Community and Coffee Shops

A couple of weeks ago, I read The Suburban Christian: Finding Spiritual Vitality in the Land of Plenty by Albert Y. Hsu.  It’s a great book- anyone who lives in the suburbs and cares about religion, Christianity, spirituality, or the Church should read this book.

What I found most compelling in the book was the author’s discussion of community (because I love community and because two of my dreams are about community).  Suburbia is marketed as the perfect “community.”  A peaceful, quite, safe place to raise your family.  A place where you can have a beautiful house, a yard where your dog and kids can play, exceptional schools, shopping malls and strip malls galore within a 10 minute drive, a million options for entertainment, and jobs so that you can buy just about everything you ever needed or wanted. 

But I think we all know that the suburbs are not the perfect communities they are promoted as.   The suburbs have been given a very bad reputation by many who are concerned (and rightfully so) that life in the suburbs creates self-centered, isolated people who are alienated from their neighbors, their family, and the rest of the world.  The suburbs might be portrayed as perfect “communities”, but in reality there really isn’t much true community around the suburbs (there are of course places in the burbs where community can be found, but these places are far too difficult to find).  Everyone is so busy, so scheduled, so consumed with consuming.  Many of us don’t even know our neighbors living next door.  We don’t form relationships beyond our close family and friends and we don’t love and care for our neighbors (our literal and non-literal neighbors). 

The author of The Suburban Christian, Hsu, was writing about how community participation has greatly decreased over the past few decades especially in suburbs.  Socializing has decreased.  People just don’t spend as much time with other people as they used to.  People are so busy, busy, busy.  A lot of the loss of community can be attributed to the loss of what Ray Oldenburg calls “third places” which he defines in his book The Great Good Place as “public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work.”  Back in the day, people gathered in the town square, at church, or at the ice cream social, but we don’t have town squares, more and more people don’t go to church, and we don’t have many ice cream socials anymore. 

Then Hsu started writing about Starbucks.  Starbucks started out with one store in Seattle selling only coffee beans and coffee making equipment.  The founder, Howard Schultz, took a business trip to Italy and he noticed there were espresso bars all over the place.  Each espresso bar was slightly different, but each was filled with people who were drinking coffee and chatting with other people.  Schultz observed the espresso bars and saw people meeting up with friends they saw everyday but also meeting people for the first time.  He then had an “aha” moment realizing that he had been doing the coffee business all wrong.  Hsu, wrote Schultz, “had seen coffee merely as a product, a commodity to be sold, not something with the potential to build relationships and community.”  So Schultz changed his stores.  He set up tables and chairs and started serving coffee in his shops.  The stores became “a place where coffee became an experience, where people could meet and talk and linger, where people built relationships and community.”  He created “third places.”  People flocked to Starbucks around the country because these coffee shops filled the need for third places, for places where community can be built.

I was starting to get worried as I was reading this because in my mind Starbucks does not create authentic community- the sort of community that I want my coffee shop to create.  But then Hsu wrote this:  “Yet Starbucks’s success only goes so far.  While Starbucks may provide an inviting atmosphere and a context where people can connect, it’s not truly a public meeting place for civic interaction.  You might go there with your friends, but you don’t necessarily go to Starbucks to meet strangers and engage neighbors.  In the end, Starbucks is still a commercial enterprise, selling lattes and Frappuccinos.”  Starbucks customers are people who have a car to drive to there and drive through the drive through, people who can afford a $4 (or $5 or $6) cup of coffee, people who are educated enough to know and understand words needed to order a coffee drink.  I haven’t spent a lot of time at Starbucks, but I’ve only met up with good friends, I never met anyone new, I never even saw anyone outside my socioeconomic class, and most of the time I got a drink to go or I sat by myself and didn’t interact with anyone.  Perhaps Starbucks brings to the suburbs an opportunity to build community, but Starbucks is not that ideal “third place” where ALL people from a community can gather together and build community and build a better world.

Now that I’m reassured that Starbucks really does not create the sort of community that I want my coffee shop to create, I have to figure out how my coffee shop will have to be different from Starbucks in order to create authentic community?

Here’s some ideas:

The coffee shop will have to be physically accessible to the community (including those people who don’t have cars or can’t afford to use gas to go anywhere that’s not absolutely necessary).  Ideally people would be able to walk or bike to my coffee shop.  Otherwise maybe I could find a location near one of the few bus routes in the ‘burbs.

The cost of coffee, other drinks, and food cannot prevent people from coming to the coffee shop.  Perhaps there will need to be some sort of a sliding flexible price for coffee and food.   Those who can afford to pay more for their coffee and food can pay more while those who can only afford to pay a few cents for their coffee and food can do so.  A few Panera Bread stores have tried out the “pay-what-you-want” model and it has worked well for business and for the customers.  Check out this article.

The food and drinks being served have to appeal to the people that I want to be a part of the community.  I will have to get the know who is living in the area around my coffee shop and then cater my menu so people will be comfortable with the food being served.  Food has brought people together for thousands of years and I hope this will be a strong part of my coffee shop.

It would be awesome if community spontaneously happened in my coffee shop (picture the grand opening where people of all races and ethnicities and socioeconomic statuses gather and instantly become best friends and then leave the shop, go home picking up litter along the way and serve their neighbors, come back the next day with a hundred more best friends of all different backgrounds, etc.).  But as we see with Starbucks, “community” doesn’t spontaneously happen.  Building community takes a conscious effort.  I’m not exactly sure what this might look like but I will have to figure out ways to get people to actively engage with each other and get to know new people who are different from them.  It will be simple things like me encouraging regular customers to say “hi” to a new customer and perhaps more formal things like a night of people sharing their life stories.

The focus and purpose of the shop (especially for me) cannot be selling coffee or other products.  Just because the coffee shop aims to be socially and environmentally responsible doesn’t mean that it’s ok to allow consumption or profit to take over.   The ultimate focus must be creating community and making life better for the Salvadoran coffee farmers.  Of course selling coffee will be a part of this and it will be a business, but it must be more of a ministry than a business- people must come first.  I don’t know exactly how to find this balance, but this is vital.

Dream #4

The Dream: to be a farmer.

Now when I say I want to be a farmer, don’t picture me on thousands of acres of cornfields in a ginormous air-conditioned John Deer tractor harvesting the unnaturally perfect rows of genetically-engineered-pesticide-and-herbicide-and-fertilizer-contaminated-corn.

When I say I want to be a farmer I mean I want to be an environmentally conscious, self-sustainable, small-scale, organic farmer of a variety of veggies, legumes, fruits, and grains.  I would also like to have some hens so I can have their eggs, cows so I can have their milk, some bees for their honey, sheep for their wool, and llamas and alpacas for their fur (and just because they are really cool animals).

I haven’t really decided if I just want to farm to have enough for my family or whomever else I’m living with, or if I would want to produce more food so I could sell it to other people.  Probably the latter.

Where this dream came from:

I’ve had my own little vegetable garden in my backyard for the past few years.  I have two raised beds that are each about 3 by 6 feet.  I cram as many plants in there as I can (which I know I’m not supposed to do, but I do it anyways).  I’ve grown tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, red and green peppers, jalapeño peppers, cucumbers, and cabbage.  I love watching the plants grow.  It’s so cool to see vegetable grow from the tiny plants- it’s almost like a miracle to go out to the garden and one day see things that resemble real live vegetables.  And there is nothing better than going into your backyard, picking some broccoli, cutting it up, and then eating it within 2 minutes- doesn’t get any fresher than that.

This year I’m growing my plants from seed (in previous years I bought little plants from a store).  I ordered seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange which is an organization located in Decorah, Iowa that is dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.  I planned poorly and ordered my seeds too late and thus got the seeds started too late, but the baby plants are doing pretty well (they don’t look as perfect as the plants you buy at the store though).  I planted them in my little garden a couple weekends ago.  I feel like a mother to my baby plants.  Don’t judge me, but I’ve been talking to the little plants and encouraging them to grow.

This year my church started a community garden, which I am SO very excited about.  We planted a whole bunch of different vegetables, fruits, and herbs.   All the produce is going to be donated to local food pantries and to PADS (an organization that works to end homelessness in our area).  I volunteered to plan the planting of the garden and I thoroughly enjoyed planning it all out, learning about the different kinds of plants that we planted, and I am so excited to watch the garden grow over the summer.  (If you want to see the progress of the community garden over the summer, check out this blog.)

A couple years ago I read a book by Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.  In the book, Barbara writes about the year she, her husband, and two daughters committed to eating only locally grown food which involved growing most of their own food.  I loved reading about their adventures, the creativity they had to use to eat locally, and the difficulties and blessings of living off the land.  Just reading the book made me want to have my own farm so I could do what they did- to be as self-sufficient as possible.

Our globalized world is becoming more and more dependent on oil, ever-advancing technologies and machines, and enormous multi-national corporations.  Perhaps not everything about this globalized world is bad, but it has come to the point where we have next to no idea where our food comes from, who grew it, what’s in/on our food, what resources were used to get the food into my grocery cart, etc.  And it shouldn’t be this way.  The less knowledge we have about our food, the less we are able to make good decisions about the environmental and social costs of the food we eat.  I want to be able to make good decisions about what I put into my mouth.  After all, you are what you eat.  If I produced my own food then I would know almost every single detail about the food I was eating and I would be able to ensure that the food was produced in an environmentally and socially conscientious way.

What I would need to do to make the dream a reality:

• Learn more about farming
• Have land to farm on
• Obtain some farming equipment
• Find other people with farming knowledge and experience to help me 

Obstacles to making the dream a reality:

• There’s not much land for farming left in the suburbs so I might have to leave the burbs or make do with less land
• Actually surviving on what I grow
• Finding other people to help and join in my farming

Dream #3

The dream: To live in or start a Christian intentional community.

For those who may not be sure what intentional community is, according to Wikipedia intentional community is “a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities.  The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision and often follow an alternative lifestyle.  They typically also share responsibilities and resources.”

Every intentional community is different.  Depending on the people and place, intentional communities can take various shapes.  Some only have a few people while others may have dozens of people.  The age of the community and the ages of the people in the community vary.  Some communities share common religious or spiritual practices.  Some grow their own food, some are activists, some try to remove themselves from Western culture, and many communities do everything possible to make a positive changes in their larger communities. The key of an intentional community is people living together in a meaningful way.

I know some incredible people who are living in intentional communities in Chicago and I know there are many intentional communities in large cities and rural areas across the county.  However, I live here in the suburbs.  After two years of being back home after my undergraduate years at Augustana, I finally feel that I am connected to the area around my house.  My family is here, I have friends here, and my church is here.  I would like to continue living in this area and I think the suburbs can use some (more) people living in intentional community who are invested in the well being of the larger community.  I haven’t been able to find people living in intentional community in the suburbs (I haven’t been looking too hard for too long though).   I’m sure there are suburbanites out there living in intentional community… I just need to find them (if any of you have any leads on this, please let me know!).

Where this dream came from:

There is something very beautiful and idealistic and practical about the idea of living in an intentional community.  Ever since I first started learning about intentional communities some years back, I have wanted to be a part of one.

Some of my awesome classmates at Loyola are living in intentional community and from what I have heard and seen it appears to be very meaningful for those in the intentional community and for people in the greater community.

I’m almost done reading a book by Shane Claiborne called The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical.  (I’ll tell you more about Shane and his great book in another post because he and the book deserve an entire blog post all their own.)  Among other things, Shane wrote about some of his experiences living in intentional community and about community in general.  Through community, Shane and his fellow community members have been able to bring some incredible change and transformation.

I learned about Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement a few years ago.  Since then I have been in awe of the work that Dorothy Day started and the work that continues on with the many Catholic Worker houses still in existence where people from all walks of life live together in community. 

I want to live with other similar-minded people who want to make the world a better place and I want to live with people who will challenge me to be a better Christian and a better person in general.  I want to live with people who are conscious of how the way we live affects the world and who strive to live every single minute of their lives in a way that announces the coming of the Reign of God.

Basically I want to live in an intentional community because I want to be a part of the incredible work that is being done by other people who are living in intentional community.  Living in intentional community certainly isn’t necessary to bring about change and social transformation, but it very much facilitates the process.

What I would need to do to make this dream a reality

• Find an intentional community to join
• Start a new intentional community: find people to be in community with (is anyone out there interested?), find a place to live, lay out what we want our intentional community to be

Obstacles to making this dream a reality

• Finding an intentional community to live in
• Finding people to live with if I start a new intentional community
• From what I hear, living in community is hard work (although it certainly comes with many blessings)

Dream #2

Here is the second installment of the explanations of what I dream to do with my life:

The dream: To open a socially conscious, environmentally friendly coffee shop near my house.

We would buy the coffee directly from coffee farmers in El Salvador and ensure that the farmers are paid a fair price for the coffee.  We would also sell freshly baked goods, simple café food (sandwiches, soup, salads), and non-coffee drinks.  The coffee shop would do everything possible to be kind to the environment.

I envision a place where a diverse group of people from the community could gather together, get to know each other, develop a sense of community, talk about the problems of the community and the world, and then go out and actually do something to make the community and the world a better place.

The purposes of the coffee shop would be:

• Supporting coffee farmers in El Salvador
• Supporting local, organic farmers near the coffee shop
• Hiring and training people who many other businesses would not hire such as refugees, immigrants, and former prisoners
• Fostering relationships within the community among diverse groups of people
• Leaving smaller footprints on the earth by using reusable dishes, using biodegradable to-go containers, composting, buying local and organic dairy and produce products and other ingredients for food, growing our own organic fruits and veggies, using energy from renewable sources such as sun and wind, etc.
• Mobilizing staff and customers to volunteer and work for justice in our community, in El Salvador, and around the world

Where this dream came from: One day, my friend Julie and I were talking about ways to improve the lives of Salvadorans.  We know that anything that will create fundamental change must be sustainable and empowering for the Salvadorans.  Most Americans have too many resources and most Salvadorans have too few resources, so the simple thing to do to improve the lives of Salvadorans is to “transfer” resources from America to El Salvador.  Simply giving money isn’t going to do it because this isn’t sustainable or empowering.  So, Julie and I were trying to think of things that Americans need or buy a lot of that Salvadorans could produce, and one thing we came up with is coffee.

I have always loved baking and preparing food and I have often dreamed of a place where I could sell the delicious things I bake.  So, obviously the coffee show would be a great way to make this mini dream a reality and to make the coffee shop even better.

Here in the suburbs I feel that there are very few places for a sense of community to develop.  People live in their homes, and come and go to work, stores, and restaurants, but there are very few common places where people can gather, meet new people from their community, catch up with old friends, be invested in the community.  I can’t really think of any places where people go to hang out, talk, have a good time, and be with people from the community that we don’t normally run into (bars might qualify, but not completely).  I have often found myself wanting such a place, and I believe that others would welcome a community oriented coffee shop.  

What I would need to do to make the dream a reality:

Learn how to make coffee drinks or find people who know how

Buy/rent a place for the coffee shop

Find employees

Build relationships with farmers in El Salvador and get the coffee

Find local suppliers for produce, dairy, etc.

Advertise

Find customers

Obstacles to making this dream a reality:

I don’t know much about making coffee

I don’t even like to drink coffee

I don’t have any experience running a business or doing accounting stuff

I don’t have any start up money to get a place, buy supplies, hire staff, etc.

i.e. pretty much everything

Dream #1 (but not necessarily the most important)

Here is installment #1 of “Melissa’s Dreams: An explanation of the dreams Melissa has for her near and not so near future”.

The dream: To be a writer (and get paid for it!).  I’m not sure exactly what I would write- there are a lot of things that I am interested in writing about.  I would like to write about religion, spirituality, making the world a better place, social justice, caring for creation, delicious food, growing and cooking that delicious food, El Salvador, awesome books I read.  I’d very much like to write a memoir, and my friend Julie is encouraging me to write a book with all the social justice Bible studies I’ve created over the past 9 months working at my church.  I certainly have lots of things that I am passionate about that I can write about. 

Where this dream came from:  I have always loved to read.  I love books- of all my possessions my books are one of my most precious.  I certainly have more books than anything else I own.  (By the way- if anyone has a bookshelf they don’t need let me know because I am officially out of space on my bookshelves.) 

My favorite author Anne Lamott wrote “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."  Yes, that’s exactly right, Anne. 

I have always loved writing- it is the way that I feel I can best communicate.  And I think I’m good at writing- at least that’s what I’ve been told by friends, family, and professors.  The idea of writing a book or at least getting an article published has this really romantic feel- wouldn’t everyone like to have their ideas validated by being a published author.  Maybe it’s a little bit self-centered of me but I think it would be really cool to have other people read what I have written and look up to me in awe like I look up to some of my favorite authors.  I do a lot of writing to try to make sense of stuff going on in my life and in the world (that’s pretty much what this blog has been so far).  Perhaps the greatest reason why I want to be a writer is that I have all these ideas, thoughts, and reflections that I want to share with other people.  I want to share because I want to find other people who can relate to my experiences and reflections.  I also want to challenge people to examine their own lives and make sense of their experiences and then do something to make a better story of their lives.

What I would need to do to make this dream a reality:  Well, it seems relatively simple.  I write.  I submit what I wrote to someone who will publish it.  They publish it.  People buy what I wrote.  And then I get paid with some dollars, appreciation from my readers, and the satisfaction of being a published author.

Obstacles to making this dream a reality:

• Spending hours writing, editing, and agonizing over my writing
• Having the time and space to spend hours writing, editing, and agonizing over my writing
• Actually writing something that other people want to read
• Making publishers think that what I write is something that other people want to read
• I don’t really know much about the publishing process
• I need to find people who are willing to help me with editing and giving constructive criticism as I work on whatever I’m writing

So that’s an explanation of my first dream.  Stay tuned for the next installment…

Reconstitute the World

Well, I graduated yesterday.  It’s official- I did indeed pass all my classes.  I can now write “M.A.” after my name (that seems a little inadequate for all the work that was required to be able to do that).  The students receiving a PhD were a part of my graduation ceremony and I have to admit that I’m seriously considering getting a PhD just so that I can wear the really cool robe and beanie that they got to wear.  Maybe someday.  I did get to wear a cool robe and hood.

Graduation day celebrated the work I have done in the many years I have been a student.  I was and am very conscious of all the support I have received from my parents, my grandparents, other family, friends, classmates, professors, and so many other people in my life.  I owe more thanks than I could ever offer.  Thank you all!  Graduation day offered me an opportunity to reflect on everything that got me to graduation, but I found myself looking more and more to the future.

Here is a really incredible picture:

These are my amazing classmates (unfortunately a few are missing from the picture).  I had the pleasure to be with these incredible people over the past two years and they taught me so much, much more than I learned from professors or even the best books I read.  Their experience, knowledge, faith, and passion for social justice inspired me and showed me what it means to live as a Christian.  Take a good look at this picture: the people in this picture are going to change the world and are going to do amazing things that none of us can even fathom right now. 

On Wednesday evening the Institute of Pastoral Studies held a commissioning ceremony for all the graduates.  Susan Rans, the phenomenal director of the Social Justice program, gave the faculty address and shared part of a poem by Adrienne Rich.  These words have really stuck with me and capture well how I feel at this point: 

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:

so much has been destroyed

I have to cast my lot with those

who age after age, perversely,

with no extraordinary power,

reconstitute the world.

These are such powerful words.  And so, I proudly cast my lot with my classmates, those who with no extraordinary power, are working to reconstitute the world.  These are the people who will day after day rebuild all that has been destroyed perhaps taking great risks to do so.  It may be a long time until the world is made into what it once was, until we reconstruct something from what seems to be nothing.  But I have faith that with incredible people like Liz, Sharaya, Steve, Angelyn, Casey, E, John, Chrissy, Nora, Mandy, Bukie, Ashley, and Beth in the world there will one day be justice.  And so we start (we continue really) to reconstitute the world.

Today my greatest accomplishment was mowing the lawn.  I think tomorrow I will do better at reconstituting the world.

One Year and One Day Ago

One year and one day ago I started this blog.  I hope you will agree that I have done a pretty good job with doing what I set out to do with this blog.  I started this blog to keep in touch with family and friends when I spent 7 weeks in El Salvador last summer, and since then I have written about El Salvador and my short trip in March.

Now as I start a new part of my life, I'm going to start to do something a little different with this blog.  I hope that's ok with you (and if not I'm sorry, but I hope you'll learn to be ok with it).  At this point I don't know exactly what this blog will become, but I envision a blog about my life and all the thoughts that go through the crazy mind of mine.  El Salvador will no doubt make it into the blog often enough, but I'm not going to feel burdened to make everything I write in the blog relate to El Salvador.  It has been helpful to have El Salvador as the theme and guide for my writing, but perhaps for a while (or forever) I will post about random, unconnected things.  Writing about 'Searching for Peace' will continue to be my overall purpose for this blog even though many posts may not be explicitly about 'searching for peace.' 

For the first time in my life since I started preschool, I am no longer a student (assuming that I passed all my classes, but I'm not too worried about that).  No longer being a student is a little scary because being a student has given structure and purpose to my life for the past 20 years.  But the thought of not being a student has really freed me to imagine all the possibilities of where my life can go from here.  The good thing about getting degrees like a B.A. in Spanish and Psychology and a M.A. in Social Justice is that they don't really prepare you to do something specific- there are so many different things that I can do and be because of the education I received.  I feel like I've got the passion, knowledge, and ability go out into the world, search for peace, and make peace where there isn't enough peace.    

Especially over the past two years I have had so many opportunities to be introduced to amazing ideas, incredible people, and concrete progressive ways of living out life.  These ideas and people have challenged me to take a serious look at the way I'm living and the way I want to be living.  For the past month or so I have had all these dreams that have been going around in my head about how I should be living and what I should do with my life from here.  The practical, organized, structured part of me says "These are just crazy ideas.  You need to do something practical and get a 'real' job."  But then another part of me (I'm not sure what to call this part of me) says "No. These ideas are wonderful ideas.  You are called to do these things and they are indeed possible.  You should do everything you can to pursue them and make them a reality."  But then that first part of me comes back and says, "But you will need to start paying off your student loans in 6 months and you should really consider moving out of your parents' house and start living like a real grownup."  Right now the "dreamer" side of me is winning.    

I'll tell you about my dreams and "crazy" ideas in my next posts.

I'm changing this blog in part so that it will be a way to hold me accountable.  Now that I'm not a student and I don't know when I'll have a "real" job, I need something to hold me accountable so that I don't just sit around and watch Oprah or read other people's blogs all day long.  I hope my blog will hold me accountable to write but also to start to actually DO the things that I imagine doing.  I have been reluctant to talk or write about my "dreams" because I'm afraid that if I share my dreams but then things don't work out as I would have liked them to then I will look like a failure.  But I'm starting to feel that the risk of looking like failure is much less serious than just sitting around and waiting for life to happen and hoping that things will turn out as I imagine.  I certainly don't want to fail and I want my dreams to work out, but even more I don't want to fail because I didn't try.  So, my dear readers, please hold me accountable.  Tell me to post on my blog if I haven't done it in a while and ask me how I'm coming with making my dreams a reality.  And if you feel so moved and able, jump in and help me make my dreams a reality!