Tea From The Top of My Soapbox

Hi Everyone

So my jet lag has passed.  I've had a date night with my husband - Misaki sushi!  I've planned a night out with friends.  I've enjoyed winter school vacation with my family and several hours of afternoon cuddling with my babies.  And while I'd love to extend the doting and atta-girls from friends and loved ones, I'm ready to publicly admit that I'm "back in action" after my seventeen day trip to India.  And lucky for me, part of that action is keeping up with this blog as requested by TEN founders, John and Sarah.  An opportunity to regularly share my perspective - that of an everyday, suburban mother of five, household executive, modern day abolishionist, women's rights activist, writer of the divine in the ordinary, community leader and life loving student of the journey.  And while I'm lovin' how all thisl sounds on paper, please note life's never as easy as I say it is.  Motherhood, womanhood, and freedom fighting is all pretty humbling work, so we just gotta start somewhere.  Right here is as good a place as any...

Regardless, I'm both eager and honored to have been gifted this venue to share my work on the issues of trafficking, slavery and human rights.  I'll be reporting live from the trenches of "everyday land" and hope that somehow you can relate to my view that we must not only bake cupcakes for the PTA, freeze during endless hours of little league games, and find a way to pay the mortgage each month.  But we must - we really must - schedule in some social justice labor too.  It is our responsibility to humanity.  I hope you choose to join the fight for the freedom of our global sisters and children. 

And since I've climbed half way up my soapbox this morning, I figure I'll finish it off from the very top with a lingering - perhaps nagging - thought from my trip.  In my debriefing, I've been really hung up on hospitality and generosity.  At the risk of reiterating Greg Mortenson's message in his book, Three Cups of Tea, I have never been served so graciously from those with so much lack as I was in the shelters of Kolkata.  Upon our arrival or departure, or right smack in the middle of the day, we were always offered two things - a seat and a cup of tea.  Sometimes we had tea after full meals, tea with cookies in the afternoon, tea with homemade potato sticks on the side, and often tea with milk and sugar.  Sometimes we were offered just tea, black, with loose leaves floating in chipped, worn tea cups.  We were forced to sit, to take take our time, to have a conversation, to accept this tangible offering of gratitude.  When tea was served, kids scattered, jockeying for attention ceased, and with the ultimate grace, children, teenagers, and young women delighted and insisted that "auntie" take a break and enjoy.  These beautiful moments are rooted so deep in the culture, that despite the circumstances, the trauma, the heartbreaking stories and the reality that these survivors have almost nothing of their own, they still somehow understand so cleary that giving and sharing are the only real gifts.

So I continue to reflect on this, how simple gestures can mean so much.  And that sometimes in the western world, we think that conditions need to be ideal, to be immaculate, to be of the highest quality to be worthy.  But in reality, showing our children the value of offering up a seat to company or a stranger, or reminding ourselves to offer what's available to our guests, without running to the grocery store or scrubbing every countertop in an effort to show how together we have it.  The most expensive spread, the shiniest toilet bowl, the finest china means nothing if we can't, in turn, share the small things - the true things - the bare cupboards, the piles of laundry, the unbathed children.  To clear a space on the cluttered table, to sit and share a cup of tea, where simple and elegant are one.  And it's always perfect. 

I hope you make time to stop and honor yourself, honor the people you love, honor those fighting for survival over a cup of tea.  Cheers to the lessons great and small and learning them in the most unlikely places.

Namaste,
Janell