Tea and Thanksgiving

After reading THIS lovely post of Lanier's, I found myself inspired to take a moment for tea today. I'm glad I did. I have tea almost every morning--it is my pick me up since I hate coffee--but there is something about tea time which is very special. I am a college student living in a dorm and I don't have a tea pot or nice china, but I did what I could. Rather than hurrying through my tea I savored it. Today I had Celestial Seasonings' Lemon Zinger, a tea I like better without sugar than with. I ate a bit of left-over pad thai and a oatmeal chocolate chip cookie with it. A strange combination, but it worked somehow or other.

And soon it will be Thanksgiving. I like Thanksgiving not so much for the turkey and the cranberry sauce but because I need to be reminded to thank God daily for what he has given me. I am a worry-wort by nature and I tend to get caught up in the troubles of the day and forget about the good things. It is surprising sometimes, when you stop to think, how many things there are to be thankful for in any given day. Even those that may seem like a burden--the rain for example. I actually enjoy rain but sometimes I allow myself to get caught up in a complaining spirit and grouse bitterly about it. But when I stop to think I can see that I really do enjoy it.

Finally, one of my favorite poems, which somehow seems Thanksgiving-y at the moment.


The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~Gerald Manley Hopkins