Here’s how tea can reduce the world’s problems

It’s official. I’ve turned my husband Dan into a Chai tea snob.

 

We have a daily Chai tea break mid-morning at home.

 

And we never leave town—road trip, hiking, snowshoeing—without a thermos of homemade Chai tea.

 

As we’ve had opportunity to sample a variety of Chai teas, Dan can now rate them on a scale of 1-10. And he does a pretty good job.

Hence, a snob.

Consider this thought from Mma Ramotswe, the fictitious heroine of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books:

Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk.

In my humble opinion, truer words were never spoken.

I have solved many of the world’s problems with tea keeping me company. Well. Maybe it was more like life’s challenges. But still … there was the tea.

Why the heck does any of this matter, you ask.

It’s really not about the tea. It’s about sitting still long enough to savor a cup of tea.

It’s about taking a few deep breaths, and relaxing our shoulders, and reflecting on the goodness falling down all around us. Because you know there’s a whole lot of goodness even as we walk through this earth’s heartbreaks and challenges and trauma.

Be still and know that I am God. — Psalm 46:10

The original Hebrew for the word still can be translated as, “cease, idle, be still.”

That’s counter-intuitive for our American culture. We earn the badges that confirm our value by being overly-busy, and overly-worked, and overly-exhausted.

No one earns a badge from sitting idle with a cup of tea and contemplating the good things in our lives.

Good things like, one more day in which I can see, and hear, and smell, and taste, and feel the strong arms of my husband holding me. One more day with a roof over my head, one more day of provision. I will probably not go hungry this day. One more day of no enemy bombs dropping from the skies. One more day with people to love and people who love me. One more day of Chai tea. One more day of … well, you get the picture.

Go ahead. Brew a cup of tea … OK, OK, coffee works, too. Sit idle with your brew and savor each sip.

Someone named Thich Nhat Hanh wrote:

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.

Now there’s a unique concept — living this actual moment of life.