time you fill without expectation, without performance. This morning, I find myself in one of those moments. I’m with a group of JAG students from Joplin High, here to compete, to prove themselves, to shine. While they’re in the arena, guided by their teacher’s direction, I’m checking into the hotel and then… waiting. The kind of waiting that feels both indulgent and invisible. So I slip away and find myself in the warm, humming arms of a diner.
Diners, to me, are a kind of reliquary—shrines of the everyday. There’s a sacred familiarity to them: the vinyl booths worn into comfort, the metallic shine of the counter, the soft chime of the entrance bell. The kitchen is in full tilt, a percussion section of sizzles and shouts, but out here, the world is slow. My coffee cup refills itself, seemingly by magic. I read a few pages, sip, and look around. Read, sip, look. Time bends, and the ordinary begins to glow.
Today’s book is Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren, a Christian writer whose reflections on sacred time reach beyond religious boundaries. In a chapter on traffic, she writes, “I want to live in time. I want to inhabit the seasons. I want to look with anticipation toward spring, to wait with longing for Easter. I want to feel the ache of Lent and the joy of Pentecost.” Though I don’t follow the Christian faith, I recognize the pattern she names—the ancient pull of order, the rhythm that brings meaning to the chaos.
That same rhythm exists here, I think, in this diner. On the surface, it’s noisy and messy—orders shouted, dishes clattered, children squirming—but underneath, there’s form. A kind of liturgy in itself. There’s the ritual of greeting and seating, of pouring and refilling, of checking in with a “How’s everything?” just when you need it most. This place runs on something deeper than commerce or convenience—it runs on memory, on presence, on people showing up, again and again.
I look up from my book and notice three groups around me. A circle of middle-aged friends telling stories between bites. A pair of elderly couples who say little, yet speak volumes. It’s the older couples who draw my eye. One woman stirs her coffee absentmindedly, not to sweeten it but to keep her hands busy. Her partner tears a piece of toast and lifts it slowly, deliberately. Their silence isn’t awkward—it’s practiced. It’s comforting. They move like people who have sat across from one another a thousand times before. It’s not dramatic. But it is profound.
Simone Weil once wrote, “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” And here, now, I find myself praying—not in words, not to a god, but in the way I attend to these people, this moment, this cup of coffee. Their presence becomes my psalm.
In Thor Wickstrom’s painting, Riverdale Diner/Bronx New York Cityscape, this feeling is captured with brushstrokes instead of verses. The diner squats low against the wide New York sky, its blue panels and neon signs defiant against the beige-gray of winter. Cars are parked out front, stopped just long enough to suggest life happening inside. The bare trees claw upward like nerves against the sky, echoing the tension between stillness and movement. It’s a painting that honors the in-between—the kind of moment I find myself inhabiting now.
Wickstrom’s work invites us to look again at the overlooked. His diner is not idealized; it’s not framed like a cathedral or shrouded in mystique. And yet, it holds weight. In the same way, this booth I sit in now—sticky with syrup, echoing with laughter and the soft clink of flatware—becomes sacred through attention.
In The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “The seventh day is like a palace in time with a kingdom for all. It is not a date, but an atmosphere.” I think this is what a good diner offers, too—an atmosphere outside the ordinary rush of things. A brief kingdom where the world slows and people simply are. Not rushing, not proving, not climbing—just being.
I know I’ll return soon to the duties of the day. The students will have results to share—wins and losses, stories to tell. There will be checklists to follow, bags to unload, rides to coordinate. But for now, I sit in this small sabbath, this booth-shaped liturgy. I sip my coffee and watch an old man lift his toast to his mouth, as if it were a host. I let the moment bless me.
Maybe the world doesn’t need to be louder to be meaningful. Maybe, like a bottomless cup of coffee, meaning refills itself when we’re willing to sit still long enough to taste it.