Rain outside. Coffee inside. The shop is a warm oasis of polished wood and exposed beams; of burr grinders, steaming espresso machines, and gleaming glass slow-drip apparatus.

Professionals, hipsters, and hippies enter, seeking refuge from the gray and the damp. They plug in their laptops and wrap their cold hands around a hot cup. A morsel of muffin is placed on the tongue, and washed down with single-origin Fair Trade drip. Coffee as sacrament. The barista leads the faithful, while the local roasters are defenders of orthodoxy.

Surely good coffee shall be with me all the days of my life, and I will sit in this coffee shop for ever. Or at least until the rain lets up.