A cup of grace

 

"You know that you are drinking a cloud; you are drinking the rain. The tea contains the whole universe.” ― Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Eat

How much grace is there in a cup of tea? Or is it all grace? If all the universe is caught in my cup,  can it be otherwise? 

After two weeks of a Goldilocks diet (nothing too hot, nothing too cold, nothing with too much texture...or I suppose, too little) I was cleared last week to eat pretty much what I please. Despite my general inclinations toward staying firmly in Advent and not anticipating the upcoming solemnity of the Nativity, "Gloria in excelsis Deo!” was my refrain of the day.

This afternoon's cup of hot tea was glorious, definitely a grace of the day (maybe the week).  Hot,  sweet, fragrant, the cup warm in my hands, its steam swirled up like incense. There is strength in there, cloaked in caffeine's bracing bite. Like Isaiah’s parched desert steppe I come to life.

I think I like my grace like my tea: fragrant and bracing.