Baker’s Box (Part I)
Making Space For The Impractical
“Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.”
At Table Fables, we’re interested in living out Henri Nouwen’s understanding of hospitality through food.
We use food because it is an exemplary space-maker, creating room in the heart for stories, ideas for the mind, and nourishment for the body.
Of course, an idea is only as good as its execution. The incarnational process of raising an idea from infancy into a fully fleshed out project that can prevail in the “real world” requires time and labor.
Once I realized that I had spent too much time thinking about these things, I decided that I need to do something about it.
I’m not sure if this is just a ME thing, or if everyone processes their musings like this, but I almost always begin any sort of project by asking, “What questions are you asking, Hayoung?” I literally grab paper and a pen and jot them down.
Is this weird? Normal? Inefficient? Let me know in the comments, my 4 substack readers!
In this particular context, I was asking three questions:
How do we create room on the emotional/spiritual level?
I can make room for someone in my colorful Google calendar, and I can toss out all the useless furniture in my overpriced apartment. This type of room-making feels obvious because there are clear and immediate consequences, but creating room in the heart…What does that look like? How does it feel? Is it a feeling? Is the feeling more like the classic gut instinct (psychological) or how the sun’s warmth feels on our bare skin (phenomenological)? Is emotional room-making something that happens best in an individual setting or as a community? Can we practice making room?
How do people become?
We are human beings, not human doings. The idea of being is fascinating to me, because unlike “doing” (which feels like discrete intervals of acts), “being” feels like a mysterious presence that’s continuous without a beginning or an end.
At the same time, I recognize that there are modes of being—that becoming is a phenomenon that I’ve seen in others and experienced myself. I’m curious about how this plays itself out. What forms us to become? How do we know when it’s happened, and why does it feel like it’s always in retrospect?
In what ways can food guide this process?
Like I mentioned earlier, I think food is a champ at creating room.
Unfortunately, Western society forces food to be anything but that, often reducing food to nutritional content with ever-evolving clinical guidelines and arbitrary societal standards. It’s like asking Russell Westbrook to be a spot-up 3 point shooter, or using an Ipad as a coaster. It’s not that this athlete or tablet can’t be used in those ways, but you are missing out on immense opportunities to experience what they’re meant to be.
There’s a reason why food is interchangeable with culture, or why in religious contexts, food sacrificed is to have a relationship with God or eaten as a way to taste divinity. Food creates space for humanity to be diverse and unified all at the same time.
The question for me is how. Why does food do this so well? Are there ways to make this a more intentional experience?
I had an opportunity to actualize these questions when I became a mentor at OurHouse, a non-profit working with older foster care youth.
Foster care in the US is broken, as over 20,000 youth are left to fend for themselves with little-to-no governmental assistance once they age out of the system. For those who have been part of foster care, increased rates of housing insecurity, substance abuse, and incarceration are just a few of the signs of a failed institution.
To bridge this gap, OurHouse provides mentoring and housing services to youth aging out of foster care so they can become successful, self-sufficient & confident adults.
(For those in Southeast Michigan, I highly encourage you to sign up to be an OurHouse mentor or donate funds for programming efforts. Their work is outstanding, the staff are passionate, and I’ve witnessed youth in the program become flourishing adults through the support of OurHouse. If there’s any organization that deserves your time and money, it’s OurHouse. )
One of my favorite programs is the monthly life skill event, where OurHouse youth and mentors spent time together on a Saturday to learn something new. These events allowed me to observe how my mentee reacted in new and potentially uncomfortable situations, and given that I lack many life skills myself, there were plenty of fun opportunities to adult.
After getting a taste of a few life skill events, I thought that there was a unique opportunity to do an event that touched on stories, becoming, and food.
I gathered up the little but very real pieces of courage within my soul and reached out to the OurHouse staff if Table Fables could host a life skill event. Specifically, I wanted to invite my talented baker friends (Hi Rachel, Hira, and Cam!) to teach OurHouse youth how to decorate an assortment of baked goods alongside a facilitated reflection journal.1
My earnest hope for OurHouse youth was that they would make room to reflect on the stories of their identities, to embrace new ideas as they enter into new seasons of life, and most importantly, to be nourished by the dessert made by their own hands.
The staff were overwhelmingly receptive to the idea, and I am deeply grateful for how positively they responded to my proposition. To be vulnerable is to dream, and their validation was encouraging in ways that they don’t even realize. It’s been formative to the point where I can still remember the glimmer of excitement in their eyes when I came into their office. For some reason, it’s these ephemeral moments that remain and get me out of bed in the morning.
Stories, Ideas, and Nourishment—This is how we become.
This is how transformation happens.
an important caveat
I also know that there will be people who read this and ask:
How will decorating cookies while discussing feelings do anything about what really matters?
I’m asked this question quite often, and it deserves a response.
The question of “what really matters” often boils down to a narrow understanding of practicality, which is defined by observable changes that can be objectively measured.
Example: The college degree in computer science is practical because it gets you a job quickly (observable change) that pays a starting salary at $100k with great benefits and free catered meals from nice restaurants (objectively measured).
While learning how to decorate a cupcake doesn’t seem to be as practical as learning how to prep for a job interview or learning how to do your taxes, there’s no need to pit the two against each other. Decorating a cupcake is important. Job interview prepping is important.
We should and can do both, like OurHouse, where both skills such as budget making (practical) and art exercises (impractical) were included. Furthermore, poet Olivia Laing contends that for impractical matters such as art, there are profound and ground-shaking changes taking place that aren’t as readily observed as practical matters.
In Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, she writes:
“We’re so often told that art can’t really change anything. But I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes; it opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living.”
Art, even as small as a cupcake decoration, can be a catalyst for moral formation, insightful contemplation, resistance, freedom.
Thank you for reading today. In the coming weeks, I’ll write more about the actual event (LOL) and the types of questions we were asking throughout the time.
I hope that this is an opportunity for people to do something similar with the people and communities they love and care about.
-Hayoung
Footnotes
I’m a strong believer that we stand on the shoulders of others, which means we ought to give credit, no matter how small, to the people who came before us. I owe much of my inspiration for this idea from Warm Welcome, which shared the stories of Asian American pastry chefs through baked goods.
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