Making Tea

I’m trying to slow down when I make tea.

I’m trying to take all the steps that I know will ensure a great cup of tea.

Instead of slamming in a teabag or throwing in the tea leaves, haphazardly, awkwardly, I’m trying to move deliberately, intentionally. I’m experimenting with being present to the boiling water. I’m leaning in to listen to the whistle of the kettle. I’m slowly dissolving my ego in the steam.

I’m trying.

To slow down.

When I make tea.

These are trying days.

So many instagram/substack/mailout posts begin with something like, ‘in these unprecedented times… in these chaotic times… in these days of crises and turmoil’.

But I wonder, wasn’t it always like this?

Wasn’t it worse during the Black Plague? Wasn’t it terrifyingly awful during WWI?

I can’t believe that these days of unlimited television and endless takeaway are worse than considering that your partner might not be home for Christmas, might not ever come home again.

Perhaps these times feel more trying because they are more complex. They might also be complicated but I notice the complexity of them at the moment; the way that every decision feels so loaded, the fact of there being so many decisions, the way that I feel myself drowning in indecision. The way that nuance and creativity might be a balm for some of our sorrows but that it is so achingly absent from most of our human spaces. I wonder whether the frogs in the dam on Dja Dja Wurrung Country have many decisions to make, whether they take turns croaking, whether they notice the cadence of each other’s voices.

I have a not-so-secret passion for teacups and teapots. I like having mismatched sets, but they must all be  a similar colour, or be a similar size. My teacups have to have a rim that is thin but not fragile. They have to hold a good amount of tea but not too much. Do you know what I mean? I know you know what I mean.

I’m trying to slow down when I make tea.

My heart has felt heavy lately. Since October, if you’re asking. There is always so much pain and so much grief in the world. And then recently, it got much more personal. And in that intimacy of violence and horror, the necessity to interrogate my beliefs has arisen. Is what I believe actually true? What do other people, real, living, whole and sacred other people believe? How can I start to understand that something I was taught is not true? And then, oh god, what is true? What does ‘true’ even mean?

If I heat the teapot before I add the tea leaves, it’s true that it makes a discernible difference to the taste of the tea.

Just because I feel something strongly, that doesn’t make it true. Because there are other people, whole, human, real and sacred other people, who feel exactly the opposite of me.

All of this thinking and cogitating and interrogating makes my heart ache. Have you ever noticed that the word ‘interrogate’ has the sound of ‘terror’ in it? I wonder if that is the case in languages other than English? Why do I only speak English fluently?

Not for the first time, I find myself: falling asleep, tossing and turning, waking up wondering: what else could I do? Is there something else I could do/ should do/ must do to make it better? To relieve the pain, to shift the balance, to tilt the course of history towards the Good, the True and the Beautiful (don’t even start to dwell too much on what these words could mean).

I live a small domestic life. I see clients. I endeavour to keep my house clean, the kids and pets fed, the garden watered. Sometimes I plant and weed trees in the country. Sometimes I sit in circle with others. I meditate and go to the gym and do most of the practical things. But it doesn’t feel enough. I feel like I’m missing something.

I asked my Ancestors the other day if there was something I was missing. They showed me: Prayer.

I’m not entirely sure what this means yet. I donate money, I go to vigils, I read articles, I sign petitions. Prayer? What could prayer do? I asked them again: How can I tend better to the pain of the world? How can I be of more service? In the midst of piles of laundry and the relentless to-do list, what is the Other Big Thing that I could do?

Just love what your heart loves, is what they said to me.

Again, I’m not entirely sure yet what this means.

Once I was a lawyer running the Stolen Generation cases. I worked and cried, strived and ranted, until I couldn’t sleep. Then I couldn’t keep going so I quit, and got a job in a bookshop. I felt helpless and hopeless at first in that job. Once, I was making a difference. Now, I’m just selling books. But books! Books! I have rarely seen the smile of satisfaction that is derived from finding the right book for the right person at the right time. And so I toyed with the idea that if I could bring happiness in just my little corner of the world, and do no harm in the process, that might be enough. At least enough for me then, in that time and place.

And now, what is there to do? Pray, say my Ancestors. And love what your heart loves.

On this Thursday evening the Fast of Esther begins. In the story of Purim, Queen Esther fasted as a way of begging the Divine to save her community from complete destruction. This year I offer my fast as a way of praying to the Divine to save the people of Israel/Palestine from complete destruction. It is not only that my freedom and safety as a Jew depend on the freedom and safety of the Palestinians, is in fact, inextricably linked to the freedom and safety of the Palestinians. It is that my ethics, my moral compass, my very existence as a Jewish woman depends on me praying to the Divine to vouchsafe the freedom of all the people of Palestine/Israel. No-one is free until we are all free.

Letting my heart love what it loves.

Slowing down to make tea.