Renaissance

So I want to share a little dream of me and my husband's...

Has anyone heard of the Renaissance Festival? Well, if you haven't, it's a sort of fair. Many people wear kilts, medieval clothing, as well as fantasy costumes. There's a heavy focus on magic and craftsmanship in the Merlin/King Arthur sense, and they serve a lot of food all ending with "...On a stick".

I despise the Renaissance Festival.

Not necessarily because I'm annoyed by kilts and costumes, or even food on a stick. What bothers me is that none of that has anything to do with The Renaissance.

It's generally agreed that The Renaissance (which means "rebirth") began in central Italy around the end of the 13th century (1200s). It's titled The Renaissance because it was the 'rebirth' of classical thinking. Ancient texts of Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were rediscovered, and their ways of thinking were applied to the arts, sciences and everyday life. It's critical to understand that The Renaissance terminated what was known as The Middle Ages, that ambiguous time after the end of Classical Antiquity (when Plato still taught at his academy in Athens). During the Middle Ages all thought and knowledge dissemination was controlled by the church, so no one really had 'their thinking caps on'. But the Renaissance changed all that. A semi-common thread that ran though all classical thought patterns was the power of reason. So basically, it could be said that during the Renaissance thinking came into style.

We want to own a coffee house, and we want to call it Renaissance.

Now I have to ask you to overlook a little tiny detail, being that coffee didn't come to Europe until the early 1600s, and the first coffee house didn't open until 1652. The beautiful ideal of the coffee house as a stage for idea exchange and discussion didn't come on the scene until about the same time, during the Age of Enlightenment. But before The Enlightenment people had already been thinking for hundreds of years. We think the 'epiphany' and 'waking up' connotations that are associated with the Renaissance are much more beautiful. So Renaissance it is.

And what would we do there? Well, we'd vend coffee, of course. But it would only be fair-trade coffee (coffee grown on farms where the farm-masters treated their workers well and paid them fairly). We'd also serve tea, also only fair-trade. We'd want to have some more delicate choices, like white teas from Asia, and some more unusual choices, like red teas from Africa. And let me tell ya, the "Chai" you get at Starbucks doesn't hold a candle to the real thing, originating in India. (I'll have to have Stephan do a guest post to tell you about our coffee ambitions - he's the coffee drinker.) We'd like to serve food too, probably mostly vegetable dishes (but not completely) and only organically grown. We'd hope to have a functioning library on site, and probably a used book store too, as well as a book swap. We'd want to showcase art, music, and writing. There'd be live music and open mic nights. We'd also want to offer tutoring for all school grades, as well as host guest speakers and discussion groups. Of course, we'd offer free wireless internet connections and big tables for students to spread their stuff out on. Maps would adorn all the walls along with some of our favorite pieces of art. It would be well lit for reading - and hey, maybe we'd even be able to sell Renaissance mugs eventually. The whole point would be to foster an environment conducive to learning, and get people thinking again.

It's a beautiful dream, and we aren't sure the Lord has it in our future, but we still talk about it none-the-less. So if one day you're walking though a college town and hear of a little fair-trade coffee shop called Renaissance, stop in and see me. I'll be behind the counter - probably with my nose in a book.