Alice's Restaurant: Part II

A couple of days ago, my old college buddy, Brother Maynard, wrote a brief post about Alice's Restaurant, which got me thinking.

Bro Maynard's post was referring to something I'd done at Providence College back in the late 80's, which earned me the nickname "Alice" among some of the more culturally enlightened students and staff at that fine ecclesiastical learning centre just south of Winnipeg.

During our last year as students at Prov -- Wendy and I had already been married for a year and were looking forward to graduating together -- I needed to work part-time in order to make ends meet. The college needed someone to be the manager of their little junk-food mecca, creatively called "the canteen", so I took the job.

The canteen was promptly renamed "Alice's Restaurant" (a hat tip to my buddy Gord); I purchased some cheap bar stools from a local second-hand store, got an old ghetto blaster to provide tunage, and in general tried to make it less about selling questionable snacks and even more questionable coffee, and more about being a place where people could hang out and enjoy friendships and conversation.

And it worked!

People would hang out and have many theological, ecclesiological, and sometimes just plain "comedic venting" times together. I had the opportunity to have over-the-counter talks with people about many different things, and there were quite a few times where I'd be pouring somebody's coffee, and they'd quite seriously say, "What time are you finished? There's something I need to talk to you about."

What many people didn't see were the many times where, after my shift would end, people would come back and we'd have great talks and prayer times. People in Bible college, just like in churches, often have deep hurts and things they'd like to talk about, if only they knew where the "safe places" were. I was privileged -- and humbled -- to be able to pray with numerous fellow students on many occasions.

We had fun too; when we discovered one day that a pot of coffee had been left on the burner for five hours, instead of throwing it out, we labelled it "Black Juice from Hell" and sold it half-price. When people would ask, "What's 'Black Juice from Hell'?", we'd tell them boldly and honestly exactly what it was. A group of hollow-eyed, haggard-looking seminary students, who were pulling an all-nighter studying for a Greek mid-term exam, bought the whole pot.

See? All this is because of Brother Maynard's brief post about Alice's Restaurant and my iteration of it. But the real credit goes to how God used my friend Gord to show me how important providing a "safe place" for people to be honest and transparent was, and is.