The Friday Café is a welcoming space at TAP’s partnering organization, First Church in Cambridge, where homeless and insecurely housed neighbors can gather and get to know each other. It offers food and coffee, rest and resources to people living on the margins – but most importantly it offers community. At the Friday Café, people experiencing a wide variety of life circumstances can relax, share a meal and talk together as friends.
Rev. Kate Layzer, Director & Founder of The Friday Café, wrote a personal reflection on a recent workshop offered by TAP staff to the Café community:
“We were honored to welcome TAP staff L’Merchie Frazier, Barbara Hamm & Keena Banda to the Friday Café last week for a free poetry, mindfulness and fabric art workshop in the Harter Room. This was the first time we had offered a program outside the main room of the Café, and we weren’t sure what to expect, but quite a few of our guests responded to our invitation and took part. Participants learned about the haiku form, and began to write their own haikus; they also began to practice placing cut pieces of fabric together to create something new. These workshops are designed to help survivors of trauma and violence confront, express, and transform the impact of these painful experiences in their lives by means of art. Learn more at the project website. TAP will be returning to the Friday Café on January 25 to continue working with members of our community.
TRANSFORMATION
I know our community pretty well, and I knew that inviting people to make art as a response to past violence in their lives was going to be a hard sell. At the same time, I knew that pretty much every guest in that room is living with the effects of trauma. This workshop was designed with them in mind.
So when I took the mic to give my pitch, I did something I’ve never done before in that space: I outed myself as a trauma survivor. I didn’t go into detail. But I let the community know that we had that in common. If I had turned to the volunteers who were present and asked how many had lived through trauma or violence—of course I would never do that!—I’m sure there would have been quite a few other hands raised.
Empathy draws people together. If we’ve been through hard times, hard times become part of us forever. We never forget what that feels like. If we’re lucky, it doesn’t make us hard: It makes us want to befriend other people who are hurting, and to lighten their loneliness a little. Our lifetimes listen to each other, as Margaret Peters puts it, and in that listening, we both feel more a little more at home in the world.
I wonder what sadness or struggles from the past have become a part of your composition. I wonder how those parts of you resonate with our neighbors at the Friday Café, and whether our life in community is playing a role in your ongoing transformation.
I know I am so grateful to the Friday Café for bringing all of us together—including many of you whom I would probably never have met otherwise, but who have moved me and enriched my life in so many ways. Thank you for that! Thank you for all you are, for all you do, and for all you give.
”
~Kate
The Friday Café is open every Friday from 1-5 pm, September through June. For more information, visit https://www.thefriday.cafe.