Tea, the Universe, and Everything.

Earlier today certain friends and I were sitting around talking about the proper way to accomplish proper tea. It reminded me of this short essay by Douglas Adams who wrote concerning life, the universe, and everything. I may not agree with him on most things, but I enjoy him immensely and I certainly agree with him on the topic of tea. You can find the essay from The Salmon of Doubt here, along with an animated visual apologia for the proper way to add milk to one's tea. Go and watch it. For now, enjoy your tea properly.

One or two Americans have asked me why it is that the English like tea so much, which never seems to them to be a very good drink. To understand, you have to know how to make it properly.

There is a very simple principle to the making of tea and it's this - to get the proper flavour of tea, the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves. If it's merely hot then the tea will be insipid. That's why we English have these odd rituals, such as warming the teapot first (so as not to cause the boiling water to cool down too fast as it hits the pot). And that's why the American habit of bringing a teacup, a tea bag and a pot of hot water to the table is merely the perfect way of making a thin, pale, watery cup of tea that nobody in their right mind would want to drink. The Americans are all mystified about why the English make such a big thing out of tea because most Americans have never had a good cup of tea. That's why they don't understand. In fact the truth of the matter is that most English people don't know how to make tea any more either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.

So the best advice I can give to an American arriving in England is this. Go to Marks and Spencer and buy a packet of Earl Grey tea. Go back to where you're staying and boil a kettle of water. While it is coming to the boil, open the sealed packet and sniff. Careful - you may feel a bit dizzy, but this is in fact perfectly legal. When the kettle has boiled, pour a little of it into a tea pot, swirl it around and tip it out again. Put a couple (or three, depending on the size of the pot) of tea bags into the pot (If I was really trying to lead you into the paths of righteousness I would tell you to use free leaves rather than bags, but let's just take this in easy stages). Bring the kettle back up to the boil, and then pour the boiling water as quickly as you can into the pot. Let it stand for two or three minutes, and then pour it into a cup. Some people will tell you that you shouldn't have milk with Earl Grey, just a slice of lemon. Screw them. I like it with milk. If you think you will like it with milk then it's probably best to put some milk into the bottom of the cup before you pour in the tea.¹ If you pour milk into a cup of hot tea you will scald the milk. If you think you will prefer it with a slice of lemon then, well, add a slice of lemon.

Drink it. After a few moments you will begin to think that the place you've come to isn't maybe quite so strange and crazy after all.

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¹ This is socially incorrect. The socially correct way of pouring tea is to put the milk in after the tea. Social correctness has traditionally had nothing whatever to do with reason, logic or physics. In fact, in England it is generally considered socially incorrect to know stuff or think about things. It's worth bearing this in mind when visiting.

"There's something stuck in your teeth" and other reasons why we need the Church

Other reasons include, "you're being an idiot"' and "you're being mean" and various other adaptations of the same theme. But ultimately, we need people in our lives who tell us things that are not comfortable, who will tell us things we will not like, who will tell us the truth, and who will love us while doing it.

That's what I've learned today. Churches aren't just buildings we show up to Sunday morning, they are buildings that happen to hold people who hopefully love us well enough and know us well enough to show us things about ourselves that aren't pretty in order to show us our true beauty.

I have had my share of hurts in churches, I'm still not even sure if I'm in the right place or have made right decisions. But this I do know: I know that the church extends beyond brick and mortar. The church is made up of people who can be pretty darn ugly to each other. But nonetheless people, who if they tough it out, eventually learn to see the beauty of Christ in each other and love one with the deepest of love because it is a love that defies conditions.

I've been doing a lot of thinking on this lately. I'm working on finishing up an ecclesiology (the study of the church) class in addition to other things. I love it when my academic life serves to dig things up in my heart, when the two intersect. Not as much as I'll love having this class off my plate so I can move on to other things, but still life can't be all perfect.

But it is just this lack of perfection that reminds me that the church is not a dead thing, but a living thing. It forces me to remember why I fight for the church, even when it breaks my heart.
So those of you who are in it with me. Thanks. I need you.

Are you sure I don't have anything in my teeth?

A little nerdy.

I'm sitting in class and Dr. MacKenzie just whipped out some hebrew off the top of his head. Rolled off his tongue. Why am I surprised? I shouldn't be. Of course he speaks hebrew, I've just been in his class for two years now and have never heard him do it.

Now he's quoting Einstein again, from a personal conversation they had, of course.

I started writing this about how lately I've felt myself dress more nerdy and librarian-ish than normal. I think I'm getting tired. Well, at least I realize it. When I start buying nerdy, someone needs to shoot me. Assembling nerdy from pieces that are not inherently nerdy I think can still be forgiven. There is something kind of fun about my green cardigan and reading glasses--with rhinestones of course. Nerdy with style.

Maybe I'm just not making much effort. Maybe I'm enjoying living the grad school stereotype. But seriously, friends, don't let me go too far down this road.

Ryan has told me I need to lighter things once in a while, just to keep things interesting. Does this count?

A good word from an old friend on Christmas

Maybe one day I'll have something of my own to say. For now, I give you wise words from our old friend Augustine:

The things of earth are not merely good; they are undoubtedly gifts from God. But, of course, if those who get such goods in the city of men are reckless about the better goods of the City of God, in which there is to be the ultimate victory of an eternal, supreme, and untroubled peace, if men so love the goods of earth as to believe that these are the only goods or if they love them more than the goods they know to be better, then the consequence is inevitable; misery and more misery.
~ City of God: Book XV, Ch. 4.

It's quite nice when one's studies bring one to a work of beauty in the midst of chaos:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.


By Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), Oxford.

On conflict and not sleeping.

Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not the let the sun go down on your anger.

So that thing that Paul said, he's right. I don't know if everyone is like me. But when there is unresolved conflict, there is conflict when it comes to sleep. I've often thought that it comes as a blessing in disguise, God keeping things on a short leash if you will, not letting it get buried. I've spent a lot of years burying thing but a couple of years ago I began to sense this inability to do so anymore.

Paul knew that anger burns a hole in your heart or in my case, my stomach. But then again, the stomach/general gut area was understood to be more the core of the person in Paul's time. And though we pray and fight it and try to maintain the belief that it's a misunderstanding and that there is no real animosity between parties, when there is no communication to confirm such things, it's a constant battle to not allow the hurt to turn into hatred and bitterness. We battle to believe the best, but without actually talking to one another, we too easily turn towards believing the worst.

We fight to curb our passive-aggressive tendencies. But to do so means balancing voicing our hurt so that we move toward one another in a way that will bring life and truth and growth through the pain; not destruction, not a surface assuaging of the anguish that lives underneath. Relationships are dangerous. The great Pat Benetar said it well, “Love is a battlefield.” To maintain them we have to live in truth, not in lies. Live in grace, not in condemnation. Live in a type of love that is willing to sacrifice, to put others first. The type of love that is willing to own one's sin yet isn't afraid to call others out, as well.

It's hard stuff. Dangerous stuff. But when done well, it can change us. And save us. And maybe even let us sleep tonight. I'll let you know how that goes.

I leave off tonight with some lyrics that didn't make much sense to me until I learned that they were about the writer's relationship with his brother. As much as I dislike quoting songs everyone knows (unfortunately I have a bit of the elitist in me, sorry), I do reserve the right for the popular to sometimes be the profound. And tonight, these words finally make sense and feel particularly poignant.

I never knew that everything was falling through
That everyone I knew was waiting on a cue
To turn and run when all I needed was the truth
But that's how it's got to be
It's coming down to nothing more than apathy
I'd rather run the other way than stay and see
The smoke and who's still standing when it clears

Let's rearrange
I wish you were a stranger I could disengage
Just say that we agree and then never change
Soften a bit until we all just get along
But that's disregard
Find another friend and you discard
As you lose the argument in a cable car
Hanging above as the canyon comes between

And suddenly I become a part of your past
I'm becoming the part that don't last
I'm losing you and its effortless

Without a sound we lose sight of the ground
In the throw around
Never thought that you wanted to bring it down
I won't let it go down till we torch it ourselves

And everyone knows I'm in over my head

Mercy on Language

Lately I find that though I have much to say, I find little desire to write. It's as if it is a welling up time, throwing things into the stew pot which are not yet cooked but one day will be. Until then, a poem introduced to me by my dear friend, Bono.

God's Laughter, by Brendan Kennelly

Someone had mercy on language
changed it into something else I can touch
I can touch
grow to love, murmured Ace
as he heard the stranger talking
of how laughter comes from God.

Who, hearing words from his own mouth
and from others, cannot stop himself
laughing or freezing in terror

at sound bubbling up out of infinite
emptiness? Well fill it up with pride
and let vanity strut along for the ride.

When the ride peters out at the edge
of small daring, then that other sound
opens.

This is the sound of God's laughter,
like nothing on earth, it fills
earth from grave to mountain-top,
lingers there a while, then like a great
bird spreading its wings for home or somewhere
like home,
heads out into silence,
gentle and endless, longing to understand

children, killers of children, killers. Mercy. Silence. Sound.
Mercy. Sound. Word. Sound. Change, there must be
change. There is. Say flesh. Say love. Say dust.
Say laughter. Who will call the fled bird back?
Stand. Kneel. Curse. Pray. Give us this day
our daily laughter. Let it show the way.
Thank God someone has mercy
on the words we find we must say.