Chapter Fourteen

THE HALOED LIGHT OF TEA

Justice Tea

Caroline Logsdon, a dear friend of mine, tells the story of learning about justice tea from Thailand. The way to serve this tea is to let 2 tablespoons loose-leaf tea float freely in a teapot with water heated to 180 degrees. Filter it as you pour it through a strainer into a cup.

At a local restaurant in Chiang Mai in the northern area of Thailand, the cook prepared a pot of oolong tea for Caroline. She described in detail when she returned to Nashville how the leaves were grown in the mountains near Mae Salong, replacing the opium fields. The people who harvest at this elevation, including Thai, Chinese, Lisu, and Akha villagers, have a long history of resisting the communist rule in China and Burma. This tea is grown by a community with a sense that generations share the food, work, and gifts.

LIGHT SEEPS THROUGH THE smallest cracks like hope. There is a small town in Tennessee called Craggy Hope. The name itself sounds like a place with only a speck of hope poking through gray and lifeless rock. When you crest the hill in the town, the image is reinforced by the gray of exposed limestone cutting through the brown grass and three old buzzards sitting in a barren hackberry tree. There is a cabin by the road with a worn-out rebel flag hanging from the clothesline near a bunch of trash and old tires. Across the road is a fenced-in field with just one sheep standing there looking abandoned and alone.

I keep remembering that scene as I think about one of the women at Thistle Farms saying in an interview that she had begged a john to kill her, just so the pain would stop. She said, “I left him and living in hotels and walking around in a daze and so mad at myself and so confused and I couldn’t even prostitute right. There were women walking by this old brown car where a man was trying to pick up a woman. I thought they were just passing up money. So I went in the car with him and, by the end of it, I was begging him to kill me. It was violent and painful and worse than I could imagine, and I left his car and went out again. I can’t imagine, I was hurt and tired, but I kept walking.” She was completely alone in this world.

It is in stories like hers, which are all too familiar and horrid, that it’s easy to find the strength to keep walking toward building the café. I keep thinking about that single sheep down in Craggy Hope—lonely and forsaken. I couldn’t turn away from the sheep in Craggy Hope that day. It is closer to home than I want to admit. The places that epitomize our fear and make the hairs stick up on the backs of our necks are the ones to seek. Then we know the gift of the sliver of light. It is in the places where we are alone and lost that we appreciate light most of all.

That same kind of sliver of light can be found dancing in a fresh cup of brewed tea. A cup of oolong made with flower petals is the color of sunshine. With sunlight as bright as a noonday sun over a Nebraska field, the reflection is so clear I can distinguish the tones in my skin. The light from the cup reflects the sunlight as haloed rings dance inside the cup as the liquid searches for the lowest point. If you look into this single perfect cup of tea in just the right way, it appears as if the whole sun is sitting inside. Light has been dancing prominently in my head for weeks now. As spring breaks free, there is light everywhere. It is pouring into the café through the four huge new windows the contractors broke through the concrete walls. It is rising in the thousands of new wildflowers pushing through the hard winter ground. It is sitting on my lap as I write in the early morning by the kitchen window, and it is filling spaces with hope that have been darkened for weeks.

I noticed one of the more remarkable images of light I have ever seen early in the morning this spring. It was still dark as I awoke from sleeping on the floor in the San Eduardo Chapel in Ecuador. As I waited for dawn, I saw a beautiful image of a stained glass window on the wall. I had never seen it before, even though I had been sleeping in this chapel for fifteen years during an annual retreat. The image was made from light coming from ventilation cutouts in the concrete wall in the shape of a flower, casting a rosette image on the opposite wall. The light was haloed as it moved and faded with the coming dawn in the middle of the world. What I felt lying there was how all light feels hallowed when we have hearts wide open in the midst of a concrete chapel off a dirt road. In moments such as these, when we remember we are on holy ground, no cathedral is more adorned. In such light, beauty rises from within as truth brushes past and carries us to hope. Light in teacups and dancing on walls become signs of God’s light.

I wondered if something like a vision of light on stone had carried Mary Magdalene through the Easter morning events. The story of the Resurrection begins with the words “while it was still dark.” The light has not yet risen on Jerusalem after the Sabbath as she heads out with grief as her guide to carry her to Jesus’ body. And that is when light and shadow begin their dance like stained glass on concrete. A sliver of light is enough for her to see the stone in front of Jesus’ tomb rolled away and to run toward Peter and John. As they run back to the tomb in a race with the murky light of dawn, they see enough to know Jesus is gone. Mary Magdalene stands alone and tries to see through tears and shadows. The light is surely breaking through as she sees angels and linen on the floor. Then, even as she cannot make out what she is seeing, she hears Jesus calling her. Then the true light of hope fills her from within, and she reaches for Jesus.

The week after I laid my sister’s ashes inside the altar at the A-frame Chapel, I led a Eucharist with the same words and motions I have used every week for twenty years. As I lifted the round unleavened bread, I recited the last prayer: “And at the last day bring us with all your saints into the joy of your eternal kingdom.” As I raised the host, there was a beautiful light with depth filling the center. I almost couldn’t break it; I just stood there drawn into it. It had something to do with the silver paten, the lighting in the room, the angle I was holding the bread, and the space that grief opens in us. I wrote that night that I couldn’t make out what the light was, maybe a lion, but even though it was unclear, I longed for it. The next Sunday, although the preacher and I had not talked with one another, he talked about a vision and said, “Imagine walking into church at night. The candles are the only source of light. Rest your eyes upon the host as it begins to send out rays of light that enter you and flood your soul, cleansing you. The rays soak into your body.”

I asked the preacher where the image came from and if he saw a shape in the light. He said he just felt it. Even murky and shadowed light carries rays of hope in grief. Those rays are enough to bring all of us to a garden while it is still dark, ready to anoint a body, but hopeful enough when we see a sliver of light on rock or bread to run to find answers.

I kept thinking about the light in the host and shining on the wall after we left the chapel and traveled to the eight-hundred-year-old town of Cuenca, Ecuador. Early on the Sabbath, a group of us walked into the cathedral as communion was ending. We approached the altar as the remaining host was being placed in a tabernacle cross, and there it was. In the golden cross holding the host, the light I had glimpsed at the altar and that the preacher described was shining. It looked like a lion’s mane. That light is always there; it is just that sometimes we have to walk through death and letting go to behold it.

When we let light flood our stone hearts, we can feel hope pouring into grief itself. All we grieve is full of light. In the right light, it is possible to feel the hope that danced the first morning of creation, that shines in the darkness, and that will lead us home. A sliver of light can cast stained glass on poor concrete walls, turn bread into a heavenly host, and cut through our darkness enough so we can see we are bathed in the light of love. It means that we can live in hope, dedicated to justice and truth, knowing the light will never leave us. That is the depth and beauty of the light that I see in my cup of tea. That is the kind of light that is ours for the beholding. This morning I celebrate all the light I have ever been graced to see and feel. I offer a toast to the source of all light before my next sip. I wish I could feel this light all the time.

But these days there are hardly enough hours in the day or time to sit and stare into a sweet cup of tea. Everyone on staff is working seven days a week, and we are running so fast that the real issue right now is losing focus and cutting out the light as we try to cut corners. This week the contractors told us the roof has a leak; we can’t afford the sound system or signage; and we have to finalize decisions amid the vying tastes in the interior design and color. It is time to call the team together, bathe in the light of our mission, and see how we can reflect that light through the next weeks before we open. This is the time to stay in the light that has led us this far and not run in fear or get frustrated and live in the shadow parts of our hearts.

Every day there are volunteer groups priming the walls, tying teacups to light fixtures, cleaning wood, building a deck, and figuring out how to make menus from thistle paper. We knew from the beginning that having hundreds of volunteers help create this space would mean hundreds of loyal customers. The volunteer crews will be proud of the mission and want to purchase their tea and show their friends what they did in the name of justice. What I forgot is the burden that such huge numbers of volunteers put on staff members, who end up organizing most of the efforts. The quicker we add a bit to our coffers, make color and tile decisions, and simplify some of the design elements, the faster some of the stress and running around might subside. Part of leadership is not only holding people accountable to deadlines but knowing when to ease the load a bit to get to the goal.

We backed up the opening another week but now have a firm commitment from the mayor that he will cut the ribbon on the café on May 24. We are now officially beginning a countdown, and anything we can do to make it to the goal with our light and love still shining would be good. One of the best things I can think to do this morning is just keep looking into this beautiful cup of light green tea and offering a prayer. We all need to keep seeing the light and walking toward its peace.

Light and darkness travel hand and hand. Because of my work for the past couple of decades, I have ventured into places not lots of folks are privileged to see. Places like prisons, underneath bridges, and alleys that hold some of the worst secrets of all. Places where rays of light and moments of hope are particularly beautiful. All of it has been a huge gift and an exploration into the heart as well as the harder parts of this world. We just returned this week from driving out with a U-Haul on the back of a huge pickup truck to a prison in rural Tennessee where a group of men built cabinets for our café. This work came from a partnership with the Department of Corrections under the leadership of Tom Robinson, who felt that the men could support the women in their work toward independence and recovery. It was a beautiful act of restorative justice that was probably as beneficial for the men as the women. We promised the men that we would take pictures of the cabinets when the café opened so that they could see how their skills were being put to good use in our sanctuary.

It is no easy task getting a U-Haul trailer pulled by a big pickup in and out of a prison. The first issue is that prison officials don’t like people driving huge trucks into prisons. We pulled up to the gate and even though our arrival was planned, three correctional officers in vehicles surrounded us. They explained that you are not allowed to pull up to the gate like that and asked us to back up. Courtney, the great project leader for the café, was driving, and we both looked at each other. Backing up with a big trailer is not easy, and this was the first time either of us had tried it. The correctional officer explained that you have to turn the wheel in the opposite direction you would like the trailer to go in. To me that felt like he said, “I am going to need you to spin around on your toes while we all make fun of you.” So, they let Courtney and me step out of the truck and they took over. Unfortunately, the young man who took over was not an expert in backing up either, and as the taunts on the walkie-talkie increased, he was unable to get us out. Finally another guard helped, and we were able to load about $20,000 worth of cabinets gifted to us by talented incarcerated carpenters into our U-Haul and get back to the Thistle Stop Café.

When we got there to unload, I tried to get two construction guys to drink tea with me. They explained they didn’t drink hot tea, ever. One man was a Seventh-day Adventist; the other, with a thick-drawled country accent, explained that he didn’t drink anything after coffee in the morning except water until he got off work, when he switched to beer. That is just how he was, he said. I said please and told them I’d be really grateful if they would just stop for a minute before we had to unload all these cabinets and just sit and try one cup of our thistle blend with me, but I was flatly rejected.

I was a tea evangelist failure and felt that if I had said it differently or maybe was different, they might have said yes. I get all caught up and confused by rejection. It trips me up and makes me question my abilities and myself. I think what I see and feel should be clear to everyone and that if I just say it again, they will see my light. That is truly messed up! Moments like these are when we get ourselves in the way of the beautiful light shining around us and trip on our own shadows. There is an image in the Gospels of the disciples finding no acceptance in a town. Jesus gives them the first liturgical dance move (followed two chapters later by Lazarus’s “resurrection hop” as he comes out of his tomb in a shroud) of kicking dust off shoes and walking with peace. Instead it’s like I stand at a door letting the dust swirl up around my head as I knock and knock, begging someone to tell me I am good and what I believe is right. When the two men said no thanks, I should have just kicked up my heels and said, “Great, let’s unload the cabinets,” but instead it took another fifteen minutes for them to tell me about their religious backgrounds, potential addiction issues, and most of their family histories and tragedies. I am sure they were as exhausted by me as I was by myself.

People have a need for others to accept their ideas as their own. But that is not the calling of the Gospels or the calling of the way of tea. That way is simply to live and serve others and get out of our own way. We unloaded the cabinets and marveled that the men built them for us. This whole thing is a gift, and I need to unwrap it more gently.

In the midst of light, it is not hard to see the shadows and remember how many things are hidden by what we have yet to uncover in this work and on our journey. The mysterious dark interior hills of China that were opened after the Opium Wars seem like a space where lightness and darkness danced in huge tea gardens spread over hillsides. The early tea botanist and spy Robert Fortune made his way into places not everyone gets to travel to, to learn the secrets of tea. He marveled at the stunning beauty and light that only a handful of westerners had ever seen. He could not have imagined the angle of the light, the generosity of the people he feared, or the high esteem in which the farmers held the tea. Tea has always been about light and darkness. It calls us to praise the light and the way it shines on hillsides and forests. It calls us to see the slivers as potential for growth. The haloed light of tea calls us to explore the shadows and drink in the wonder that has shined in our hearts since the first dawn.