Tortuga

I am starting to realize, from the datelines on my previous posts, that Friday must be "blog day." Friday, for me, is the day when I splurge just a little to celebrate the upcoming Sabbath. It is a day of anticipation, and for some reason it is a day where the creativity and introspective tendencies flow well. On Friday mornings, I make sure to leave the house a little early and take the R train all the way in to the City Hall stop. I then head over to my newly-discovered "hipster" coffee shop on Chambers Street. Now I certainly don't object to cheap bodega coffee, but sometimes a expat Northwesterner needs to step up the coffee pursuit just a notch, and Starbucks is a pretty poor option. So you can imagine how delighted I was to find a little slice of Portland in Tribeca, right on my way to work. This shop has pretty good coffee, excellent bagels, pleasant music, minimalist decor with local art on the walls, and baristas that look like members of The Decemberists. So in other words, it is PDX transplanted into NYC. They have become my Friday ritual for a nice big coffee and a drippy-hot toasted wheat bagel with butter, which I consume with decadent pleasure while hacking out my semi-weekly blog update. So there you have it folks, a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a pop star. I'm sure you were all wondering and discussing various theories as to why the blogs come only on Fridays, and now you know.

In any event, this entry is not only a restaurant review or a day in the life, but it is also an update. Things are moving in many interesting directions for us. Our big announcement is that we are finally going to start doing a "thing," and I use such ambiguous terminology because I have a hard time figuring out exactly what it is. But maybe it's best that we don't obsess over naming things anyway, because once we name something it loses a good portion of its vitality. Anyway, the "thing" in question has a very simple name:

The Tortuga Collective

Ok, so what the heck is a torutga and in what way is it collective? Well, tortuga is Spanish for turtle, but we are not really about turtles, although the collective part is accurate enough. Actually I'd rather wait to go into the name choice in detail and just give a brief overview of what The Tortuga Collective is (at this point in time):

- A group of people who are gathered together with the intention of knowing God better and loving people face to face
- A group of ordinary musicians, artists, and radicals (thanks Shannon!) who want to mutually support and encourage each other
- A group of dreamers and visionaries who recognize that "how it is" is not "how it is supposed to be."

(Please note that these are not carefully thought-out elements of a mission statement or anything of that nature, but rather just random thoughts from the top of my head)

Right now, the Tortuga Collective is going to be four people who live together, have a sort-of order of life based around worship and prayer, and serve together wherever we are called. It is more than that, but for today I just want to give you a taste. We will be meeting over the next few weeks to iron out things like directives and mission statements, and I will be sure to post those things here as soon as they are available. So for now, I will leave you scratching your head and wondering what I'm talking about, but at least you now know what I'm eating and drinking on Friday mornings.

Love,
Brian