Thoughts on Tea: Part 1

I was never a big tea drinker. Even though I grew up in the South, where sweet tea is delivered in an IV drip, I never had a taste for it hot or cold. As I was getting ready to graduate from undergrad, a friend made it her mission to make me into a tea drinker. She took me to a tea shop in Lakeland and after searching almost their entire collection, I found my gateway teas which were herbal and fruity and tasted nothing like tea.

I went on with my fruity tea ways until I learned that I was going to be studying in England. If you know nothing else about England, you know that tea is a BIG deal. Therefore I knew that I needed to work on my taste for tea.

Enter the British exchange students. After sharing with them my hesitancy with tea, they made me a “proper British cuppa.” It was when they poured a splash of milk into the steamy tea that the tea-gates opened and my first step of inculturation was born. It was truly a revolution. The milk dulls the bitterness which I so disliked of tea (brewing it for the proper amount of time I have found also helps), and gives it a nice creamy flavor. I was a born again tea drinker. I was ready for England.

Towards the end of my time in England, people liked to ask me, “So what will you miss most about England?” The more  thought about it since then, I have realized that what I will miss most are the tea times. For the British, tea creates a space for hospitality, friendship, invitation, and consolation. When moving to a new house, your tea supplies are the first things you unpack and you “put the kettle on.” When someone comes over to your house-“put the kettle on.” Someone crying in the common room? “Put the kettle on.”

Whether significant or mundane, tea punctuates the moments of British life. It brings people together and warms their hands as well as their hearts. There is just no real equivalent in American life. How can we in the busyness of our American lives build those tea times into our routines? Make the time to stop and sit with each other, comfort one another, live with one another?

Because tea is so important, I thought that it deserved two different posts. Next week, I will not only describe how to make a “proper English cuppa” (Be prepared. The process is fraught with fascinating characters (see below) and controversy), but also explore some more of these issues.

Hello Goodbye

“You say “Yes,” I say “No.”
You say “Stop,” and I say “Go go go.”
Oh no.
You say “Goodbye” and I say “Hello, hello, hello”
-The Beatles

There is a beautiful certainty in routines. I love when I have things figured out, when my life is going in the direction I know. When I have a plan and a destination and the steps forward are illuminated before me. I don’t like transitions. The awkward speed of the on-ramp or the slow taxi to the terminal with the seat belt sign still illuminated.

But that is the season in which I find myself. The lingering effects of Jet lag, the preparations to begin what will be my final year at Divinity School, and trying to process the previous year in England.

In May when I came home for Duke’s graduation, the minute I stepped off that plane everything I left in England became a blur. It was like I had fallen asleep at one airport only to awaken in a different one after having a dream worthy of L. Frank Baum.  This response scared me. Over the previous 10 months I know that I have been shaped and formed in ways that I am only beginning to understand. I have become more passionate about my calling to ordained ministry and more dedicated to my own personal discipleship, And, throughout that process  made friendships all across England that cherish.

The thought of all that growth vanishing the puff of smoke focused my final few weeks. I filled in all the gaps of my London to-do list, I took the time to eat with friends and learn some English recipes, and I wandered around Durham taking pictures and soaking up more memories so that I could board my plane in Newcastle with luggage full of souvenirs and a heart absent of regret. I succeeded in both. So, now the challenge begins of making this side of the transition successfully. Of integrating the lessons I learned in England to the life I live in the United States.

My first Sunday back at Trinity was in many ways a typical American Methodist service. There were two hymns, a creed, some prayers and a sermon. But at the same time, it was all different. The first hymn was “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” (one of my favorite of Charles Wesley), but sung to the American tune. The second, “Bless the Lord, O My Soul (10,000 Reasons) by modern English Christian songwriter, Matt Redman, was one that I sang many times over the past 10 months. As the service ended I realized that this was my new life. I realized that no longer are my only resources American ones. I realized that my theological, ministerial and personal worldview now stretches across the ocean. I am not sure how all of that is going to work. I am not sure how I am going to put the English lessons I learned into practice in the Church in America.

All these things are still a mystery and the questions they raise I hope will be fleshed out in new blog posts in the future, but also in sermons,  prayers,  conversations over cups of tea, or in debates in the classroom. As I said goodbye to those in England, my prayer was that my time would conclude with a comma instead of a full stop, that our lives would cease to intertwine because we not longer live in the same place or the same time zone. And I hope that the hellos to old friends and the new ones that I will make this year will be enriched by the experiences I have had and the people I have met because I am going to need both the old and the new, the English and the American in order to do the work that God has called me to. Where that journey takes me and us I don’t know, but as I merge back into American life I am grateful that I have so many more people in my corner now and though I may want to tell God to stop, all the signs are telling me to Go, Go Go.

Me and friends at my last meal in Durham.