Love, faith and muffins
One woman’s recipe for bringing America together.
Faith Holmes was around 6 years old when her mother took her to a black church for a teachable moment. After services, the children were invited to attend Sunday school, but Holmes resisted. As the only white child, she recalls telling her mother she felt different. Her mother replied, “Good. Now you know what it feels like.”
Then she told her young daughter to remember that feeling whenever there was an opportunity to be kind to someone who might feel like an outcast.
It is in that spirit that Holmes dedicated her 20s to race relations work in Los Angeles, forming a nonprofit with a Grammy Award-winning music producer and acting as personal assistant to a renowned African American author. And it is how she now runs her community cafe in a gentrified Washington neighborhood near the famous U Street Corridor, once a major hub for African American music and business.
On a freezing predawn morning, the sidewalk scattered with salt in anticipation of snow, Holmes, now 44, unlocked the door of her small business, Love ‘n Faith Cafe. Nestled between a high-priced gym, a boutique grocery store and underneath apartments where a one bedroom rents for around $3,000 a month, the cafe is meant to be a place where everyone, regardless of race or class, is welcome.
Inside, a glass case is filled with Holmes’ muffins and scones, and there is a liquid nitrogen ice cream machine. It’s a coffee shop, a bakery, an ice cream shop, a smoothie bar, a sandwich place — it’s a bit unfocused, but it’s trying to be a
little bit of everything for everyone, which is fitting.
There are square wooden tables each etched with two quotes, one about love and one about faith. “I have decided to stick to love ... Hate is too great a burden to bear,” reads one quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “Ya gotta have faith! faith! faith!” reads another from the George Michael song.
Holmes welcomes local activists to hold community meetings in the cafe. On any given afternoon, neighborhood schoolchildren careen through the door, and Holmes’ staff knows that each, if they say “please” and “thank you,” can have a free ice cream sample.
The current political climate and the racial discord it has engendered makes Holmes feel like a space like hers is more vital than ever. Already on every Martin Luther King Day she holds a unity event for patrons to come and have a discussion about race in America. She’ll be holding one again Monday — a week that begins with the federal holiday for the civil rights leader and ends with the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump.
Creating a dialogue
Holmes was raised in the Bahai faith, a religion that promotes racial equality and believes “racism is the most vital and challenging issue facing America.” Her upbringing led her to major in African American studies and psychology in college.
In 2014, she created her brick-and-mortar venture, Love ‘n Faith, which merged her two passions: community outreach and food service. “I wanted my place to be a beacon of light; I wanted it to be a place where people when they come in they feel the love,” she said. “I wanted it to be a source of inspiration because society right now is really dark.”
On this early morning, two women are sipping freshly squeezed juices. Others cycle through for lattes or breakfast paninis. Holmes greets each with a lively hello and a big smile.
Robert Herndon, 74, a black man who has lived in the neighborhood since the 1960s, walks in for coffee, and Holmes gives him her cheery welcome. About 30 minutes later, as he prepares to leave, Holmes calls out, “Bye, love, thanks for coming in.” He turns and smiles. “Keep the faith,” he says.