From Your Minister
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A trend which began in the San Francisco Bay Area is now spreading to other cities—the trend of hipsters paying four or five bucks for a piece of toast. Toast. You know, like you make in the toaster.
Now, when I first heard this, I presumed that it was the dream child of someone who was playing “The Emperor’s New Clothes” with food; some con man or woman saying, “Let’s see to what lengths over-moneyed, under-purposed people will go to eat what’s hip—something that will cost us almost nothing but which they will all agree is so good that it’s worth shelling out for.”
But in fact, according to an article in a magazine called Pacific Standard, this trend toward toast is due to a woman named Giulietta Carrelli, who runs Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club in San Francisco. I recommend the entire article to you if you’re online. The author is John Gravois. What fascinated me is that this woman, far from being a cynical hipster, began selling toast out of her own vulnerability and need.
Giulietta Carrelli has a rare kind of mental disorder that had kept her from steady jobs or housing. Her inner life would become so complicated and overwhelming that she would, from time to time and unpredictably, simply not know who she was. In these periods she might walk aimlessly for months, disconnected from everyone and everything. She would quite simply lose her identity.
But an old immigrant man she met on the beach changed her life. He listened to her story and then asked a powerful question: “What is your useful skill in a tangible situation?”
Carrelli knew immediately—she was good at making coffee. When she was able to hold down employment, it was generally as a barista. And cinnamon toast had always been a source of comfort to her, so why not for others? At bottom, Carrelli says, Trouble—the tiny coffee shop she opened in a one car garage—is a tool for keeping her alive. “I’m trying to stay connected to the self,” she says.
At the coffee shop, Carrelli is personally known by hundreds of customers. These days, during a walking episode, Carrelli says, a hello and a call-out by name from one of these casual acquaintances in some unfamiliar part of the city might make the difference between whether she makes it home that night or not. “I’m wearing the same outfit every day,” she says. “I take the same routes every day. I own Trouble Coffee so that people recognize my face—so they can help me.”
Reading this article, I was struck by Carrelli’s genius. She has structured a life that keeps her remembering who she is, that enables her to find her way home every night.
I was also struck by the fact that her genius was so noticeable that others tried to emulate it. But, I would propose, they copied the wrong part. They copied the form instead of the substance. The form it takes for Carrelli to find her way home is running a coffee shop and selling toast. That is her useful skill in a tangible situation. The substance of Carrelli’s journey, how-ever, is creating a life that allows her to remember who she is, and to use her very particular gifts.
For those of us who don’t want to open shops and sell toast, I recommend considering what it might be to emulate the substance of Carrelli’s life. What might it look like if we shaped our lives in very particular ways that would help us find our way home each night?
I am aware that for many CLF members “home” may feel distant. Many of you are in hospitals, on various kinds of trips or overseas work assignments, in prisons, the military or college, etc. Many of you are members of CLF precisely because you are looking for a spiritual home in a time when your former physical home is in transition or absent.
I love thinking that the services of CLF are clues to help the people in our community remember who they are, to find their way home. Maybe it’s a daily meditation, or this newsletter, or your personal interaction with others that connects you to yourself.
The great African American theologian and minister, Howard Thurman, wrote, “There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
You may be far from the place which you physically bond with most, which means home to you. But, in hearing the sound of the genuine in yourself, in transforming that sound into a particular shape for your life, may you find exactly the support that you need to create a spiritual home wherever you are
- From Your Minister - July 1, 2020
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