Tea Mind, Be Kind

LAST ENTRY OF 2006, NEW BLOG ADDRESS, NEW YEAR, NEW LIFE, NEW TIMES AHEAD...

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 04:29:51 GMT

A tea to greet the New Year: White Chocolate Ginger Tea... From SBS Teas...

"White chocolate melded with spicy sweet ginger is an awesome combination, to tantalize and stimulate your senses.

Ingredients:
Black tea, cocoa bits, almond brittle candy, milk granules, chocolate chips, ginger and intense natural flavors. This blend contains caffeine.

Ginger: Gets the blood moving to keep you moving. Warms from the center of your being..."

"To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."

Mary Oliver, "In Blackwater Woods"

I am indulging myself tonight, New Year's Eve, in the last entry of this blog which completes the basis for the book Tea Mind, Be Kind, the first in a series of books, due out this spring, by having a tea I have previously reviewed and dearly love, White Chocolate Ginger tea. It is my own form of decadence to celebrate the passing of the old year!

This has been a year of many endings and beginnings, good times and hard times, as all years will have, and I have seen death, new marriage, a waning of a life due to a 2 year battle with cancer, and much more. There have been many endings. I have loved that which is mortal and there have been many letting gos, and more yet to come. Just like the end of a year, the passing of people, places, and things from our lives makes us soft, and melancholy, vulnerable and sad, while still, on the horizon, a new year dawns, new people will come into our lives, unimaginable joys will arise, soft tender times will envelop us in a loving gentle peace, and we will cry our tears and sing praise to the glory days.

This tea work has taught me so much. A good cup of tea, a time of contemplation and renewal, time to nurture oneself to face the time ahead, time to gather with friends or meditate alone over the gentle steam rising to our nostrils as we sip the tea and allow our senses to be awakened and snapped back into the reality of the moment, this moment, the only moment that exists.

And so with the passing of the old year and the coming of the new, with all that has happened and all that might happen, we must always remember that all that we really have, all that we really know, is this moment, this one precious moment. In another poem by Mary Oliver she asks, "What will you do with your one wild and precious life?" This quote has always moved me very deeply and so I ask each of you, as I ask myself, "What will you do with this one wild and precious moment?" The past has passed. The future is unknown, and the future will be infinitely more fulfilling if it is built on moments well spent. May each moment of the new year be lived fully and with love, and grace, with peace, and joy, and with the ability to let go when those difficult letting go times come.

One final note. This blog will remain right here in cyberspace where it has been, but by the time you read this the url teamindbekind.com will have been pointed to it's new blogspace on blogspot. The reason for this is that as much as I love this blog here, this service has had repeated difficulties, delays, and been difficult to view, either loading very slowly, or not at all, and often only coming up if the page were refreshed which many people did not know or think to do. Still, in a year's time there have been nearly 11,000 visits to this blog and I am so grateful that so many people have found and loved the work. I thank each of you who have left kind comments and written to me via e-mail. You can look forward to the book based on this blog due out in a few short months, and I really appreciate your passing the word along about the coming book and the continuing blog. I thank you with all my heart for the support I have felt here this past year.

Henceforth you can reach this blog, the first year's journey, anytime, by using the address teamindbekind.blogdrive.com, and the url teamindbekind.com will take you to the new blog, starting tomorrow, January 1, 2007. All things pass, and new things begin. So too with this blog!

I wish you a new year filled with gentle peace, with love, with tender joy, and with the ability to let go when the times come that make it necessary, and to revel in each moment for all it might be, and as always, to have a good cup of tea at hand.

I can't end without thanking SBS Teas for being my sponsor for this blog (as well as the new one) and for the Tea Mind, Be Kind list at Yahoo. They have been a continuing support and inspiration, and better tea I have never tasted!

Warm Regards and Deepest Blessings to all ~ Namast�...

Maitri

NAPPING HALF THE DAY ~ BEING KIND TO YOURSELF...

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:54:53 GMT

A tea that will teach you to be kind to yourself: Green Rooibos Haiku... From SBS Teas...

"Fulfill your longings
island tropics in a cup
Your caffeine free escape...

This amazing blend of healthful Green Rooibos, brings together a tropical sensation from the Florida Keys. Excellent hot or over ice.

Ingredients:
Organic green rooibos, papaya pieces, mango bits, peach pieces, orange peels, calendula and natural flavorings. This blend contains NO caffeine."

"Napped half the day;
no one
punished me."

Haiku Master Issa, 1763-1827

I have always been a nappish person, but like the regular napper would lay down for perhaps an hour, tops. That changed 5 years ago when I went on two more important medications that I take with lunch that may be anywhere between 1:00 and 3:00 and by the time I've eaten and the medication takes hold -- KAPOW-- it's like hitting a brick wall and I can't keep my eyes open.

For nearly 5 years now, as my doctor worked on all different kinds of medications in different doses to which I had different peculiar side effects, I would be knocked out and sleep 2-3 hours. Then, having slept I would be up half the night working. And as I never "sleep in" as in "sleep till noon" because I have a dog that tries to be as polite as he can but when he can't stand it anymore HE HAS TO GO OUT and NOW! So I'm usually up between 8 and 9 even if I've been up until 3 a.m. the "night" before, and on it goes.

Of late the whole cycle seemed to have regulated itself somewhat so that I do nap mostly about an hour and a half, but just about the time it felt like everything was falling into place I am coming, I believe, to the end of the peri-menopausal stage (which has been a challenge at the best of times) and about to enter the full blown "Pause," which I don't see as a bad thing but when I hit my cycle each month I can barely keep my eyes open.

The whole point of discussing this is that one of the most peculiar things, and I experience this a lot as different aspects of my life seem to alarm people no end -- barely leaving the house, all kinds of crazy hours, working nearly round the clock when I'm up -- is that people have been terribly alarmed by the napping, especially when I sleep for 2 or 3 hours ( 3 is actually rare). I have gotten comments that ranged from joking to downright rude, as if the nap had no other purpose but to aggravate people, which I assure you is not the case. And so feeling guilty due to people's reactions I tried not to nap, tried setting an alarm, tried all kinds of things but my body said, "Unh-unh. Lay down. Go to sleep. Let us do what we need to do inside of you. Be kinder to yourself." I was uneasy and a bit shocked by the whole thing but finally I gave in and now most people who know me know my routine. I turn my phone off when I nap. I am simply not reachable then, and somehow, though some people still get aggravated, the world seems to go on without me just fine.

As I have lived through these years and finally come to a place of comfort with it all, I have begun to ponder people's need for speed, need to fit in with society like clones or Stepford Wives, living a kind of life expected of them rather than one that their body is naturally allowed to assume, one they would be happier and more at peace with. My life gives me peace. When I flow gently with it's natural rhythms I can get more work accomplished, feel in sync with my life and days, make better decisions, and am coming, more and more, to a clarity about what life is, and what my role in it is meant to be.

There are some of us whose lives worked out a little differently than most, both by nature and/or nurture, and we spend most of our lives either apologizing for not being able to live like everyone else, baffled, perplexed, feeling like something was wrong with us (Never mind the conditions, diagnoses, medications, doctors and whatnots, we are who we are and we deal with it all as best we can and that becomes, for us, the norm.) and it makes for a very painful and isolating existence. We who are disabled in some way live life learning how to find peace, acceptance, understanding, and making of ourselves something productive, something that we can be proud of and one day I finally let go of people's misconceptions, criticisms and whatnot, and just started being me, whatever the heck that was. And I love my odd little life. And I am happy.

I feel the need to say that this is not just about napping. Napping is a metaphor for the deeper purpose of this piece as certainly I realize that many people have work schedules out in the world out of necessity and come home to families to care for and whatnot and an occasional nap would be a luxury at best. What I am, more to the point, getting at, is that it seems most people feel that taking care of themselves, in whatever way that happens or that they need, is selfish, is not "what most people do," and they will keep on keeping on pushing themselves beyond all reasonable limits, eating junk food on the fly (and yes, I like and eat my share of junk food, but for some in this over-pressurized world, that's all that many eat!). What I am suggesting is that you take a look at your life and take a kind of inventory. Look at the things you are doing because you must, and put a keen eye on those things you can really see that you are doing because you "think you are supposed to" or are doing because you are trying to fit into what society considers the norm. In fact you don't need to be disabled some way to be different, and I think more people than we realize through their lives always feeling like the square peg trying to fit in the round hole. I say look for a different hole, a square one, one that fits who you really are, and it will change your life.

This is where I come to tea. We can all have a cup of tea. And perhaps we will all find different times of the day for tea time. I got a call from a dear friend this week who had a baby nine months ago and sounded weary and frustrated at not being able to get her writing done. I told her about another dear friend who, once her little girl was put to bed claimed an hour for herself in the bath.

Women (and all parents of course but this mostly still falls on the shoulders of women, working or no...) can't help but deal with this when their children are young. But you can make a cup of tea, take a book, your journal, whatever, make a big bubblebath, light candles and sink into the water and sip your tea and read your book or write or just soak and float. And perhaps the busy person can take time in their workaday world for a massage or something relaxing and rejuvenating, not just once a week, but something that fits into their schedule, if only for an hour. My mother always said, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." If we can find the time to get things done, we can find the time NOT to get things done. Whether it's on the way home from work, on your lunch hour, or after the kids go to bed, or like I did when my children were young, I set the alarm, got up at 5 a.m., made coffee and had time to read and think and write before the day began. There is no one right way to do this, but it's important to find a way that works for you, and look at that balance sheet: absolutely MUST do vs. really don't need to do, and use the latter newly found time as your nurturing time.

If you have your teatime late at night it is good to have a soothing tea with no caffeine and rooibos is a perfect choice. It is soothing and relaxing and actually a gentle sleep aid, and I am having, as I write, the tea that I had last night and fell in love with, this wonderful Green Rooibos Haiku. What an amazing tea. Soothing, deeply flavorful, the complex flavors melding together creating surprise and delight, the kind that then makes your whole body relax, and sigh, and changes the whole tenor of your day (or night). The next time I place a tea order this will definitely be on my list of must have teas.

And so I will close here. I will sip my tea and almost feel the warm gentle island breeze on my cheek. I will knit and read and write and have a soft gentle evening ahead of me.

Take time. Make time. Be kind to yourself. It will change your life.

Maitri

LIVING A QUIET LIFE & THE IMPORTANCE OF TEATIME...

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 16:27:13 GMT

So aromatic it scents the whole room!: Rooibos Pear and Honey ... From SBS Teas...

"Delicious as a dessert treat or anytime of the day and night. Sumptuous sweet pear and smooth honey unite in a lovely tryst of smooth sweet devotion to your cup. Be prepared to stun your guests and taste buds with this decadent tea!"

"In the evening I go up in the desert where you can see the world all around -- far away. The hours I spend each evening watching the sun go down -- and just enjoying it -- and every day I go out and watch it again. I draw some and there is a little painting and so the days go by."

In a letter from Georgia O'Keefe to her friend Anita Politzer, 1929

The last few weeks have been something out of the ordinary for me, pleasurable and unsettling all at the same time. People come and go in your life and life goes on. What this has meant for me is a clearer vision of who I am and what my life really is. And so when I read the above quote by Georgia O'Keefe, one of my favorite painters, I sighed, and relaxed and realized that yes, we live our little lives and the days go by and they are filled with shining moments.

I believe Georgia would have understood my life, a life some feel peculiar at best. Coming close to living the life of an anchorite, my life is for the most part homebound, and made up of contemplation, nature, animals, the sacred, prayer. As a writer and a fiber artist, living in a small cottage of a place with parrots and finches and doves, 3 beautiful beta fish and my sweet dog Moe, I spend whole days in silence, days when there is no tv, no music, no phone, just the chattering of the birds.

I fill the feeders outside all around with seed for the wild birds and the occasional squirrel, stray cat and whomever else comes around gets fed as well. My outings are in my own garden, and at midnight to look at the full moon, or gaze at the stars. The few times I go out into the real world are for necessities or to babysit my precious grandbaby, but mostly, here, I live quietly alone among my hundreds of books, and fiber everywhere, and now a cottage full of plants brought in just in time before winter frost, and my tiny galley sized kitchen looks more like a potting shed than a kitchen these days as I clean up, repot and feed all of the plants just brought back indoors, as well as repot the African Violets, my loves, growing like topsy and blooming again.

Comes that special time of day when the light is slanting on the horizon and a little chime goes off in my head, "It's tea time." And so the kettle goes on and I begin to search through my many teas to see what tea best suits the day, the time, the mood. This has been a hard week and I needed something soothing. I find rooibos teas one of the most soothing teas and often have a cup of rooibos at bedtime. The other evening as I sifted through bags of teas in my tea cabinet, I came across one I had not tried yet, the Rooibos Pear and Honey, and simply opening the bag I let out a deep sigh and felt tension melting out of my body. Succulent sweet pear redolent of honey, so strong that the next morning, with a bit of tea left in my cup from the night before, the whole room smelled of honey and pears. This is one of the most flavorful teas I have ever had.

And so I sat here having brewed my tea, and watched the sky turn it's eventide colors, mesmerized, breathing in the silence deeply as the birds inside began to quiet down and the wildlings were gone for the night. Moe was asleep belly and paws up on the couch and I was surrounded by stacks of books and fiber projects all around me. I held the oversized vintage Stangl mug with a pale pink tulip and scalloped green leaves up to my nose and just breathed in the lovely, fragrant tea, and the first sip came almost as a shock it was so full of flavor, my tastebuds exploded delightedly and I sank deeply into my chair with a smile. Finally, settling in with tea, and the silence, and letting even my own thoughts fade away, I had a contemplative time with my tea, a tea meditation as I do most early evenings, and I let the cares and worries and pain and frustrations of the weeks pass from my body and I looked silently around my little room to all that is here.

Amidst too much of everything, books and fiber everywhere, and looms and knitting needles, and my precious spoolknitters in every shape and size and spindles with their fiber attached as I spin my yarns, and yarns in baskets nearby as I make a hat, jars full of colored pencils, paintbrushes, sketchbook on the arm of my oversized chair filled with too many pillows that are just right, and the old rattan chair with frazzled places where Henry, my grey parrot, likes to sit and unravel pieces for that brief moment before I catch him doing it, and tossled vintage quilts here and there, a bright fuschia Christmas Cactus blooming madly, and knowing that there are paperwhites to be potted for inside and bulbs to be planted outside, I felt a deep sense of fulfilment as I sipped this delectable tea. What more could a person want? And the tea made the moment perfect.

And so as with O'Keefe I make my daily rounds, I drink in the fragrance of flowers blooming and tea perfuming the air, and now, as I write this, Henry sits on my shoulder and Moe sits by my side, his velvet soft nose brushing against my knee to make certain that all is well before he goes to his favorite spot on the couch, and Henry and I will carry on here, as I nuzzle his grey feathers and kiss his beak, and reach, once more, for yet another sip of this wonderful tea as the dove coos to his mate and silence falls upon the room once again, and I feel peace return as the last curtain of night falls...

Maitri

A TEA TO LIFT THE SPIRITS...

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 18:51:52 GMT

A tea to lift the spirits: Hepsabaugh Berry Tisane ... From SBS Teas...

"Bring your favorite dolly and have a tea party! What better blend to have but our flavorful fruit melange with hibiscus blossoms, elderberries, grapes, bilberries, citrus peel and natural raspberry-cherry flavor. Deep berry flavor! Kids and adults both love this tasty brew! Wonderful hot, chilled or frozen as a sorbet. Gorgeous deep red color."

" I'll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time."

Emily Dickinson

I made this ravishing tea as the sun rose, and the sky was the amazing unimaginable colors of early morning, pink, blues, the layover of one color into the next, and then I brewed this early morning tisane, needing something to bring me into this world and out of the place that a dream will sometimes take you, to a land you need most urgently to leave. But I wanted to be able to go back to sleep so I chose a lovely fruity tisane I had not tried yet, and I was nearly dumbstruck at the aroma, the color, a deep cherrry red, the color of red wine. And the fragrance of berries that filled the air brightened all of my senses and brought me back into the world of light. I held my oversized mug in both hands as I watched the kaleidoscopic changing of the sky's colors and a tiny chickadee feeding at the kitchen window feeder. I leaned back against the kitchen counter so as not to frighten the wee small bird away, and my whole body relaxed.

I have come late to the joy of tisanes. I had had black teas and flavored teas and herbal teas in my time, but never true tisanes, all fruit, and juicy as biting into the ripest berries, sweetened by the sun with a bit of tartness quickly swept away by layers and layers of flavor. This is a very complex tea, soothing, and if you like berry teas you should not miss this one.

I went back to sleep and rose again and as the day went along I decided, having brewed a large pot, to try it iced! Oh, what a heavenly treat iced. I was thinking it would make incredible popsicles! I did feel like a little girl at a tea party, and wished I could set up a tiny table with dishes and dolls and my dog and know, in that place of lost dreams, that the world was an innocent place where nothing would ever go wrong. The child's mind before it becomes cluttered with the world's doings and the sometimes harsh realities of life.

I am a dollmaker. I have a wee tiny teaset sent to me by one of my dearest friends. I think I shall have a dolly tea party and pour droplets of this tea into acorn top sized cups. Even if, as the tea disappears, it is I who have drunk it down with a giggle and full of delight, it shall be a wonderful way to turn a rainy, grey, cold Sunday into a day of delight. Tea does that. So do dolls, and knitting, and watching the sun rise, a ribbon at a time.

Maitri

THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR...

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 16:18:57 GMT

A tea for thanks-giving: Pumpkin Cream Spice Tea - LE ... From SBS Teas...

"Pumpkin Cream Spice and everything nice! Curl up with a tasty cuppa tea that has the taste and scent of autumn pumpkin. Perfect for a blustery fall afternoon, or snuggle down evening at home. Delicious iced and hot! Add a dash of cream for instant heaven. This is the real deal, back from last year and here only through the holidays! - Limited Edition

Ingredients: Black tea, hibiscus, rosehips, almond, rooibos, vanilla pieces, cinnamon, apple pieces, calendula, elder blossom, triacetin and natural flavors. This blend contains caffeine."

"Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action."

W.J. Cameron

And so we have all just celebrated Thanksgiving Day, those of us who do, that is, and for me, as with so many others, the holidays bring joy and gladness as well as fear, tension and a number of weeks fraught with anxiety. In this world, today, many people's response is, "What is there to be thankful for?"

Yes, we live in a war torn world with poverty, soldiers dying in wars as well as the peoples of the towns and villages that they fight in who have nothing to do with the hatred. In India, like so many other countries, children are begging in the streets and starving. All over the world people are suffering and many have chosen to grow bitter and sour and not celebrate at all. And although there were a few difficulties and challenges in my own Thanksgiving celebration, and though we have just lost one family member and another is close to dying, and though there is very little money for gift giving, there is love, and amidst what seemed like insurmountable complications there is peace. And it is our task to give thanks so that we might receive it back, and pass around the globe a tender act of gratitude and acceptance, loving-kindness and tolerance. As Cameron said, Thanksgiving is a word of action.

For me, the most amazing acts of giving thanks are sharing from an open heart the simple things that one might offer another. Inviting a friend for tea, or taking a thermos of tea to an elderly neighbor, and bouquet of what might still be found in the late fall garden, perhaps some fresh baked goodies, and taking the time to sit with them and share the thing we have in limitless supply, our time. A cup of tea is a cup of friendship, and I can think of no tea more appropriate at this time of year than this incredible Pumpkin Cream Spice Tea from SBS Teas. (Their link above will take you right to that page for ordering.) I in fact had it on Thanksgiving Day and have been trying to find time to write about it for days. It is truly delectable. It is pumpkin pie in a cup. For me, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is pumpkin pie time, and as it is my favorite kind of pie, I relish this pumpkin pie time of year, and there could be no more perfect tea to go with it (or even alone) than this one.

Too, I think people don't celebrate a day of Thanks-giving, wherever they are in the world, because they feel lost and alone and feel that they have nothing real to celebrate. No family, no money, perhaps few friends, a job they are not happy in, and if life is viewed in this way it is no wonder that so many people are depressed on the holiday. This is a day for giving thanks, not for celebrating the pilgrim's feast. This is the day to look at your own life and see how very much there really is to be thankful for.

Among the things that I am thankful for are my 11 year old "puppy," Moses, a lab-doby mix from the Humane Society. I have been going through some hard times but he is always right here at my side, laying his velvet soft nose on me and looking up at me with loving eyes. And yes, I live in a house full of birds and my newest addition is a pair of diamond doves. They are very tiny, the male coos softly, they are domestic doves suitable for homes, and soon, along with a tiny beautiful pair of zebra finches who are working their nest and mating, we will have babies in the house at Christmas. I can't imagine a more delightful time. My version of the Biblical story is, "And unto us a bird (or 7!) are born..." The doves will have two tiny perfect eggs and they are wonderful parents whose babies are precious past belief. And I think no house should be without Zebra Finches. They are the merriest, most cheerful little beings in the world.

I am thankful, in fact, that though I live alone, meaning no other human companion, I am never really alone. I am awakened by Moe hopping about and putting his nose on me and saying, "It's time to go OUT!" and as soon as my feet hit the floor Henry the grey parrot starts in with, "Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Morning." He calls every bird in the room by name and tells them good morning as well, and before you know it, every bird on the place is peeping and cheeping and talking and carrying on while I get Moe out to the potty and get all of the birds fresh food and water, as well as my 3 beautiful Beta Fish. My little animal family brings life, liveliness and love to this little cottage and brings me joy untold. I am grateful for them.

I am filled with gratitude for my 3 beautiful children and grandbaby. For the rest of my family and friends. For a dear friend that helped me enormously through a rough patch recently. I am grateful for anyone who offers me a kind smile as I go for my mail or to the grocery store or anywhere else I might go in the world. It is not easy for me to leave my house to go out into the world hence the kindness of strangers if a gift beyond measure. Remember that. A smile, a kind gesture, to a stranger that you pass briefly and will likely never see again, can make a difference in their life that will echo through their days. Perhaps a moment of kindness when they've had very little of it. Even meeting someone eye to eye with a smile as you pass them with your cart in the grocery store, not even stopping to say a word, is a lovely feeling, and makes, of this disjointed, fractured world a kinder place to be. Love breeds love, kindness breeds kindness, and giving thanks, starting with the smallest things, begins to make one more grateful for a great many things in their lives and once the ball is rolling, the smallest things become glorified and fill our lives with more and more uplifting moments.

One need not feel alone at the holidays either. There are soup kitchens to work in, places to volunteer, and if we are not in touch with our family of origin we can create our own family of friends. Don't wait to be invited, invite some friends over yourself, make it a potluck, make your own kind of holiday. Just because it wasn't the traditional holiday your family experienced when you were young doesn't mean it isn't just as wonderful, your own way, today. And if your holidays were not happy when you were young, it's never too late to start new traditions now.

I have so much to be grateful for. My plants and flowers, the books that are everywhere in my studio that serves as my home, the fiber everywhere that I spin into yarn to do my fiber work, friends to talk with on the phone. Make a list. Start as small as possible. A freshly sharpened pencil can bring great satisfaction. Good eggs and toast for breakfast are a great pleasure. Cleaning your house, filling the outdoor feeders for the wildlings, cleaning and putting the fall garden to bed and dreaming in the seed catalogs for the year ahead, those are things that make the heart feel very full. Perhaps a bright pink ball of yarn and new pair of knitting needles, and once again, a velvet soft puppy's nose to kiss when you feel sad.

And for me, sitting right beside me, is another cup of this delectable Pumpkin Cream Spice Tea that makes every day a celebration. This tea is something to be grateful for. Thanksgiving is not just a day, it is a way of life, it is action. Where will you begin?

Maitri

HAVING EVERYTHING, OR HAVING A GOOD CUP OF TEA?

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:56:32 GMT

A cup of tea full of everything: Gingerbread Cream Tea - LE ... From SBS Teas...

"We didn't think it was possible to improve on the perfection of last year's Gingerbread tea, but the tea Genie has outdone herself again. Gets the blood moving to keep you moving. Warms from the center of your being; ginger and spice with a smooth creamy note. Perfect alone or pop those flavors with some cream and sugar! If you love our other holiday teas, you will find this yet another you must have in your tea repertoire!

This is a LE-Limited Edition Tea only available through the holidays, be sure to stock up on yours today!"

"There must be more to life than having everything."

Maurice Sendak

There must be more to life... Indeed.

As I sit in my little cottage, birds chirping, singing, and talking all around me, a dog at my side, and holding a doll in my hands that I am making, my steaming cup of tea beside me, I think, in an inside out version of Sendak's quote, that the reason I am so happy and at peace here is that I don't have "everything" in the world's terms. I have a darling little 12 year old mini-mini van that is a very peculiar shade of green that's bleached out by the sun and whose paint job is going funky with a license plate that says WABISABI, and I love that little PeaMobile with all my heart. My vehicle is wabi sabi as surely my whole life is, and coming to terms with all of that, all of ME, all of my life, is worth more than gold. And I wonder, I truly wonder, if the wealthy who do have everything are ever as happy as I am with a grey parrot singing and talking and a soft velvet nose resting on my toes as I have my cup of tea...

A couple of nights ago I had the most wonderful soothing tea, the Gingerbread Cream, Limited Edition mentioned above. It was like comfort in a cup. It spoke of holidays and gingerbread boys with icing on the top. It spoke of roaring fires in a fireplace with snow falling softly outside the frosty windowpanes, it spoke of sugar and spice and everything nice with a dollop of cream to boot! This is a comfort tea. It has everything.

And so I sit, as I type this, with Henry, my grey parrot, on my forearm, bobbing up and down with the movement of my typing, and I lean down and give him a kiss on the beak and smile at this darling bird, my soul mate, and I want to make more of this divine tea right now. I wish I had some gingerbread cookies to go with it, happy little boys with icing faces. This tea brings me joy and the delight of walking into a house where warm gingerbread cookies are cooling on a rack and the whole house is redolent of fragrant spices. It is the simple pleasures, after all, that bring the most contentment, and an inner peace

Look for joy in the simple things in life. Realize that you have everything there is to have in this very moment and appreciate it all. Look into your cup of tea and realize that we have everything in each and every moment that we need, if only we have eyes to see. Tomorrow we may have more and that will be perfect too. But for today we have our tea, perhaps a parrot on our shoulder, a dog at our side, and I can't imagine wanting anything more.

Blessings to each and every one of you as the holiday season approaches, and always...

Maitri

A TEA TO BLAZE A TRAIL OF DESIRE ~ LET THE RIVER RUN...

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 19:44:56 GMT

{This piece is dedicated to my father-in-law, Arthur Kolb, who
passed from the world this week, and has blazed his own
trail of stars to the heavens, and beyond...)

A tea to blaze a trail of desire! : Gypsy Ambrosia, Flavored Tisane Blend ...

"Our most popular premium blend without caffeine!

gypsy, noun: One inclined to a nomadic, unconventional way of life.

ambrosia, noun: 1. Greek & Roman Mythology. The food of the gods, thought to confer immortality.
2. Something with an especially delicious flavor or fragrance.

This astonishing blend is certainly these things and more! This is a wildly eclectic, unconventional yet beautiful blend of rose, lemon grass, organic rooibos enveloped in rich luscious ripe peach flavors with a creamy vanilla boost, give this blend a mystery all of its own!"

From SBS Teas

"We the great and small
Stand on a star
And blaze a trail of desire
Through the dark'ning dawn..."

Carly Simon, "Let The River Run"

{The above link will take you to a page
where you can hear this incredible song
and sing with it and blaze your own
trail of desire while you drink your tea.}

It is a blazing bright Saturday afternoon in October, one that sparkles like the stars in the dark of night, and I am filled with a thrilling exultation as I sip this tea and play Carly Simon's Let The River Run over and over and over again. It is like a mantra to me now. I play it in the morning when I need the lift to blaze my own trail of stars in whatever way I can. The tea simply bursts with flavor and the music sets one's spirits soaring with a staunch determination and a heart full of desire to do what one can to work as hard as possible, in our own way, to make the world a better place. There's never been a greater need. What are we waiting for?

My father-in-law, Arthur Kolb, (and even though my husband Kevin and I are now divorced, we are still family to one another and his dear father will always have been my father-in-law...) died on Wednesday after a long life. A courageous man who fought in WWII and worked hard all of his life, raised three sons and was a devout Catholic. He is standing on a star and blazing a trail even as I write this. I can see him at the height of his powers, in his Army uniform -- his service was something of great pride to him. I love you Art, wherever you are on your journey to the great beyond.

Simon writes in this powerful, triumphal song,

"It's asking for the taking.
Trembling, shaking.
Oh, my heart is aching."

And this week my heart has been aching, for the death of Art, for the pain the family is feeling, and I want to stand up and sing him to the stars. He is no longer in pain and suffering, he has transcended all that is known on this earth. With tears in my eyes and a heart that is aching I raise my cup of this ambroisal tea, and, too deeply moved to speak, and with tears running down my cheeks, I smile through my tears to feel the Earth move as another spirit is set free.

And death reminds us how very important Life is, and how we must not waste a single moment. Not a single opportunity to love, to create, to care, to offer compassion to every soul that we can reach out to, to remember that we are on this Earth journey to both learn lessons and make of this world a better place. I know my father-in-law did that. It will be my great quest for the rest of my days, come what may.

Let the river run. We will bend and shift and turn and follow the swift current of life, sometimes holding on by our fingernails, and at other times soaring even as we sit in a chair, hold a lover's hand, kiss a grandbaby as you hold him in your arms, watch your children with pride, help an elderly neighbor, and never forget why you are here, and make it count, and never forget it for a moment.

"Let the river run,
Let all the dreamers
Wake the nation.
Come, the New Jerusalem."

Carly Simon, "Let The River Run"

It's time now. Raise your cup of tea and sing with everything you've got in you. It's time to wake the nation. Come the New Jerusalem.

Maitri

AS SUMMER MOVES INTO AUTUMN, THE LAST OF THE SUMMER MOON TEA ~ MOON TIMES ~ FULL MOONS...

Sat, 07 Oct 2006 04:36:08 GMT

A Deeply Flavorful Tea When I Am Sorely In Need of Replenishment, Renewal, Release: Summer Moon Tea, Flavored Black Tea ...

"Late nights, warm breezes, fresh flowers growing in your garden. Something different is awaiting you. Opposites attract and we offer you this limited edition summer tea. Ripe juicy papaya, magnificent sweet mango. Combined with a surprise finish that will leave you wondering while gazing up at the summer moon. Delicious hot or iced! A tempting and necessary treat day or night! This is another in our summer 2006 Limited Edition Teas. There are VERY limited quantities available of this special blend. Be sure to get yours today." From SBS Teas.

"Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody"

Mark Twain

This tea is so good that as soon as I tasted it I went, instead of straight to update this blog, to place my monthly tea order with SBS Teas and ordered a pound of it. It is a limited supply tea and there is still some left but I shall be revelling in it for many months to come...

And how very true was Twain in his statement. We each of us have all of the elements of the earth inside of our bodies ~ bones, salt water, more... ~ and we will, upon occasion, come upon those dark times, and perhaps it is not that we try not to show them to anyone, but perhaps these are the times that we go underground. I know I do. And this is a very deep time for me.

I am coming into my Moon Time, and it is the final phase of what will be the monthly moontimes at all for me. I am perimenopausal, and I find that I go deep within myself at these times, even more so than the powerful inward pull of the regular month's cycles I have had all of my life. My periods were always long and hard, and now that I am approaching menopause they are not easy but they are different, and I go far deeper inside myself when this time arrives. I enter the dark side of the moon for comfort. I become very quiet. I commune with no one. I read and write and draw and paint and knit and do other fiber work, but I am very, very quiet while doing it. Tides and time are changing inside of my body, and even more in my life, as time passes, and Cronehood approaches, and I am ready to take on the mantle of the Crone. This requires much preparation.

Today I was very, very quiet. I sat down to answer e-mail and couldn't look at it. I deleted all the junk mail, saved that which needed to be saved, anwered a rare few, and then did my work, some little here on the computer, and I spent most of the day drawing and sketching and painting and reading in my big comfort chair ~ oversized, worn, and full of pillows. I didn't want to speak to anyone, communion with my animals was enough, and even they sensed the change and were quieter than usual. It's a funny thing how as the full moon approaches, all of Nature's creatures feel the shift.

There is a deeper shift happening inside of me than I have ever known, and with each moontime, I go deeper and become one with all the women that have come before me. This tea empowers me. All the women who came before me reach back to take my hand as I reach back to take the hand of the woman behind me. We are an unbroken circle. Perhaps this whole book and my entire life are about a woman learning how to come into her own power and then pass it on to heal and help others.

Tonight I found the most profoundly beautiful website as I was doing the research for this piece. It is Native American and the site is The Walkan Circle, "Indian Women" ...

"The honor of the people lies in the moccasin tracks of the woman.
Walk the good road....
Be dutiful, respectful, gentle and modest my daughter...
Be strong with the warm, strong heart of the earth.
No people goes down until their women are weak and dishonored, or dead upon the ground.
Be strong and sing the strength of the Great Powers within you, all around you."

WARRIORWOMAN HAS FULLY AWAKENED

This woman has been kind, gentle, and has such love.
All of this has been given with the blessing of the Great Spirit above.
But Great Spirit gave her something else and she didn't know it,
The Great Spirit gave her the blessing of being a Warriorwoman as
Now her light is lit!

This Warriorwoman has come fully alive today,
She is no longer anyone's slave or prey.
She is taking back her life today,
And those who know who she truly is, can stay.
No longer will she live the lives of others,
She will give back the blame and responsibilities of others where
It belongs,

For she also has the Bear and Wolf inside her,
Which is now so very powerful and uniquely strong.
The Warriorwoman now knows what road she must follow,
For others it will be too hard to swallow.
Her life was taken from her unknowingly many years ago,
And this Warriorwoman is taking back her life before the next winds
Blow.

Oh Sister Moon you give me the strength,
As a Warriorwoman to conquer what's on my path,
High above and way beneath,
And the much needed strength to take on the wrath.
This Warriorwoman is fully awakened and is taking a stand,
Taking the problems by the horns with my hand,
I will conquer that is all there,
All and who comes as they dare.

Warriorwoman has fully awakened,
And many will see that they have mistaken,
Of robbing her of her life, they as a thief,
Warriorwoman will conquer! And have no grief!
This warriorwoman will protect her people, her son, and those who
Need her.

If anyone hurts them, look out!
They will hear a GGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRR,
As they run and shout!
This Warriorwoman is taking back her life,
Taking back the respect that was taken from her throughout the years
Ever so slow.

This Warriorwoman is removing pain and hurt from within the heart
Caused by the knife,
From all those who are both family and foe.
I am claiming what's mine, and my dignity,

From those who live in this society of vanity.
I am claiming back in full my heritage,
And as a Warriorwoman I am going to clean up many years of carnage.
For now standing in front of you,
You see this Warriorwoman, you see me.
Someone special has taught me to be free.

From this day forward for me, no more slavery.
Gentleness, kindness, and love is part of me, and so is my dignity.
This in NOT WEAKNESS, as other believe,
But this strength is within me and you.
I will listen to the Spirits and grow,
I will travel in the whispering winds as they blow.
All the work I now do will be for Our People and all nations,
I will protect and guide the future generations.

Now it is time for me to travel on my new path,
As a Warriorwoman conquering all wrath.
If you ever see me and want to meet me,
Please come, and I will also teach and share with you how to be

Free.

And so I sit here in awe, barely knowing what to say or how to follow those deep, deep words. I believe it best that I sit with my tea and go back to wordless pursuits. Drawing and painting, thinking and dreaming, not running from my body but feeling it, as we feel the Earth's changes we feel the changes inside of our bodies as well. A deep empowerment is entering my body and with it comes tremendous responsibility...

"Oh Sister Moon you give me the strength,
As a Warriorwoman to conquer what's on my path,
High above and way beneath,
And the much needed strength to take on the wrath.
This Warriorwoman is fully awakened and is taking a stand,
Taking the problems by the horns with my hand..."

This Summer Moon tea will help me remember, will help me ride the tides of this Moontime inside of my body, and flowing out around me into the world. Past menopause and into Cronehood we surely do become Warrior Women, and I feel the spirit growing strong within me everyday.

Ride the Moon. Bodysurf the tidal waves. Drink your tea.

Maitri

THE WAY OF TEA ~ OR ~ BECOMING YOUR OWN TEACHER...

Wed, 04 Oct 2006 02:20:37 GMT

A Delectable Tea For A Cozy Evening: Chocolate Berry, Flavored Black Tea ...

"Fine China black tea, black currants, organic rooibos flavored with vanilla, chocolate nibs, cocoa pieces, orange peels, apples, yogurt pieces, almond bits and natural flavors. This blend contains caffeine, trace amounts of dairy. Gluten free, no trans fats. " From SBS Teas.

"If anyone wishes to enter the Way of Tea, he must be his own teacher."

Sen Rikyu, 1522-1591

The above quote is like a Zen Koan and one must think about it deeply. I think about it this evening while having this most delectable tea, and I think of Sen Rikyu, one of the great teachers and masters of the tea ceremony, telling us that we must be our own teachers. It is a conundrum, and it is true. He is my teacher through his writings. I must learn the meaning on my own. We read words, we take them in deeply, they flow through our being, but it is not until we take action that the teaching itself is taken in in solid form, made tangible, made manifest in our lives. I have taught a Zen writing class for nearly 30 years. When my students thank me I must bow to them and thank them, for I can only provide the material, they must do the work. This, too, is the Way Of Tea, we are given the tools, we must become our own teachers.

I am reading the most extraordinarily beautiful book, Living the Zen Arts: Meditation*Martial Arts*Calligraphy*Flower-Arranging*The Art of Tea, and in the chapter on The Tea Ceremony (Chado), author Andy Baggott writes...

For one who follows the Zen path, the Chado principles of harmony, respect, purity and tranquility are not just reserved for the tea ceremony but are a part of everyday life. What makes a master of Chado is someone who embodies these principles in his or her daily life so that when it comes to the performance of a tea ceremony, these things flow naturally without a need for thought or intent. In order for this to happen, one has to practise these principles in all possible circumstances.

And so this is the reason that I have given my life over to the study of Tea Mind, which inculcates all the principles of the tea ceremony, the practices therein being the practices that serve us well in daily life. The Wabi Sabi nature of the world, of our lives, of each moment.

I take a moment here to be mindful with my tea. I take a sip and roll it around on my tongue and then swallow slowly. I can taste the black tea and the rooibos, I can taste the chocolate, the apple, each element in it's own time reverberates on my palette. One cannot just write about the way of tea, one must take the time to honor the tea. And I do so for a few moments before I continue, my own evening tea ceremony, sacred, ordinary, divine. Wabi Sabi for sure. I drink this very new, very fresh, delicious tea from an oversized and very old mug whose beautiful lotus flower has been fading with time. All of life ephemeral, the very teaching, the heart, of the tea ceremony.

In the beautiful book by Ryofu Pussel, Tea and Buddhism. Chado: The Way of Tea as a Buddhist Path, he writes...

Wabi sabi incorporates the Buddhist ideals of finding spiritual freedom in a situation of material insufficiency, not to be bound to material things, expectation, or worldly values, but to transcend them; a broken but repaired piece is completely acceptable at a tea meeting, and insufficient equipment can still be used suffiently by a calm and improvising heart. Wabi sabi is the realm of true sincerity. In short, the Buddhist ideals of being and acting simple and unpretentious, the beauty of a lotus flower blooming above mud, purity and perfection, and detachment are included in the meaning of wabi sabi.

What a powerful teaching wabi sabi has been in my own life. It began in 1995 when Bell's Palsy left me significantly paralyzed to this day. In the mysterious way of the world, just days after I was stricken with Bell's, in terrible pain and looking grotesque, a book would come to me that would be the first place I ever read about wabi sabi, and it has in many ways saved my life and allowed me to live peacefully in this body of mine that was stricken by other events, both physical and personal that have led me to this unusual life I live today, and which I treasure. The book was and is one of my most cherished books to this day, more than a decade later, by the wonderful writer Sue Bender. It is Everyday Sacred: A Woman's Journey Home. This book has allowed me to see the entire world in a whole new light, and in the decade plus since I first read that book, life has allowed me many opportunities to take this lesson in more and more deeply. What a blessing it has been in my life.

And so this night I drink my tea, I breathe deeply and quietly, in and out, out and in, I finger my mala beads as I sip my tea and say my mantra quietly in my mind, and I pray that each day, and in every moment, I might both learn from the wonderful teachings I am presented, and then bring them fruitfully into my life and days. I shall return to my tea now, my breath, my mantra, a prayer and I shall have my own tea ceremony in my humble home, where birds sleep all around me and fresh air flows in through the open windows. I am at peace, and the tea before me will show me the way.

Maitri

THE TEXTURE OF BEING ALIVE... THE BEATING OF THE BUTTERFLY'S WINGS...

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:17:38 GMT

An Evening Dessert Tea To Relish: Black Forest Cake, Flavored Black Tea ...

"Schwarzwerkirschtorte, say that three times as fast as you can! That is why we call it Black Forest Cake Tea instead! The brew meister (that would be moi) has done it again. Taking chocolate to all new heights. We start out with our scrumptious best selling sinfully dark Royal Chocolate flavored black tea, add creamy bits of caramel topped off with sour summer cherries and then our own special twist! We've tossed in a few sweet cherries, oranges, rosehips and hibiscus to give it that extra special cherry twang!" From SBS Teas.

To say, in a work of nonfiction, "I was born in such and such a place, in such and such a year" seems pretentious. It makes one's individual life appear very important -- when what matters are not the facts of a life but the quality of the feelings and affections -- what is universal, that is, instead of what is merely local and historical. My individual life could not be more insignificant, and I venture to speak about it not because anything particularly interesting has happened to me but simply because life has happened to me, and it has happened as well to everyone who reads these words. Every book that I care to read or write is a book about the texture of being alive, and only incidentally about the facts of a particular historical moment... Yet the facts of a life are strings that hold it to the ground.

From The Barn At The End Of The World:
The Apprenticeship Of A Quaker, Buddhist Shepherd
by Mary Rose O'Reilley

The texture of being alive. Ah, those words riveted me to the page of this book I so dearly love and will soon reread. It is an amazing book, and my copy is "textured" indeed. Dog-earred, full of underlinings, notes in the margin, turned down pages. A well loved book. And so tonight I sat paging through this fat paperback book sipping this most delicious tea. If you click on the SBS Teas link above it will take you right to the page this tea is on and you really should just peek at it. It is such a beautiful tea to look at, and it is so delicious it tends to lead one into a reverie of sorts. Tonight I think about life, and how it happens to us all, and how it moves and shapes and forms us, and how all the insignificant little lives add up to an astonishingly large whole. It is like looking down at people on the ground as you start your ascension into the sky on an airplane. The people on the ground look like ants and then soon disappear. But they are there, and each moment of their lives, of our lives, matter.

If you have ever sat in a group -- and we most of us have -- like a meditation group, or a yoga class, or even in church on Sunday in the moments of silence when one is deep in prayer and contemplation, what you feel all around you is the energy of a sea of people you do not know (for the most part). You do not know their lives, their longings, their heartaches, their political beliefs, if they have recently lost someone they love, if they are about to take a journey of significance in their lives and you are in this group with them just as they are on the precipice of this life changing event, no, you simply feel the hum, the pulse of the group of people around you. And if you are very quiet, and close your eyes, and breathe slowly and meditatively, and just, if only for a moment, feel -- not thinking, not moving, not lost in your own life -- you will feel one of the greatest miracles any of us might experience, the bodiless embodiement of life, where all the drops of water in the sea become one great ocean, where the individuals in the group don't so much matter as the larger group itself. It reminds me of a Navajo chant that I sing softly to myself often, We are one with the Infinite Sun, forever and ever and ever.

And so I sit, on this night, on the 29th of September, in the year 2006, in a little cottage on the coast of North Carolina, drinking my tea, and I am alone, and yet part of the flow of life, of all of human existence. And I am acutely aware of the significance, even in my insignificance, of sitting here with my tea and writing, sharing my thoughts with you, as I have read O'Reilley's words tonight and been deeply moved. It is the neverending ebb and flow of life. And so my family and friends scattered hither and yon, and someone that I do not know who might be reading this, and all the peoples of the world living their lives, in wars, with sadness, grief, fear and death all around, and those that are starting new lives, new marriages, new relationships, babies born, feeling joy, and love, being awe-filled and astonished at the deep pleasure of being alive, exist together on this planet all in the same moment. And how is it not possible that if we live our lives as best we can, with all the love and compassion and kindness that we have in us to give, if we each do what we can each and every day, how can it not matter? We are all threads in the tapestry of life, and each of our lives lend texture, color, grace.

It is especially easy in this war torn world we are living in today to give up hope, to feel too insignificant to do anything that might matter, but this would be wrong, and it would be a very sad way to live. I cannot, from my little cottage, change the world all in one fell swoop, but I can be loving and kind and generous of heart, I can reach out in whatever way that I can, as you can, as we all can, and if we are all one under the sun, if the beating of the delicate wings of a butterfly can affect the weather patterns around the world, how can human kindness, compassion, and love not do the same?

I take one sip of tea. I hold it in my mouth for several seconds feeling the wet, warm sensation, and swallow very very slowly. I note the flavor left on my palate. I breathe in deeply and think about what I have just experienced. This tea with deep dark chocolate, caramel, cherries, oranges, rosehips, hibiscus have all become one flavor, none of the individual elements distinguishable. Of all of the ingredients just listed what I am experiencing is one tea, the coming together of all that is in this one small cup, the pieces and parts become the whole. So, too, each and every one of us in this world, on this planet, in this moment, now.

It matters not the color of our skin, the country of our origin, the spiritual path we follow, or what we had for dinner. It matters that wherever we are we live fully awake and alive and aware of our singular responsibility to be all that we can be, because the rest of the world and all of its people are depending on us as we depend on them. Let us not, for one moment, think that we do not matter. The minutiae of our lives may not matter, but how we live our way through all the small moments of our days certainly does.

Live your life, have your tea, and bring all the kind compassion you can to every single person in every single moment. There's no one person who can save the world, we all must, in our own way, do our part. And there's no time to waste. Start now, feel the ebb and flow, breathe with it, become aware of it, feel the whisper of air of the butterfly's wings against your cheek as it travels the world. Be quiet, be still, do you feel it? It's there...

Maitri

ON COMPOSTING, BEING AN INTROVERTED ARTIST, AND DRINKING PEACH MELBA BLACK TEA IN THE EARLY HOURS OF THE MORNING...

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:36:52 GMT

Late Night Tea While Working: Peach Melba, Flavored Black Tea ...

"Another romantic European classic steeped in vivid history! Peach Melba is a wondrous combination of fresh peaches, sweet raspberries, and creamy vanilla ice cream. We dedicate this tea to the creator of this sumptuous dessert Georges Auguste Escoffier! Swan ice sculpture not included! Indulge your taste buds today." From SBS Teas.

Being an artist is doing something, making something, or trying to be ready to make something. On this subject there are several metaphors valuable to me. One is Gary Snyder's idea of composting; that's what the introverted artist does with experience; take it in and grow something different from it."

From an interview with Ursula Le Guin, in On Women Turning Sixty: Embracing The Age Of Fulfillment, interviews and photography by Cathleen Rountree...

I am an introverted artist, a metaphorist, a Teaist, and they all come together, often, late at night, past midnight, during what is called, much to my delight at the mere sound of the word, the weesmas, meaning the wee small hours. I find one of the things that menopause has given me is an interesting time table in which to live my life and days, with Circadian rhythms all askew, and as an artist it is a gift. Sipping this sumptuous peach tea (And I promise! I have the next several teas picked out and none are peach!) seems to open up the portals of my mind and allow things to flow that wouldn't at an earlier hour, when, too wide awake, thinking of too many things, my brain may have been too scattered to allow the composting to happen that would allow me to take experience and turn it into something more.

I am already an odd duck at best. My business cards for many years simply said my name and under it one word, Metaphorist. I was not trying to be facetious, not cute or funny, I merely felt it the best explanation of who and what I was and how I processed the world. Like Snyder's composting, once I got the metaphor, I understood the experience and could write about it. Enlivened and yet soothed by the incredible blending of peach, raspberries and vanilla in this, one of my new favorite teas, my brain both exploded with a kind of fourth of July fireworks display and brought me to a place of calm and refinement in my mind when the metaphors ran clear and I could see what I needed to see.

I am an introverted artist living a cloistered life, by choice, chance, and circumstance, and I spend much of my day composting in Snyder's sense, trying to make sense of a world often confusing to me, a world that looks to me, often, as though I were seeing it through funhouse mirrors. I have to put it through my own filters amidst much silence and feel it, sense it, from my toes all the way up to my brain. No t.v., few phonecalls, and I don't answer those if I'm writing unless it's one of my children, no music, just the twittering, singing and chirping of my birds and my own breath on the waves of the quiet room I am working in. This is the time for tea, for it soothes the body and fuels the brain and allows me to see, not through funhouse mirrors but as if through a kaleidoscope where the world turns different shapes and colors until it comes clearly into vision. I feel very close to Wordsworth when I read his poem, The World Is Too Much With Us. The world is always too much with me, and it takes this silence and solitude to allow the world to move through many filters so that I might digest it and have a story to tell. Today I celebrate the joys of introversion.

I find it strange that my introverted quiet life so unsettles people. They want to "get me out," and feel that there is something terribly wrong with the fact that I spend most of my days in my little cottage reading, writing, and doing my work. It is true that other than taking care of my animals, eating, tending the garden and doing what needs doing here, most of my life is spent writing and doing my art and it is a very deep thing for me, deeply spiritual, the glue that holds the fabric of my being together, that keeps all the myriad and sometimes confusing parts of my somewhat peculiar being woven all of a piece. Perhaps that is why I am a serious weaver, because in warping the loom and weaving the weft I somehow keep myself woven firmly enough to walk in the world, somewhat like the scarecrow in the Wizard Of Oz who had to keep stuffing his straw back in. I have to keep weaving so my stuffing doesn't fall out. And all this work is done quite nicely with a good cup of tea at hand.

This Peach Melba tea is divine, the sounds of silence and a house put to bed around me are comforting. The birds are asleep in their dark corners, Moe is asleep on his dog bed, only the air filter makes any sound at all and it is a soft comforting sound. One thing I know to be true is what Emerson wrote some long time ago, "The one thing in the world of value is the active soul." Yes, that is what people don't understand. Sometimes I think I do more in a day sitting at my desk than a runner in a marathon. I travel a million miles through countless books, pages of notes, things written, revised, tossed, and begun again, studying, always studying, my active soul in search of my quiet mind where all things are revealed and the compost heap turned over.

Most people seem terribly afraid of the soft still silence of my world, as if if they are not running running running, doing doing doing somehow the world as they know it will collapse around them. I don't expect anyone to live this peculiar life of mine, but it wouldn't hurt to let a few walls collapse. Taking time to sip a good cup of tea, breathe in and out, out and in until the body stops and the mind settles, and allowing for time to stuff the straw back in and become whole again is a worthy pursuit. Come. Let me pour you a cup of tea, and we will settle into composting and weaving ourselves back together so that we might see what we need to see and move forward again. If not now, when?

Maitri

DURING TIMES WHEN WE MUST BE EVER SO GENTLE WITH OURSELVES ~ PEACH BLOSSOM WHITE TEA...

Mon, 25 Sep 2006 04:14:08 GMT

For a very soft soothing evening: Peach Blossom White Tea ...

"This is a high-grade China white tea. Flavored with delicious creamy peach taste. It maintains all the health benefits of white teas. This tea is mellow, with a round, slightly sweet and subtle flavor with hints of honey. Unlike other types of tea, it is also delicious at room temperature." From SBS Teas.

With the scent of peach-blossoms
The sun rises suddenly
Over the mountain path.

Matsuo Basho (1644-94)

There are many great teachings to be had in a fine white tea. Each step is about mindfulness and gentleness. The water must not come to a full boil. If it says steep two minutes that's what it means, two minutes, and maybe even a hair less. It means watching the tea and being very present with it. The ultimate Zen mindfulness training, making a cup of tea.

And so I watched the kettle carefully, the tea leaves spooned out into the brewer, ready for the water to come. I found myself breathing, in and out, out and in, as the water heated, the stove coils glowed, the soft aroma of peaches rose from the dried leaves, waiting, just waiting, the tea leaves and I.

It has been an especially difficult two weeks here. Hard to explain. A cocoon time, much going on under the surface, not especially visible to others but tumult and exhaustion at the same time, focus gone, a time-out-of-time experience when one falls out of time and space. I now realize these are precious times, though not easy ones, because they are the times our subconscious mind takes the time it needs to work out things we have been unable to handle. Rather than fight it, one must just be very gentle with oneself and let it wash over and out to sea. It is the perfect time for a gentle cup of tea like the Peach Blossom White, nothing too startling, simply soothing, softly flavorful, every sip a pleasure, and one more easing of the soul into a deeper relaxation, where the work inside one's body and soul can be done, and we can do our best to stay out of the way and not interfere. We want so to interfere, and we do such damage along the way when we do.

I am reminded, every year at this time, living here on the coast of North Carolina, where we have often and will be hit by hurricanes. While the sea that we love and are drawn to with some deep primal longing can also destroy, kill, wipe clean away that which was. And each year there are numerous reports on television about what to do if you are caught in a rip tide. People die in them every year and there's no need for it to happen. One gets caught up in the swirling angry ocean's spinning seemingly out of control, carrying one out alarmingly further and further. People die when they frantically try to swim straight into shore, but there is no need for this to happen. A rip tide actually only covers a small area, and if one is caught in one instead of trying to swim straight in to shore with the rip tide pulling at you, you swim parallel to the shore and out of the rip tide and then you can swim safely in. It is very much like these time-out-of-time experiences when our souls can do their work in gentle silence and calm, but the harder we fight the uncomfortable changes, the more likely we are to drown in the middle of them. And so I have learned to drift slowly to a safer place, and swim in, when the time is right, to a safe haven.

When this is happening in our lives we must turn to the things that sustain us. I have been drinking gentle teas like this lovely Peach Blossom White, a lovely rooibos or two, fruity tisanes and herbal blends, all the while drawing and sketching, watching no t.v., listening to the sounds of silence, or perhaps at most some soft classical musical, or even Celtic. One day I played a beautiful rendition of Danny Boy by a Celtic group, the singers lilting Irish voice rendering my heart more broken with every note, having just talked to my mother whose cancer seems to be bringing her into another shore, coming closer and closer, one we can no longer see. And yet the music was the perfect kind of music that massages the soul, so much pain, tears running down my cheeks, and somehow, amidst the worst of the cutting pain, my soul opened wider to allow it to flow through and out to sea. With each new starting of the song yet again, my heart opened wide and the tears fell and I held my cup of tea to my lips sipping slowly for long periods, and I thought of my little Irish mother dying, climbing slowly toward the ascension into grace, and I thought that there could have been no more perfect song than this, certainly no more perfect tea, for the gentle white peach tea did soothe my soul and steady me on my course, as my subconscious did open wide and do the work that cannot be done when one is truly present to the world.

I shall order more of this tea. It is a lovely tea and feels as if it is one for special passages in one's life. The tea to ease the way. The tea to ease the heart. And one day as the peach blossoms fall around me, I shall sing an Ave and be deeply at peace.

Maitri

LIGHTER, FREER, FLOATING, FLYING, FINALLY AT PEACE... DOVE'S DETOX TEA

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 15:45:29 GMT

A Lovely Tea To Soothe, Cleanse, Relax, Find Peace, and Fly Free: Dove's Detox Tea ... From SBS Teas...

"When you need peace within, use Dove's Detox tea. Much more than an olive branch! This is an excellent all over body detox blend. It helps promote regular bowel movements without the severe laxative effects of other bowel blends. Helps to purify and cleanse out the liver and purify the blood. It also has stimulating properties and makes an excellent coffee substitute. A proprietary blend of Burdock root, dandelion root, chicory, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger root, orange peel, vitex, licorice, red clover and a hint of spearmint. Not for children! "

"I wish I had the wings of the dove so I could fly away."

Henry James

There is nothing more gentle and soulful than a dove. I have raised doves of all sorts and today I terribly miss my tiny diamond doves and would love to have some again. The gentle coo, the gentle lilting tones, soothing, peaceful. And so, as we all get from time to time, heavy with life, not feeling so well, a general un-wellness, when nothing specific ails you, but you know you need a cleansing, something to help you feel lighter, freer, able to fly again, I was wondering what I might take or do and I came across this wonderful tea, Dove's Detox Tea, in SBS Tea's offerings. I had hoped for a cleansing tea, and it is all of that, but I was not prepared for how utterly delicious it is. I have just ordered my second pound and make it several times a week. It's very good hot, and I've come to really love it iced, in fact it is one of my favorite teas for any reason!

I have had teas meant for a cleansing that made me ill, tasted horrible, and gave me you-know-what that's not so pretty to talk about! Dove's Detox does not do that at all. It is amazingly gentle, incredibly delicious, and I will not be without it in this little cottage of mine.

I am coming into a time in my life when many changes are occuring and I feel an intense need for both internal and external cleansing. In my body, in my home, and in my life. What can one let go of, both inner and outer, to free oneself of the heavy weights that have held one earthbound, like the albatross around the sailor's neck (where that common phrase began) in the late 1700's poem, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, when the sailor has shot an albatross that has led the ship to safety, and once the albatross had been killed the weather turns deadly and the sailor's angry crewmates make him wear the dead albatross around his neck.

Too many times our bodies feel leaden, weighted down, and we crave that lighter freer feeling in our bodies. Dove's Detox is definitely a tea for that, a tea to be enjoyed, a tea that will once again have you lighter, freer, flying, soaring!

And so I put the kettle on to make enough for two days and I will drink it, and as I shed the layers of life held inside of my body and draped around my shoulders like the albatross, I will be preparing myself for a time when once again I might fly, and fly I shall. On the wings of a dove, I will fly.

Maitri

A TEA COLETTE WOULD HAVE LOVED... "EARTH MOTHER PU-ERH"

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 03:40:26 GMT

A Late Evening Tea With Colette: Earth Mother Pu-erh Tea ... From SBS Teas...

"Pu-erh is very popular worldwide where it is being used as a slimming tea, diet aid and to lower cholesterol.

Earthy Pu-erh and sweet rose petals are melded together and smoothed out by the very exotic nature of this blend. If you find plain Pu-erh to be a bit too earthy, this is an excellent alternative.

Ingredients:
Pu-erh and organic rose petals and buds."

"You must be calm, garden, calm and sensible! Don't forget that you are going to feed me ... I want to see you adorned, yes, but with a fruitful beauty. I want to see you covered in flowers, but not in such tender blooms as a single summer day of sizzling crickets will scorch up. I want to see you green, but away with the relentless green of palm and cactus ... Let the arbutus burst into flames beside the orange tree, and let there be sheets of purple fire dripping down my walls: the bougainvillaea! And at their feet, let the mint plants, the tarragon, and the sage push up their spikes, just so high that a dropping hand, as it crushes their slender leaf stems, can set free their impatient scents. Tarragon, sage, mint, savory, and burnet opening your pink flowers at noon, then closing them again three hours later, I love you certainly for yourselves -- but I shall not fail to demand your presence in my salads, my stewed lamb, my seasoned sauces; I shall exploit you. But all I have in me of disinterested botanical passion I shall keep for that other flower, over there, for her -- honor of every climate favored by her presence -- the queen, the Rose."

Colette

And so this September night, between summer and autumn, when roses bloom on my patio and others are ready to burst into fall bloom, those that can't bear the dismal, heavy heat of our coastal summer, but once the weather cools will bloom into December, and wrapped in my shawl with my old, worn, tattered volume, Earthly Paradise, the collected writings of my muse Colette, I sit drinking this earthy Pu-erh tea, laden with pink roses. Just to see it in the brewer with the pink roses floating in the earthen-colored translucent brown tea was a thing of beauty.

I know a great many tea lovers that do not like Pu-erhs, but I have always loved them for the earthy richness which seems to sooth and ground me. But I think this beautiful floral Pu-erh might enchant the most reticent tea drinkers who steer clear of this amazing tea. Even while earthy it is sweet and gentle, a perfect tea for Colette's earthly pardise.

I have been feeling very melancholy and sad the last week or so, but there's nothing for it but to put the kettle on and go to work. Sitting amongst my books with my animal companions and my fiber work all around me, with dogged determination and clutching my prose bible, this book of Colette's, I knew that one must forge on and she would have little pity or respect for one who simply sat and mucked about in misery. No! She would not bear it for a moment.

When I get in this state I always think of that line of Colette that I am certain I have used here before, as I've used it often in my writings and even put a post-it note on my computer with this brief, powerful phrase. Colette wrote, "Who said you should be happy? Do your work."

And so now as I settle in amongst my books, sipping a tea that celebrates mother earth, and earth mothers, I lift my cup to Colette who is likely bending over one of her beloved plants in a garden in the heavens, picking herbs for her supper, and gazing, lost in thought, at a single, perfect rose.

Maitri

AN ODE TO LEMONS, AND, LEMON COCONUT CREAM TEA...

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 19:46:11 GMT

A Lovely Tea On A Monday Afternoon: Flavored Black Tea, Lemon Coconut Cream ... From SBS Teas...

"And now to dessert. Here's the lemon's shining moment. Lemon ice, lemon pound cake, and lemon pudding cake. Lemon squares, bars, and shortcake. Lemon fluff, Madeira cake (with lemon in it), lemon jelly, plain lemon cookies. Besides chocolate, the longest entry in many cookbook indexes is for lemons. I adore a recipe from Jane Grigson's Good Things. New Years Eve I try out her lemon rice pudding (see: "After The Holidays"), which you make with cream (or half and half), rice, sugar, and lemon peel. You bake it slowly in the oven, adding a drop or two of lemon juice, and stir it up from the bottom from time to time. The resulting pudding, served very cold with a couple of blanched pistachio nuts, will make rice pudding lovers crumble into bits. The rice almost dissolves on the tongue, but is not mush. It is suave, sophisticated baby food with a wonderful lemon taste. The tiny pieces of peel have cooked to a candy. This dessert is innocent and wicked at the same time, the ideal end to a dinner welcoming in a new year."

Laurie Colwin, More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns To The Kitchen

And so a love affair with lemons is nothing new and quite widespread, throughout history, as it would seem. It is useful in all manner of cooking and old timey/herbal medicines, and most spectacularly, when teas have been turned into dessert in a cup, scintillating brews with evanescent and then lasting impressions, when one can close their eyes and remember the lemon coconut cream still rolling across the palette and, at the same time, house a deep desire for a lemon poppy seed muffin, or Jane Grigson's delightful lemon rice pudding, a lemon pound cake, and more, one thinks that they could be quite happy no matter WHAT their circumstance might be if a lemon tea and sweet were at hand.

I had an odd thought when I started writing this piece. I was thinking of the popular saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." I thought about that and then I thought, well, life hasn't exactly given me lemons, but it forgot to put the sugar in the lemonade. Which only goes to show that we can't expect life to do everything but must play our part. Do we need to think more positively, see the good side of things and not always the bad? Pehaps we need to work very hard at the glass half full moments in life rather than the glass half empty. So things don't always turn out the way we would wish, well, what then? What if we add our own sugar and make sweet lemonade (still tart, as lemons always will be, to remind us of the balance, the yin and the yang of life...) but that it is always within our power to shift the landscape before us with a tiny change of viewpoint.

I added a bit of sugar to my tea, I longed for a lemon poppyseed muffin but instead made cinnamon toast, which was just perfect anyway. I sipped the tea slowly and I felt enlivened and refreshed. It was not too sweet, not too tart, smooth and creamy with the secret ingredients SBS Teas added, and it opened my eyes a little wider to see off into the vistas of the whole new world before me.

Lemon tea is a wake up call. There are many delicious desserts we might add into the mix that would be a fine compliment to the tea, but if we are going to lead a life with tea guiding us down paths we need to go, if we are going to give ourselves over to life's lessons rather than sit hard and fast in our own solidly black and white way of looking at things, never budging from a rigid viewpoint, we will live sad lives, never quite full, never quite able to see all the colors of the rainbow, in our hearts, and the world around us. The bright yellow of the lemon, the sparkling awakening on my tongue and down my throat, wake me UP and I am given a chance to turn the kaleidoscope and see a new view of life.

I hope I am always open to new people, places and things. I hope I always live with a heart wide open, leaping into the void of uncertainty with courage and fortitude. No, I don't buy that life only gives us lemons. Life gives us opportunities, and it is up to us to do what we must to sweeten the pot. And what an exciting way to be. It really is all in our hands.

I wish you could be here with me so that I could pour you a cup of this delectable lemon tea, and we could talk about lemons and their lessons. And we could dip our paintbrushes in yellow paint and paint the way before us a wide sweep of golden yellow. We've always time to change no matter how old we are. The tea is in the cup, the paintbrush in our hand. Follow the yellow brick road...

Maitri

SELF CARE, A DIFFERENT CELEBRATION & KAHLUA COFFEE TEA...

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:05:15 GMT

On A Night When You Need To Feel Soothed: Flavored Black Tea, Kahlua Coffee ... From SBS Teas... : "Creamy lush coffee taste with a subtle rum flavor. This tea is as close to a well known favorite alcohol blend as you can get. We thought but in a tea? Yep, in a tea, add cream and topped with a bit of whip and a cherry."

"She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaving them gratefully into a single cloth --
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration

where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you."

Rainer Maria Rilke

In the last entry I wrote about the practice of becoming no one special. I stand behind this with all my heart, and will follow this practice all the days of my life. But at the same time, I know that we are each special and as unique as a snowflake. My dear friend Katya and I wrote about this back and forth the day after I wrote the last entry.

What it boils down to is this. In the Buddhist sense being Nothing Special is about egolessness, the kind of ego that leads us to believe we are bigger and better and more than anyone else. By my definition we are also special in that whoever we are we bring to this planet our God-given gifts and talents, our strengths and our weaknesses. Sometimes in our strength we can help someone else. At other times, in our weakness, we allow someone else to let their strong side come to the fore, affording them the lesson of strength while we are helped in the process. It is yin and yang, and we are never always strong and we are never always weak. We are always both, and the two sides cycle on throughout our lives. In the Buddhist sense it matters not whether we are President of a country, waitress in a diner, corporate executive, housewife, gardener, artist, teacher or any of the other myriad paths one might take. In this we bring our unique gifts to bear on who we are in our lives. What we must caution ourselves against is thinking that we are better than or not as good as someone else. That is all ego. We are not more special if we are President and less if we are a street sweeper. When the God within me meets the God within you we have found the great equalizer, where there is no shame or pride, where we just are. Nothing special. Absolutely special. A great Zen Koan, a puzzle, a teaching, a prayer.

One of the things that is certain about me is that among my gifts and talents there lies a dark side when I fall into anguish and despair, depression and anxiety. It is at these times that I have consciously learned to take care of myself so that I don't go hurtling over the rails of life, and there is nothing better than the ritual of making tea to bring me home. The last two days, after having been off one of my medications for several days, my body went through re-entry with the drug and my head ached and I was barely out of bed when I could hardly keep my eyes open. I slept for four hours two afternoons in a row. I was aghast, but my body needed to readjust, to come back into balance with the important drug back in place. I had to allow myself days of grace, like grace notes on a page in a musical score. Pauses in the day to allow my body to do it's work, and upon awakening from my drug induced sleep, as the chemicals re-entered and helped stabilize my brain, I began to re-enter my body, slowly, ever so slowly.

One of the saddest things in this modern age is that we are supposed to pretend that everything is always fine, we are not allowed to have moments of spaciousness to allow ourselves to find our equilibrium, and so we get further and further away from our center until we are barely holding on by our fingernails, all the while saying, "I'm okay, I'm okay." Well, somedays we are not okay, and these days are gifts, when we find the stuff we're made of, where we can be nobody special and let the world carry on without us for awhile. Amazing isn't it? The sun still comes up, and then the moon in its turn, and one day turns into another, and the world has gone on just fine without our being whoever-we-are, the almighty indispensable one, and those who could not live without us, those whom we were afraid to let down lived their lives and let us be. We are usually the last ones to see, admit, realize the depth of our need to be nothing at all, to float, to drift, to dream, to drink our tea and let the world be.

And so I put the kettle on, and while the water was coming to a boil I sorted through my teas. I needed something that would both soothe me and give me a lift. I wanted a black tea to revive my sleepy brain, and something soothing as well. I will admit that while I am not much of a drinker, one of the things I do love, though I seldom have, is Kahlua. I like it in coffee. But the idea of Kahlua and coffee flavors in a tea seemed impossible to me. I was skeptical, but as I opened the bag of loose tea the aroma made me audibly sigh. It smelled heavenly. I sniffed about the brewer like a bloodhound as it was steeping, and I put a bit of milk and sugar in which I seldom do in my tea anymore. Oh, Heaven! This is the most delicious tea. After the first sip I sank back in my chair with the tea in my hands and just allowed the warmth to spread through my hands, up my arms, in my belly, throughout my insides, and the very air was perfumed around me with the delicious sweet fragrance of the tea. The ritual of the tea-making and the tea itself brough me back to myself, my nothing special/special self, and in that moment it mattered not who I was, what roles I had in life, what gifts or talents or not I possessed, it was simply tea and me and a moment sublime. I had given myself over to the much needed empty space where I mattered not at all in the universe, where I floated in my own emptiness and let myself fill up with air, with prayer, with sleep, with a good book, with my dog, and my birds, and the argiope spider I've named Louise who has built a beautiful web outside just over my little front garden.

I was nothing special and everything special all at once as I sipped my tea and felt all the wonders and glories of the universe. I was empty and I was full and the tea was good and I felt full in my emptiness. And when we can find that we have found grace. And when we have found grace in emptiness, we can re-enter the world with our equilibrium intact and be somebody/nobody in a world where nothing/everything matters, and we can sigh with relief because we don't have to hold the world up with our own two hands, and finally, just maybe, we can find a comfortable place in the universe to walk amongst our fellow men and women, and not have to be anything other than what we are, but simply be.

I shall think about this a little more as I prepare to make this evening's tea, and work on the book, and perhaps knit a little, and feel comfort in the silence of this dark room around me, where the birds are sleeping and Moe is belly up with his paws in the air, more at peace than I think any of us will ever know. Dogs just are. I envy them, we have to work at being that relaxed in the world, but tea comes close to bringing me to that place, and the kahlua tea was so smooth and such a delight, I felt at peace in this little bubble of time, and woke up today more prepared to face the world. Self-care is not selfish. Self-care sustains us, and makes us whole. Pour yourself a cup of tea...

Maitri

BECOMING NO ONE SPECIAL... OR, THE PRACTICE OF LEARNING TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT...

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 03:23:57 GMT

A Tea For Bringing One Back To The Present Moment: Ginseng Oolong Tea ...

"Soothing and sweet, with a cooling sensation in your mouth," write the purveyors of this fine tea, and they are right. This is a lovely tea from The Tea Farm. They also write, which I think is instructive and helpful on our path to learning about teas, "Oolong tea is processed by using a tray and sun dried for a few hours before the rolling process. It is allowed to be oxidized for a short period of time thus creating this semi-fermented tea. There are many factors that contribute to the quality of the Oolong tea, such as the region the plants are grown in and tea plants can only be produced into Oolong tea in a few areas in China and Taiwan. Oolong tea is favored by many tea drinkers because of its digestive functions, and it is the only type of tea that is thought to be good for your stomach. Besides being good for your stomach, Oolong tea possesses all the antioxidants and health benefits as other teas." Oolong has longsince been one of my favorite teas, and the more I find out about the health benefits, the more grateful I am to be able to sip this tea, a fragrant elixir as well as a soothing balm to the spirit.

In the eating hall, a stuffed parrot hung from the ceiling, and from its golden beak dangled a card that read, "We are in training to be nobody special." I had often repeated this to myself, working against my need for achievement and recognition, and the discontent that could engender. "I am in training to be nobody special." Saying the words in my mind, I felt how they redirected me from a certain seductive struggle and excitement and disease, into a more stable focus: forget what others think of you, forget the future goal of achievement; arrive instead in this body/mind, attending to this present moment. This is the whole of practice.

Hidden Spring: A Buddhist Woman Confronts Cancer
Sandy Boucher

In Boucher's book she begins, "Like most American Buddhists who did not grow up in Asia or in Asian-American homes, I came to Buddhism as an adult..." I found this a stunning remark because I, too, having been raised Catholic with twelve years of Catholic education under my belt, and then leaving the church, and then on a path of searching, going to this church and that, finally came to Buddhism in my early twenties, a young adult, at the beginning of what would be a lifelong journey. At 52 I still consider myself a student of Buddhism, and will be a humble student all the days of my life. Not having been raised Buddhist, and having only the Westernized version to fall back on, I am most grateful not only for the many Asian teachers who came to this country bringing their knowledge, their wisdom, and leaving us their teachings in their books -- jewels in my firmament -- but I am most grateful for the Westerners like myself who have taken Buddhism deeply into their hearts and lives and try to follow the daily practices, always a struggle for a mere human, still learning and growing with the knowledge I gain, all the while knowing while it's good to read books it is the practical practice that gets you there. And practice is continual, it never ends.

I wear three things at all times -- my sterling silver dragonfly necklace with an aquamarine set in the center on a heavy silver chain (My last name, Libellule, means dragonfly in French, and the dragonfly is also my totem animal in the Native American sense.); my beautiful mala (prayer beads, used to chant one's mantra), roughly 40 inches long, made for me of lovely beads of rose quartz, aventurine, and amazonite, with beautiful sterling silver Bali beads by my dear lovely friend Victoria; and a beautiful little heavy silver hand-carved mindfulness bell with an amethyst set in the top that I wear on a heavy sterling silver snake chain. These two necklaces as well as my mala are so much a part of me that one day when I babysat my near 2 1/2 year old grandbaby, Lucas, he asked, "Where's your bell?" He loves to sit on my lap and play with my necklaces and beads. But it is the bell that is most actively a part of my practice. When I walk it makes a tiny little tinkle, bringing me back to the present moment and a state of mindfulness, to live and practice, continually, forgetting and remembering over and over, that the goal is one of becoming no one special. Only in becoming no one special can we let go of the things of the world that weigh us down, whether things that are ego based, material things, or worldly ambitions that take us away from our True Nature, our Buddha Nature, something that few attain but many strive for. I fall quite a bit on the path, I become ashamed of myself, and then realize that that is ego too. Living in a house full of parrots, most especially ruled by my grey parrot Henry, a great teacher and friend, I am constantly brought out of my self as I watch these amazing creatures who live solely in the present moment and make my fears and concerns and ego-based thoughts fall away, at least for a moment, and then I walk and my bell tinkles and I remember. And then I prepare to make a cup of tea, the mindful meditational ritual that nightly brings me back to my goal of becoming nobody special..

There is nothing special about making tea, and in that nothing-specialness we find the sacred moment, the present moment, the ordinary, the sublime. I love the ritual acts involved, the filling of the kettle, measuring out the loose tea into the brewer, fixing my tea tray, fingering my mala beads while I wait for the water to boil, pouring the water over the leaves, and bringing the tray into sit, mindfully, watching my breath, feeling my body relax, knowing that the tea brings health to both body and mind.

I feel my muscles relax, I see, more clearly, the day that has gone before me, and note, without judgment, the events of the day, and where I might have been gentler with myself or others, and where I created my own impediments, for nothing and no one can create those for me outside of myself. I am learning this more and more. I am not that special, and there is deep comfort in that.

And so past ten tonight I am sipping my tea and writing here, and I realize that my whole body has sunk deeply into this moment, and I feel gratitude, and I know it will not last. But that is not really my business. My busines is to be here now, fully present with my tea, and know that if I am fully present in this moment, I have a greater chance of being more fully present in the next. Moment to moment, like my fingers moving from bead to bead around the circle of 108 beads on my mala, are these precious, ordinary moments, continually circling the labyrinthine path called life, and never becoming lost if we only take one step at a time. Let the next step, tomorrow's steps, next year's steps take care of themselves. As Ram Dass wrote, Be Here Now. And I am trying. And even while I am remembering I am forgetting, and I am learning to be very soft and gentle with myself as I stumble and fall, and the softer I fall the less I get hurt. I am in training to be nobody special. I will keep on training steadily, as I sip my tea and listen to the tinkling of my bell...

Maitri

DRAWING BOOKS, DRINKING TEA, FLOATING IN APRICOT DREAMS...

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 00:59:13 GMT

A Tea For Drawing & Dreaming Books: Apricots and Cream Tea ... From SBS Teas...

"Remember, you don't have to make a career of it. Be a Dabbler! Sign up!

No talent.
No money.
No time.
Play Devil's Advocate.
Why are these limitations?
Why are they not?"

The Creative License:
Giving Yourself Permission To Be The Artist You Truly Are
Danny Gregory

And so it's tea time and book time. Tea time, book time, and drawing time. Drawing, collaging, mixed media, words on tea stained pages, Japanese rice papers, tea bags, notes from anywhere, quotes from everywhere, exuberant flashing thoughts and quiet moments, this is the book that I am writing. Tea Mind, Be Kind has become so much more than a book and a blog, it has become a way of life and the coming into the fullness of my being, both human and artistic. Drawing on more than three decades of writing, publishing, making art in many genres, and having had three small presses, all hand done, each page will be scanned into the computer rather than typewritten. The typed words on the page will be part of a larger picture, as surely words on a page always are.

"The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?"

Chuang Tzu

I am fully aware that some people won't like this format, those that want black and white words on a page in neat little paragraphs, and I appreciate and read quite a few myself. But like the apricots bursting forth in full flavor on my tongue from the exuberance of this flavored black tea, my spirit is soaring and it won't be held back.

I have always loved books whose spirit was larger than life, starting back in the 70's with books by Shambhala like The Rainbow Book printed on bright colored paper, each section a different color and full of wild artwork and rainbow colored thoughts, arcing into the future and still alive today more than three decades later. Then there was Ram Dass's Be Here Now, a revolutionary book graphically, rubberstamping instead of fonts on paper the color of a brown grocery store bag with a brilliant blue cover. BE HERE NOW. You might not have liked it, you might not have understood it, but you will never forget it once you've even seen it and held it in your hands. I take a sip of tea. I am thinking...

More than a decade ago I fell in love with Dan Price's Moonlight Chronicles, all hand done, drawings, photographs, hand-written words on a page. Then there came SARK in all her rainbow-colored glory, with color so alive it would shatter a rainbow, like Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy's very words and art did break open my heart, and clear the clouds from my eyes so that I could see the world in a whole new way. Sabrina Ward Harrison came along with journals so wild and wooly and full of life, art on a page, words as art as words, that you could never look at a book the same way again, and Nick Bantock's magical book series about Griffin and Sabine shook me to my core. Today I have his marvelous book, Urgent 2nd Class: Creating Curious Collage, Dubious Documents, And Other Art From Ephemera. Is not tea, art? Can I not write a book by dipping my pen in a cup of tea and dreaming the words onto the page? Collecting the history and lore of tea, the physical aspects of tea life, the collage of teaware and words and sodden tea bags with drooping tags, and tea boxes with some of the finest art you'll find today all over the outside. Can you read my tea leaves? Can you put them on a page in a book about tea? It's all like a Zen koan. It is all inspired by tea and art and life and a pen in my hand, and a room around me messy and colorful, and a life lived in books, life as art as life.

If I know one thing I know that I am a Domestic Mystic. I am a Wizard and a Shaman. I know that I can fly. At least I can with a pen in my hand. Colette asked, What's the point of this wish, this journey, this extravagant flying carpet? I know in my heart that she meant the journey of writing, living as artist, a peculiar life at best, and lest I get too caught up in magical realism, she turns around and brings me back to earth when she says, Who said you should be happy? Do your work.

For more than a decade my work and life have been centered in the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi. The imperfect-perfect. And Domestic Mystics don't come close to being perfect. Some of us live in messy houses, many of us would rather drink tea than mop the floor, a good deal of us are dreamers, and there are those of us who are writers and artists as well. We, perhaps, lead the most peculiar lives of all.

I have always thought that my life was best captured in a poem by one of my favorite poets, Lucie Brock-Broido. This poem, Domestic Mysticism was published in a book of poems in 1988. The book was called A Hunger. She had me with the title. The first poem, whose title I have given above, has a few lines that make me laugh, that make me feel as if I am looking into a mirror into my very own life. She writes,

This work of mine, the kind of work which takes no arms to do,
Is least noble of all. It's peopled by Wizards, the Forlorn,
The Awkward, the Blinkers, the Spoon-Fingered, Agnostic Lispers,
Stutterers of Prayer, the Flatulent, the Closet Weepers,
The Charlatans. I am one of those...
...I've got this mystic streak in me.

I've got this mystic streak in me as do most Teaists if they allow themselves to fully be. To become the tea is to become the moment and nothing more. When I write here, when I draw in my sketchbook, when I pick up my fiber work and create wild, colorful beings, when I kiss my grey parrot on the beak, I feel this mystic streak shooting through me, oozing out of my pores, and I feel joy. I look into my tea cup as if into a deep reflecting pool and I see not the lumpy, bumpy, lopsided, cattywompus, middle-aged woman that I am, I see a reflection of my own soul. Tea takes me there. Tea takes me everywhere.

In closing, I will leave you with a few lines from this same book of poems by Brock-Broido. The title of the poem is Jessica, from the Well and refers to the little girl some time ago who fell down the well and it took a valiant effort to save her, and they did. Brock-Broido ends the poem in this way, and I shall end this piece this way as well...

...Given my character, I will always be mercurial,
a little sentimental, star-shaped & terrestrial
divine by water, healed by air
luminescent, inconceivable, a prayer
... I sing.

Maitri

WHEN IS TEA TIME? WHAT IS TEA TIME? ~ THE CONTEMPLATIVE ART OF "TAKING TEA" ...

Sat, 05 Aug 2006 00:27:58 GMT

Hot or Iced, It's Very Nice!: Cool Fusion Tea, The Tea I Drank All Day Long... "Black tea, mint, chocolate nibs, cocoa pieces, vanilla, organic rooibos, almond slivers, apple pieces, vanilla yogurt bits, and natural flavors. This blend contains caffeine.." ... From SBS Teas, formerly "Scent By Spirit"...

"He noticed that the river's voice spoke to him. He learned from it; it educated and taught him. The river seemed like a god to him and for many years he did not know that the wind, every cloud, bird and beetle is equally divine and knows and can teach just as well as the esteemed river. But when this holy man went off into the woods, he knew everything; he knew more than you and I, without teachers, without books, just because he believed in the river."

Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

Today was a very contemplative day, between 2 phone meetings, fiber work, writing and the spaces within and without and all around I took tea, and revelled in it. Experimenting just now with which teas I might like iced for the summer, I couldn't help but turn to SBS Teas "Cool Fusion." With a name like that, how could you go wrong?

This sweet chocolate minty tea was one I had wanted to try for some time and today, between the first and second meetings, I brewed a good sized pot. I was sipping it hot with a teaspoon of sugar (which I found, upon the first sip, I didn't really need) and a splash of warmed milk, which was good, but with the second cup I left out both the sugar and the milk and savored the many-layered flavors in this marvelous tea. The second cup I drank plain and by now as it had gone cold and I added more that I had intentionally brewed stronger in the pot, I added ice. Oh! How refreshing! And this time the meetings were over and I sat, silently, savoring the tea and thinking. The chocolate mint flavor is lingering on my palette still. This will be a must have tea in my little cottage now.

It occurred to me that if asked "When is tea time?" most people, including myself, would answer, "Anytime!" and then I realized that the answer was far deeper and more complex than that. Tea time is not just a time of refreshment on every level, it is a time that we should make it a point of taking, and we should take it slowly, and breathe deeply, and allow the mind to unwind, and we should think about the river.

You can travel a river in your mind. Close your eyes. It is a beautiful, perfect day, warm, but not too hot. You are laying on your back on a raft, floating gently down the river, and all of a sudden you are alone, suspended in time, in a place that is beyond time, the dreamtime. There are no outer encumbrances, only inner peace. And suddenly you become acutely aware of the call of bird overhead, you feel the wind on your cheek, a splash in the river beside you, but still you do not open your eyes, you are in a place of wordless wonder. It is at this kind of time that you find your deepest connection with God, with whatever you connect with deeply spiritually, and you needn't think in words, you simply allow yourself to feel. To feel the groundless ground beneath you, the endless sky above you, the kinetic energy that gently flows through each and every one of us, connecting us, and you realize that if you find peace within, your radiant flow of gentle soothing breath-filled grace will affect the energy waves flowing from you out into the world.

Breath, drink your tea, don't open your eyes...

You are bodyless, there is nothing tangible, there is floating, there isn't the ability to cling to the things, to the excuses, to the worries, to the books, to the shoulds and should nots, through the times in our lives when we have fallen away from our path. We sip our tea, we close our eyes, we float on the river, we breathe. This is tea meditation. Tea Mind. It is the time we are closest to our deepest Self, the real essential being that we are, underneath clothes and body, and station in society, and a string of degrees or no. This is the place where it doesn't matter what kind of car we drive or house we live in or how much money we have in our wallet. This is the place where we are as naked as a new born baby, with a world full of possibilities before us. Each moment is new, each moment Divine, filled with potent possibility abundant. We drink our tea and we are reborn. When we open our eyes the bright lights will make us squint for a moment, and then, amazed, we find ourself looking at a whole new world. We have the ability, from this moment on, to make of our days and our moments and our lives all that we would have it be. We have choice. The very notion fills me with joy.

I shall not let anyone take this knowledge from me, as if they could. Tea time is good tea, quiet mind, open heart, gentle breathing, and letting go, letting go, letting go. Tea is the great equalizer. You cannot have your tea and float on the river, eyes closed, becoming one with everything, needing nothing but your essential Self and not be changed when you set down your cup of tea and open your eyes. And so I have done today, and the Cool Fusion tea took me there. I shall not soon forget this tea.

Maitri

AN INDEPENDENT TEA BOOK FROM AN INDEPENDENT PRESS...

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:22:52 GMT

People have wondered, as well as I myself have wondered, why the blog and subsequent book have been slowing down. I have given you my laundry list of personal reasons in the last few entries. Family illness, a wedding, a child leaving town for a new life, and more. But it has not been for personal reasons as much as artistic reasons. The tea work, and my relationship to it, has been undergoing a metamorphosis. It is with relief that I give my energy back to this work, for I am finally emerging, like the caterpillar turned butterfly, from the cocoon I have been resting in while I figured out what it was that was holding me back, and finally what direction I wanted to go. It has truly been a revelation. It is exciting. It is scary. And it is exactly what this writer/artist/teawoman should be doing.

First of all, artistically, I wanted a very different kind of book. I have had 3 small presses. The last press was The Blue Hibiscus Press, named for my beautiful blue hibiscus, Hibiscus Syriacus 'Bluebird.' I got that tiny plant just days after coming down with one of the worst cases of Bell's Palsy that three doctors had seen. After every kind of treatment imaginable, and more than a decade later, I am still significantly paralyzed with a wonky smile and an eye that goes rather its own way when it feels tired and stressed. The plant that I ordered before I came down with Bell's, this sky blue hibiscus (who has made many moves and is still here with me today in a huge barrel on my back patio, blooming up a storm as we speak), was an inspiration during a time I desparately needed beauty. I named her Miss Blue and her ravishing beauty has thrilled and delighted me year after year since I got her in June of 1995. If you click on her picture below you can read her story, and by the by, her petals really are a gorgeous sky blue, not pinkish as they look here. The color is just very hard to photograph!

For three years I published a quarterly journal called: THE CONTEMPLATIVE WAY ~ Slowing Down In A Modern World. I had over 200 subscribers, and I put the 100 page quarterly together by hand, having at the time a small black and white monitor laptop with no internet access, and am still kidded today as I bemoaned the loss of letter-writing and said I would never sell out to the internet. Ahem. At least I believe I was just about the last person on this planet who did when I got tired of writing long beautiful letters with sealing wax and pressed flower petals and bits of poems and quotes and the deep sharing of my heart to people who never wrote back. I was a real holdout until I had grieved long enough and in 1997, after a serious surgery that had me laid up for some time, got online and never looked back. But the feel of putting The Contemplative Way together never left me. I loved it dearly. It was a cut and paste job. I typed out the columes by hand and cut and pasted. I had numerous writers from around the United States who wrote for the journal and I cut and pasted theirs too. And I used Victorian artwork, and had something toward 100 quotes in each issue, tucked here and there and sometimes around the edges of the pages. It was heartfelt and artful and I loved it dearly. My son helped me assemble and staple it and get it ready for mailing. It was all on blue paper and beautiful (though it got to the point that Aaron, my son, said he hoped he never saw another blue piece of paper again in his life!), and to this day it makes my heart ache when I remember those years. I still have people contact me who were subscribers and say they felt so sad when I stopped and also that they had saved every issue. That just fills my heart with joy.

I am an independent publisher in my soul. I long to be immersed in that kind of work, and now the new innovations of on-demand publishing will make it possible. I can write and design the whole book and it will be published on demand as buyers place an order. What a revelation. And even within this whole new wonderful world of possibilites I have been trying to figure out how to accomplish what I want to accomplish and not lose the flavor and feel of a homespun book, something you want to hold in your hands, close to your heart, like a book of your great great grandmother's old "receipts" to a hand drawn diary sketchbook, with side notes, and quotes and resources. I want to celebrate tea, and what tea means in the spiritual sense, in my own personal life and more. I want it to be "The Contemplative Way" using the technology at hand with my own handspun, heartfelt vision of what this book might be. There has never been any doubt that I would do it, it just went underground for a time while my relationship to it all made the metamorphic changes that it has. Art has it's own time as does tea.

And so in the weeks and months ahead you will see the entries here more often about special teas and teatimes, thoughts, revelations, notes, quotes and flashing thoughts, and as I write here on the blog I am also designing the book here in my studio. It is as though the floodgates have opened. It's time has come. Thank you for staying with me, encouraging me, and having your cup of tea as I have mine. The tea-energy circles the world and floats us all on its waves of peace and gentleness, its ebullience and flavorful revelations. Tea is joy. Tea just is. And so, I hope, shall this book be. A book to feel at home with while you sip your tea and nibble your scone. A book to dream in, learn from, find wonderful tea companies and other resources, a book coming right out of the center of Tea Mind, and certainly, a book about being kind.

I raise my cup of tea to you. Let us follow our visions, dream our dreams, and put the pot on for another cup of tea. There's always time, there's never any rush. Birthing a book is like birthing a child -- so many joyful moments amidst the laboring and sometimes fear and then giving oneself over to the process. And so I shall keep on, and never lose sight of my goal. May you find peace on your own journeys. Follow your star...

Maitri