Fellowship and good hearts
perk at this coffeehouse

Robyn’s Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

Last summer my husband Chris and our middle daughter Samantha spent a week in Slidell, a Louisiana town full of strong and determined people still reeling from the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
They were part of a team of about 20 people, mostly dads and their kids. During the day they split up into sub-teams and went to different homes and did whatever needed to be done.
My daughter came home having learned not only how to drywall, spackle, sand and paint but also how to install a free-floating hardwood floor. She also managed to help touch the lives of an elderly couple. The husband was a gruff, self-sufficient man who did not appreciate having his home invaded by a bunch of kids. By the end of the week he was thanking them, through tears, for a job well done.
Last week Chris and Sam spent a week in the Bridesburg section of Philadelphia. It’s a vibrant community full of hard-working people who take pride in their families, their homes and their heritage.
Chris and Sam joined a team of about 30 people, mostly teenagers and a few long-suffering adults. During the day they performed light construction on various buildings, including the recreation center, and at night they hosted a vacation Bible school for the neighborhood kids.
Their "base camp" was a building on the corner of Buckius and Richmond streets. It used to be known as Sluggers bar, now it’s Realife, a coffee bar with an unusual mission.
It is a beautifully renovated space painted in all the current café au lait colors. It’s also a place where people can drop in between 6:30 and 9 a.m. and 3 to 8 p.m. for an affordable cup-o-joe and a fresh cookie. It is a welcoming, easygoing and non-threatening kind of place. And if you’ve been there before, they remember you the next time. Sort of like Cheers, minus the alcohol.
Sunday mornings sound interesting. Stop by at 11 and you’ll get live music and a free sermon to stir in your cup. The real message behind Realife is more than real snacks. It’s about real people with real issues, real problems and real questions.
And Realife, I was told, helps to provide those answers. Or, as the mission statement of the coffeehouse reads in part: "Our mission is to draw people to the love and redemption of God. We work toward this by serving our community and city in a way that reflects the way Jesus served those around him."
I recently stopped there with my youngest daughter, Madeline. The place is just a short drive from where we live and I was excited to see what Chris and Samantha’s team had been up to all week.
I was given a tour of the café as well as an upstairs apartment, which was temporarily housing about 12 teenage girls involved with the volunteer effort. It consisted of a small bathroom, a tiny kitchen/laundry room and a common room with wall-to-wall sleeping bags, clothes and assorted hair-care products strewn everywhere.
As a mother, I can say that it wasn’t pretty.
I then got a tour of where the guys were staying. Let’s just say I didn’t inhale. But all this messy communal living did nothing to deter the enthusiasm of the volunteer team. These kids were happy to be there, happy to be serving and happy to be part of something that is bigger than they are.
At about 6 the café began to fill with kids, lots of them. They sang some songs, did some crafts, played some games and heard some stories from the Bible. All of it was led by the teenagers; the adults supervised but the teens did the work.
At about 8:30 the moms and dads came to pick up their little ones. And they hung around. It was a beautiful summer night, the kids were playing, the adults were talking, the teenagers were behaving.
I know this may not sound like real life, but for a section of Philadelphia known as Bridesburg, it is. If you want to know more about Realife, visit their Web site at www.realifephilly.org
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears each week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net