YOU CAN’T GET A DECENT CUPPA

On December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty stormed three ships docked at Griffin’s Wharf and dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston Harbor. It’s been downhill for American tea drinkers ever since. Well, that’s not exactly true. Many of the great supermarket chains in the United States began as tea merchants, e.g., The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company or A&P. Nevertheless, this has become a nation of coffee drinkers. Eccentric tea drinkers have been reduced to second class status. I am one of them.

Being in the church business, I go to a lot of meetings. There is always a huge vat of coffee, freshly brewed. Generally, Lutherans cannot talk to each another without a cup of coffee in one hand. Most churches make no provisions for tea drinkers, or if they do, it consists of a carafe of warm water and a box of 100 economy brand tea bags. I’m looking at a box I found at my church. The paper wrapper around the tea bag has turned yellow with age. Since the building was put up in 1980, I’m pretty sure they’re no more than 25 years old, but I’m not positive. I’ve been places where I think the tea bags have been around since the Truman administration.

Most restaurants are no better. First, you have to specify HOT tea or the iced variety will be served. Even so, asking for hot tea doesn’t guarantee hot tea. Usually you get a tiny metal container filled with what was once fairly warm water and a tea bag in its little paper covering lying by the side. You put the tea bag in the water and nothing much happens. The tea is very shy. Maybe after awhile you can coax some out of the bag and into the water. And despite the label that says your have the “choicest blend of orange pekoe and pekoe black tea” (which tells you nothing about the kind of tea, only about which leaves have been used), the tea tastes like it was made from the muck swept off the tea blender’s floor.

There are exceptions, of course. Chinese restaurants serve nicely brewed oolong or china black tea. Japanese restaurants do excellent green tea, though it is often hard to get more than a single cup from some of the wait staff. The Russian Tea Room in Chicago actually prepares a proper Russian tea in a glass with lumps of sugar on the side. Of course that glass of tea costs as much as light lunch in most places, but it is an experience for tea drinkers.

OK, I admit I’m a fussbudget about tea. I prepare it from loose tea in a Bodum glass tea pot which has an infuser with a plunger so I can stop the brewing after three to four minutes. I drink it in American fashion sweetened, but without milk. Over the years I have purchased tea from various merchants, but stick with a particular tea when I like the blend. So I drink Earl Grey, Prince of Wales, gunpowder green, and jasmine tea from Twinings; keemun and peach tea from the Coffee and Tea Exchange in Chicago; and for special occasions various flavored and scented teas blended by Mariage Freres in Paris and sold through the Cultured Cup in Dallas. And yes, for those special occasions I have Spode, Royal Albert, and Wedgwood tea cups to drink from.

There is a danger in telling people you are a tea drinker. They give you fancy boxes of tea as gifts. Of course, it is always tea in bags, and frequently isn’t tea at all but some fruit or herbal beverage more properly called a tisane. I like tea for the sake of tea.

Will there be tea in heaven, do you suppose? If there is, well and good. If not, I’m sure God has things worked out so that I won’t miss it at all. In the meanwhile, I’ll stop for afternoon tea each day as part of my pilgrim journey. Surely a fine cup of tea is a sign of God’s goodness.

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne