‘He has filled the hungry with good things . . .’

Sunday morning, up before dawn, and the smell of the oven preheating, a machine hum in the empty café. Outside the street was empty, and I could see the kitchen lights reflecting in the dark shop windows across the way.

I was a university student then, working part-time in a downtown coffee shop around the corner from my small apartment. On the weekends, I had the early shift. Before the shop opened, there was baking to do: muffin batter to make and measure out into paper cups and frozen bagels to set out on wide aluminum sheets. Then oranges to squeeze for fresh juice, coffee to brew and the day’s newspapers to unroll and get ready for the first customers. The papers made my fingers inky black, and I needed to wash them before dealing with the oranges. I dried them with rough brown paper and looked at the clock. Another hour before the next staff member showed up to help make breakfasts. Half an hour until I’d need to unlock the doors. Ten more minutes on the first trays of bagels. So, time for music.

I always started those winter Sunday mornings with Paul Simon. It was good music to get me moving, dancing a little, my energy up. These were the days of miracle and wonder, angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity. He says, “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” as the oven timer sounded, and the first customers came in through the door.

Runners in their leggings and sneakers, faces flushed. Then the bikers in studs and leathers, and the contrast between the two would make me smile but they were all there every Sunday, and I guess they got used to each other because I watched them swap smiles between the tables and with the cops, too, when they showed up for their breakfasts. Scrambled eggs and buttered bagels and coffee with half and half and two sugars, please. Ponytailed moms with strollers asked for muffins and lattes and chatted with Jazz from the hairdresser’s down the street, who I saw every day and who wore the coolest, skinniest jeans I’d seen, thick twists of silver rings the bikers might have envied, and last night’s eyeliner. The whole neighbourhood stopped by. Older couples and groups of students and it’s not just me, and it’s not just you; this is all around the world and the music found its ending and it was time for something else.

Church was right here

My musician boyfriend had put together a demo tape with a friend out west. They called it Maskil, a word from the Psalms that means to teach, but the best song on the album was Madonna’s Vesper, based on the passage from Luke 1. My soul doth magnify the Lord, and I will rejoice in his name. I pushed the play button and looked around the café as the music curled into every corner.

Through the windows, I saw people walking past on their way to the church up the street where I’d go later for the evening service but for now, church was right here. I poured more coffee and counted the bagels. The lowly were lifted up, the hungry fed and there was mercy here, generation to generation.