Making Tea

This is a story with a story. As matters go, this actually is about making tea. Not spilling it.

In my world making tea has always meant that one is putting the kettle under the tap, running water into the kettle. The kettle is put on stove or in the case of an electric kettle, plugged in. Once upon a very long time ago I was taught to let the kettle boil. Immediately turn off the heat and pour the hot water over the tea, whether loose in a teapot or a bag in a cup. Once the tea has steeped it is polluted with milk, sugar, honey or whatever suits the drinkers’ fancy.

Then I met an Irishman who told me, much to my horror and dismay, that I had been taught all wrong. The right way to make tea is to keep an eye on the kettle. When it is hot, but before the water boils, kill the heat. Give the almost boiling water a few seconds to calm. Take the kettle off the stove. Pour the water over the tea. Cup or pot. Loose or bagged.

If the tea is black, such as Irish or English, put milk in the cup before pouring in the tea or water. It makes the tea milder. That is the Irish way to do it. No one who is taught to make tea by an Englishman would ever think to put milk in the cup before the tea.

The reason the Irish put the milk in the cup before the tea, something which few people might know or remember, came from a few hundred years ago when very delicate Chinese porcelain cups were used. The cups made in those centuries were likely to crack when boiling hot fluids were poured into them. The thrifty Irish poured milk into their cups before the hot tea to preserve their tea cups.

My personal experience is that the Irishman was right about tea. Those who initially taught me, alas, were wrong.

This story leads to the question, how are you making your spiritual tea?

Are you taking care for yourself? It’s entirely too easy in this world to scald our souls — and our physical beings — with rash and foolish decisions. It’s all too easy to tell ourselves we’re controlling our lives. We think we control our health, our jobs, our rights and freedoms. We believe that we have and will continue to have control over all these facets of our lives in the future

Great.

More power to us?

Not very likely. We have to put work into everything to get anything. If we put work into our spirited spiritual lives, our souls, we have a chance. We have to put in the effort to create good in our souls, in our lives and the lives of other people.

If you are preparing to walk out a door and see it opening, do you even think that maybe there is a person on the other side weighted down with packages who struggled to open that door? Or do you walk through, pushing them aside and ignoring them? Behaving as if it were their job to open the door for you?

If you have a scintilla of sense, you stand back and let that other person pass before you.

I know. I am the voice of experience on this one. Today I was loaded down with heavy packages. With my one free finger I opened a door and began to walk through it. At which time a young woman and her male companion coming from the opposite direction shoved me aside.

Behind me was another elderly man with packages. Interestingly, that man offered to help me. Unlike the couple half our ages who had pushed us aside.

As I so often heard from the elders in my community growing up, I hope those young people live to be very old. I hope they live to know what it’s like to be pushed aside.

It’s clear the young couple have stunted spiritual growth. A spiritually or emotionally mature person would not presume to behave so badly. The man who offered to help me has seen life. He knows. As we spoke his soul shone through.

He knows what it is like to be shoved aside. To be treated as if you do not exist. From what he told me, he also knows what it is like to be appreciated and acknowledged for who he is.

That’s the thing about spirituality.

If and when we wish to grow up and become mature adults, choices must be made. We can decide to remain emotionally stunted. We can push other people aside.

Or we can grow up.

Become spiritually mature adults.

Know when to stand our ground and when to give way to others. Pay attention to what burdens others carry through life.

Of course, one of the burdens so easy to see is the weight of believing the lies we tell ourselves. The day we think that we are more important than all other people, we have shattered our fragile vessel.