I come by my tea drinking habits naturally. My mother starts heating hot water for tea as soon as she wakes up; so did my grandmother. I don’t remember Mother ever fixing coffee except for company. She still keeps her china teacup near the stove all day, pouring boiling water over the same teabag over and over again to get every last bit of good out of the leaves Lipton put in it.
The goodness of tea is in its slowness. It takes time for a mug full of very hot tea to reach a temp I can sip, but even the waiting is at one with a warm drink that soothes and heals. Lingering over a hot cup is part of the act of drinking tea.
Starbuck’s doesn’t make much money off me. The tall tea is the cheapest thing to order. And to me, it’s good deal to get that much Calm, Zen, Earl Gray, English Breakfast, or Darjeeling in a cup. It’s soothing, especially this time of year.
Drinking tea alone is a very good thing. But drinking tea in the company of someone else is like drinking in friendship, attention, and conversation all at once. These things, like matters of the Spirit, need time to steep. You can’t rush tea. My favorite line of Anne Lamott’s is this: “It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony.” The simple ceremony centers me.
In mid-November I’d been thinking about the gift tea has played in my life – how many afternoons I’ve stopped for tea when I’m in another city or country – how few I’ve stopped for tea with a friend here. The next day at staff meeting, Dorisanne asked if any of us had decided on a spiritual discipline for Advent. I didn’t say anything out loud that day. But inside, I was still thinking about tea.
A few years ago Judy Prather and I heard Wayne Muller talk about two kinds of healing. "One kind,” he said, “is the healing that comes when we look for what is broken and out of balance. We search for a way to put our hand to the source of pain or surgically repair the wounded place. We do what we can to heal the sharp, hurting pieces of life. We offer our gifts. . . “But there’s another way of healing . . . We listen to the things that haven’t been broken. We take time to see where wholeness is alive. We notice what is good. We help make the quiet, invisible things visible. We remember the things that don’t die – the changing of the seasons, friendships, God’s love. We take time to see where wholeness lives in others. The healing of the world turns on all these good things.”
Drinking tea may seem a long way from the word “discipline.” But if it slows me down, I will put another teabag in my mug, each morning, each afternoon, each evening this Advent. In this small ceremony, I will raise my blue mug give thanks for you.
“The cup of grace,”
Sharlande Sledge
Lake Shore Baptist Church (Waco, TX)
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