3 Creams, 2 Sugars, and a Dash of the Celestial: Time Spent at the Roots Brew Shop
In the core of Grand Rapids, on the corner of Seward and Seventh, sits Roots Brew Shop, nestled into the polished shell of the Seventh Street Lofts—a coffee shop occupying its rightful place as the creamy center of a pastry priced out of reach for most of the neighborhood. Across the street, a bus stop plays host to the typical minor mischief you’d expect from unhoused locals, fresh off their rounds at the food bank down the block. But for the most part, the area is postcard perfect. The lofts themselves, from the outside, have all the appeal of a trendy urban haven—spacious, industrial-chic, with just the right amount of exposed brick to remind you how far you've come. Of course, being a regular at Roots doesn’t grant you access to the loft parking spots. Still, there are worse fates than having to parallel park on the street. The short walk past the loft entrance, flanked by pruned greenery, feels almost idyllic. Trees arch overhead, casting a gentle shade over the patio tables where patrons linger, sipping their artisanal lattes and pretending not to notice the mild, often entertaining drama unfolding across the street.
Step inside, the vibe remains—the aesthetic from the sidewalk slips effortlessly indoors. The first thing that strikes you, immediately, is the sheer size of the place, almost an indulgence for a coffee shop. And on most mornings, it’s brimming with people. It's designed for every conceivable coffee shop activity one could think of. Four booths for work and casual meet ups, while eight or so stools are scattered about under high counters for laptop bound loners usually there to doomscroll social media or look at homes they can’t afford on Zillow. Two or three sprawling, circular tables sit ready to embrace the beautiful chaos of either children or an oversized group of caffeine-fueled conversationalists ready for a board game. Then there are the lounge areas, plural—plush, inviting, practically begging you to sink in and lose yourself in a book for an hour or two. Meanwhile, the individual tables dotting the rest of the room cater to the workers: headphones on, spreadsheet open, phones buzzing. Those ones are for me, a spot to plug in, tune out, write a story.
The place is busy before noon, always a line, so you’ve got a few minutes to casually scan the menu before stepping up to the counter, even though I get the same three things every time. When your turn comes, you’re always greeted by someone genuinely happy to see you—an uncanny warmth, like they’ve mastered the lost art of making strangers feel at home. Take it from me, someone who practically lives in cafes, the perpetually wayward kid with the case of the “writers,” (symptoms include inflated self-importance, staring at walls and losing arguments with my own brain) I can say with conviction: you won’t find a more inviting, well-meaning crew. The staff is a mix of ages and backgrounds, but generally hovers around what I’d peg as early twenties—still youthful, still unjaded, still chock-full of a sincerity that feels increasingly rare these days.
My usual: a large iced black coffee, and a Turkey sandwich if I forgot to eat. It’s a coffee house staple of mine. Black coffee and forgetting to eat breakfast. I don't actually like black coffee, but it's something I can sip slowly enough to nurse through a two-hour writing session. Whenever I order coffee with cream or sugar, I finish it without even realizing, and before I’ve written more than a sentence, I’m already staring into an empty cup, wondering what happened. To avoid that trap, I go for a drink I can tolerate rather than enjoy—something purely functional. And here, at Roots, the coffee’s good enough to get the job done.
I still remember the first day I really lost myself in writing there. It was the third time I went. I was tucked into the solo booth on the left—the one that gets blasted with refracted sunlight at just the right (or wrong) time of day. I probably looked ridiculous, sitting inside with sunglasses on, then off, then on again, depending on where the sun decided to strike. But there was a warmth that went beyond the sunlight—a kind of comforting energy in the space itself. It was the kind of moment where the outside world blurred and the act of writing felt seamless, like I was exactly where I needed to be. Everything was in its right place. That all too fleeting feeling is why I write. I was working on a short story back then, loosely based on this wild memory of my dad taking me backstage to a Foo Fighters concert on the night of the 2000 presidential election. I was way too young to be there, but the whole experience left a mark—the collision of two major events, personal and historical, all wrapped up in one night—before I knew the world, before I knew myself. That’s what I was trying to capture on the page, and in that space, it was somehow made possible.
I wrote it fairly clean, all 5,600 words, in one unbroken flow. I closed my laptop, took my headphones off (which are always either on silent to muffle noise, or spinning ambient music on low) and exhaled. I took the final sip of what was my second iced coffee and took notice of my surroundings. It was past noon, but the place was still packed, busier even. And then I began to see a pattern—a certain type of person emerged, a recurring theme I didn’t before see.
I’ve always thrived off writing in public spaces, drawing energy from the collective wavelengths given off by people working on themselves—whether it’s school, jobs, or side projects. There’s something about being alone together that sharpens my focus, especially after years of café hopping, from Philly to Rome to the Jersey Shore. But nowhere, in all my wandering, had I ever seen so many people studying the Bible.
I hadn’t noticed it at first, but suddenly it was everywhere. There, in plain sight, were priests—collared and affable, radiating talcum powder and the unspoken privilege of enjoying their coffee for free, thanks to their VIP status. The corner jewelry stand was adorned with crosses and Christian symbols, and it seemed that every patron, save for me, wore a symbol of faith. It was like a not-so-subtle undercurrent, one that had been there the whole time, just waiting for me to notice, and yet, the writer who fancies himself a keen observationalist, whiffed on it completely.
Not that it bothered me. Not long ago, I was just a tike in my school tie and khakis, catching the bus to St. James Elementary School, where Christian harmony was a daily norm. I look back on those days with a certain fondness, a potent nostalgia, remembering them as a time of uncomplicated wonder. Even with secular parents and their odd blend of contradictions that included buying me Grand Theft Auto and sending me to Catholic school, religion was always there. I even credit C.S Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia, an overtly Christian themed series from one of the most gifted nonsecular minds the world has ever known for sparking my lifelong love for books. Even if my parents’ choice to enroll me in Catholic school had nothing to do with religious conviction and everything to do with appearance, it was still there, as it is now. Omnipresent. Both comforting and maddening, and sometimes fascinating, depending on where I stood with it at any given moment. In that way, I’m no different from the moon, constantly waxing and waning, going through phases, always cycling back to the same familiar place after all that work.
My first phase of faith was that of a fervent believer. It often is when you’re a child and adults tell you things. Sometimes, when you see the horror in the world, how it unfolds daily and without pause, it’s easy to empathize with some of the stories told to our children through the church. However, I still believe Tolstoy, a Christian hero of mine, when he wrote in The Kingdom of God is Within You: “The chief and most pernicious work of the Church is that which is directed to the deception of children—these very children of whom Christ said: "Woe to him that offendeth one of these little ones.” From the very first awakening of the consciousness of the child they begin to deceive him, to instill into him with the utmost solemnity what they do not themselves believe in, and they continue to instill it into him till the deception has by habit grown into the child's nature. They studiously deceive the child on the most important subject in life, and when the deception has so grown into his life that it would be difficult to uproot it, then they reveal to him the whole world of science and reality, which cannot by any means be reconciled with the beliefs that have been instilled into him, leaving it to him to find his way as best he can out of these contradictions.”
This applied to me. Directly. In ways I wasn’t prepared for. When I finally ended up in public high school, something that was fought over, it became clear just how tangled my beliefs had gotten. Spending those crucial years between third and seventh grade convinced that my dead grandmother, who I loved deeply, was in heaven, singing karaoke with Judy Garland, keeping score with God, watching me, was far from comforting. It wasn’t a gentle reassurance that she was in a better place anymore, especially now with so much new information; it was a kind of spiritual surveillance, a cosmic weight on my shoulders that was made worse by being exposed to so many differing worldviews for the first time.
When secular kids bully you, shaping your belief system like it’s a sort of celestial North Korea, where you live in constant awareness of the man upstairs monitoring your every move, and you realize it’s true, it warps things. By the time I hit ninth grade and walked into science class still thinking the Earth was 6,000 years old, it was clear those early years had left a deep imprint—one that took time to unravel. Over the course of those four years, it did. And it hurt deeply, the confusion, the lies that left me empty and depressed with a heavy psychic burden to overcome.
College is tailor made for rebellion, so of course, that became the natural next phase for me, initially. I ended up dating a communist. By then, though, the term had softened to “socialist,” I think, but the vibe was the same, at least according to the writings of Jean Paul Sartre. I wanted nothing to do with religion. By freshman year, my faith had all but evaporated—at least in any way I cared to show. I hadn’t gone to mass in ages, I didn’t pray, didn’t touch the Bible. For all intents and purposes, I wasn’t a Christian anymore. I was a philosopher, a writer, a student, a blossoming intellectual. It felt only natural, being exposed to so many alternative opinions, to want to devour them all. Essentially making up for lost time.
I was angry—resentful, really—at the Catholic Church for keeping things hidden from me. If it hadn’t been for her rage, her guidance, and, if I’m being honest, the sex, I probably wouldn’t have made it through that expedition of disillusionment. I was discovering for the first time just how pernicious televangelists could be, preying on the poor and the elderly. I read books that dragged Mother Teresa through the mud, portraying her as someone who reduced women to mere tools, fit for nothing but cleaning and breeding. I read exposés on the Falwell’s, detailing the corruption and greed running through their church empire. On Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye. All of them, apart from Billy Graham, were reprehensible crooks.
Then came the Old Testament—my eyes finally open to the possibility of allegory, my brain rewiring in real-time. The God I once thought of as wise and loving now seemed wicked, vindictive, cruel. How could anyone hold up the story of Abraham—a man ready to sacrifice his own son—as the foundation for a moral code? I was learning so much, but with every revelation, I became even more confused. Looking back, growing up immersed in a school with such different teachings, I should’ve been easier on myself.
And the figures I now held in such high regard, in a place that was once occupied by religion—these writers who seemed to open the world up before me—they were atheists. Nietzsche, Plath, Yeats. Roth, Jefferson, Sexton, Hitchens, Marx, McCarthy. I was listening to the Velvet Underground, Television, and Blondie, not one of them had room for God, at least not in any way definable way, yet they were becoming gods to me. They were proof that the path forward didn’t require faith. At least, that’s what I thought at the time...
It took years to realize that both phases, both extremes—the full moon and the waning gibbous—were necessary in building the foundation of the faith I hold today. The secure feeling I have within myself concerning it. I had to, in a way, marry the two. It was the only way to keep my sanity intact, to reconcile it all. The way I learned is to just have faith, just faith, to never be positive. The definition of faith is to believe without evidence, so when religious people, some of them in Roots, approach you and tell you they are positive your soul will burn for eternity if you don’t accept Christ as your savior, they are, inherently disobeying the teachings of Christ. Teachings that, after hardships, breakups, layoffs, and mental breakdowns, I can come back to, in any state of belief.
The teachings of a revolutionary, an empathetic man who seemed to understand the human condition in a way that transcended his time by centuries. A man who wanted to eat the rich and feed the poor. The pioneer of servant leadership and universal compassion. I can take that, the Beatitudes and all, with me wherever I go, and I can leave the rest. I can use them the way I see fit, mold his teachings to benefit my life, not the other way around, and I can be nice, I can live in the moment.
Did he really walk on water or turn water into wine? Was he born of a virgin?! I don’t know, and frankly, it hardly matters to me anymore. Faith is faith, in the end, it’s about how you live. Staying present, staying aware that we’ve all been cast into this indifferent universe without asking for it, that we’re all just muddling through together—well, that’s enough. The struggles of others are as real as mine, and if I can ease them, even just a little, in some fleeting moment of shared humanity, why wouldn’t I? That’s what keeps me grounded and motivated for the future. That’s how I live out Christ’s message in a way that feels right to me. Does that make me a Christian, an agnostic, I don’t really know. It no longer matters to me.
This feeling, this clarity about what faith means to me—at least what I can grasp—has, ironically, been shaped right here in Roots Brew Shop into something distinct, something meaningful, something beautiful. Because, in the end, it has all led me in a direct line to a higher connection with my higher power: writing. Bleeding on the blank page, pouring out my soul, consciously drifting between thought and language, letting one word tumble into the next, building momentum, creating something from scratch. That’s where my faith truly resides—in the process, in the craft, in the research, in the unrelenting pursuit of love and expression.
Roots is closed on Sundays, billed as a day of rest. I didn’t know that until I showed up one Sunday morning, expecting the usual warm greeting, only to be met by a locked door. The same unjaded, youthful staff, likely at mass. Praying to things I don’t believe in. But in that moment, I realized we were more alike than different, despite any disagreements we might have about where we go after all this ends or what it all means. I, too, wanted to go to church. To nourish my soul, to recalibrate myself for the week ahead.
For years, I used to say that, outside of a funeral, I hadn’t set foot in a church in a decade. But now, I realize that I do go to church—it just doesn’t look the way most people would define it. I go often, in fact. Usually from 10:30 to 3, around about three days a week. I go to feed my soul, to draw inspiration, to ground myself in something bigger. I go to tell a story. When it comes to church, for me, it’s Roots. For coffee. And a dash of the celestial.
