The Tea Party

 

I think a tea party is the multimedia confluence of all culture. Everywhere it goes, tea inspires ceremony and art. Coffee is similar, but more exciting and less soothing. Coffee houses are fine places for slam poetry and to plan revolutions. Tea culture is more refined.

There is the English tea, and tea gardens, and fine China, and dressing in your finest, and finger sandwiches, and polished silver, and parasols. 

And then there is the Japanese tea ceremony, and meditation, and tea rooms with some featured objet d’art and a garden view. One is supposed to contemplate the cracks in the teacup. 

There are similar Chinese and Korean tea ceremonies and tea gardens. Suzhou is famous for its tea gardens; there is a fine one recreated in Vancouver. In China, the ideal is a white porcelain teacup so thin in spots that you can see the tea through the porcelain. In Korea, tea is served in thick green celadon cups. There must always be an odd number of cups, and guests. The tea houses of Insadong are famous; each has a theme. One has an actual stretch of railroad track inside. Every village had its tea house, where you would go for philosophical discussions or just to catch the news. 

In Russia, there are the traditions of the samovar; and reading fortunes in the tea leaves. 

In Thailand and in Kashmir, there is an elaborate dance to aerate the tea. Watching the performance is a large part of the experience. 

In India, there is masala chai, with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, ginger, and pepper. I’ve learned how to make it; but it is an elaborate production that easily takes half an hour. 

In Tibet, tea is served with pink yak’s milk and salt. It is a taste I have not acquired, but perhaps leads to enlightenment. 

In Morocco, it must be gunpowder green tea with mint and much sugar. In brightly coloured cups.

In the Southern US, if you give them something hot with milk or cream, they’re shocked. Tea is cold in a high glass with ice and lemon.

In England, debates about how to make a perfect cup of tea have gone on for decades, centuries, and include essays by famous writers like Charles Lamb, George Orwell, and Douglas Adams. Milk first? Warm the cup?

I think tea gathers culture around it because it soothes and concentrates the mind. One is open to philosophical ponderings and aesthetic appreciation. It is the thinking man’s drink. It comes to us originally from Buddhist monasteries.

I’m totally into it. In vino veritas; but in eternity, you hear the sound “tea.”

More than Meets the Eye

 

Picture this.

Jesus told his disciples a parable,
“Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?
No disciple is superior to the teacher;
but when fully trained,
every disciple will be like his teacher.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’
when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
You hypocrite!  Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.
“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
For people do not pick figs from thornbushes,
nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

 Luke 6: 39-45

This was today’s mass reading. 

That familiar saying about the splinter in your brother’s eye, and the log in your own, is commonly taken to advise us against criticizing another’s sin. 

Bu this actually does not make sense. If this is meant, there is no reason for a metaphor. And a good writer, a good communicator, does not use a metaphor when plain speech will do. It would be easy to say, “flaw in your behaviour,” or “sin.” So why this business about the eye?

Then notice that sight is an extended metaphor in this “parable”: it begins with the image of the blind leading the blind.

But it is also not about physical sight. Note the image of a “beam” in the eye. This is physically impossible: this tells us the realm of which we are speaking is the realm of imagination, the “inner sight,” the imaging faculty.

Sight is the obvious metaphor for imagination.

 We are told that the blind man is like the uneducated, the untaught. And one should, after removing one’s own beam, instruct one’s brother. But in the case of ordinary knowledge, it is indeed possible for the student to exceed the teacher, and a teacher hopes for this. It happens often. Augustine exceeded Albertus Magnus. This is something, some knowledge, in which the student cannot so excel the master.

So the passage tells us imagination, our inner vision, can be either better or worse, clear or clouded by splinters or beams. Perhaps this represents material things, material concerns, the things of the senses.

And this is true. This is the experience of the artist. He does not compose or create: he sees. Michelangelo said that in sculpting, he discovered the form in the marble block. Steven King says writing a story is like an act of excavation. You hope you get it out intact.

The disciple cannot exceed the master because the master, the source of inspiration, is God himself. The world of the imagination is the kingdom of heaven.

And the business of the true disciple is foremost to express his own vision, not to criticise the work of others. As Blake put it, “I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

Now we speak of fruits: of good trees bearing good fruits. Again, this cannot mean, as commonly thought, moral acts. For one thing, bad people can indeed perform good deeds. They commonly dd; beware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

No; the passage says clearly that it means what “the mouth speaks.”

What does it mean to say that a given speech is “good”? Again, not that it advocates good behaviour. The worst Pharisees and hypocrites advocate good behaviour. Anyone can. 

No; it has to mean “good speech” in the sense of beautiful speech. Artistic expression.

Good morals can be faked. Truth can be falsified; anyone can lie. But the perception of beauty is perfect and immediate and cannot be achieved by trickery. Beauty is the test.

Zelensky and Trump Come to Blows

 

I was appalled by the scene yesterday in the Oval Office. That is not the way to conduct diplomacy, and that is not the way to treat a guest. It seemed to give succor to Putin, and looked like two-on-one bullying.

The first thing I thought of was Hitler’s bullying of Czech president Benes and the Munich Agreement.

BUT: A lot depends on who started it. Did Trump invite Zelensky to the White House, or did Zelensky ask to come? Trump says it was Zelensky’s idea. Did Zelensky challenge Vance in front of the cameras to begin the row? I can’t sort that out. I can never tell whether I’m being shown the full exchange. This might have been Zelensky trying to push Trump around, grandstanding for the cameras to gain support in Europe. 

Sounds suicidal, but I think we have seen other European leaders try to do so. Macron publicly contradicted Trump before the cameras and in the latter’s presence a few days ago. Starmer was about to visit. If this was happening, Trump had to respond sharply, right now, before things got out of hand, to establish his authority. Better to go against Zelensky, now, than have a big diplomatic row with France or the UK later. You kill the chicken to scare the monkeys, as they say in China.

Trump is doing now with Zelensky just what NATO should have done when Russia invaded Ukraine: a quick and powerful response. It is because they did not, that we are in this mess now.

To state the obvious, Russia is in the wrong in this war, and Ukraine is in the right. Russia invaded Ukraine. All other considerations are a distraction and an alibi for not helping. Down to and including objecting to Zelensky not wearing a suit to visit the White House.

At that point, when Russia first invaded, it was the moral duty of all other nations to support Ukraine. But instead of reacting quickly and resolutely with massive support—they should have sent in air cover and declared a no-fly zone, then shipped in tanks and missiles--they kept giving Ukraine aid in dribs and drabs, just enough to continue the war, but not enough to win it. 

Their argument was that they did not want to escalate for fear of starting World War III. This made no sense: if Russia could not handle Ukraine alone, they were not going to expand the war and take on all of Nato. Go nuclear? Not unless they were suicidal. Mutual Assured Destruction. This stance simply allowed Russia to escalate at will, confident Nato would not allow them to lose. It forced both sides into a never-ending state of war. 

Makes you wonder about that old saw, the "military-industrial complex."

This stalemate has to be broken one way or another. Huge numbers of lives are being lost, daily, for nothing. Ukrainian lives matter. Russian lives matter. These are all innocent victims.

Or not quite a stalemate: someone I said this to recently pointed out that, in fact, Russia is slowly gaining ground. In a war of attrition, Russia can expect to eventually win. They have more population than Ukraine to send to the front to be ground to blood and powder. And they have oil to finance it.

The principle of the just war applies. You have a duty to self-defence, to fight for justice, and to defend the victim. But only so long as there is a real prospect of victory, and the suffering and death from war is less than the evil being threatened by the aggressor. Jesus told his followers to buy a sword. But when a large contingent of Roman soldiers appeared to arrest him in the garden, he told Peter to put away the sword. People would die, and the final result would be the same.

As an aside, this is why it is immoral for Canadians to speak of armed resistance should Trump invade. There is no way it is worth killing people just to avoid being ruled from Washington instead of Ottawa. Similarly, is it so much worse being ruled by a kleptocracy in Moscow than by a kleptocracy in Kiev? Worth killing an entire generation of men?

That is where we are in Ukraine; unless NATO is prepared to come in with much more at this late hour. I’m not sure they can; they’ve frittered away most of their available armaments now, and most of the Ukraine’s fighting-age men. If they can, I wonder if it would still be worth it; it would be far more costly now than it would have been in 2022. 

Perhaps Zelensky is calculating that they can and will. Perhaps Europe now has the confidence to go it alone. This itself would be a good thing, should they succeed. Trump may be happy enough to see Europe go ahead with it—he has been urging them to take more responsibility for their own defense. 

Failing that, it’s time to cut a deal. Trump was apparently upset that Zelensky was still badmouthing Putin and trying to get Trump to do so. Not good strategy if you want a deal. You need to preserve the other guy's dignity. And, if Zelensky is not prepared to coo a little at Putin, perhaps Trump's best course for peace is to disassociate himself, so that he looks to Putin like an honest broker. I half believe this confrontation was deliberately stage-acted in front of the cameras to let Putin save face while accepting a Trump-brokered deal.

Zelensky is, sensibly enough, concerned that Putin cannot be trusted to keep any peace agreement. All very well for Trump to make a quick bargain for "peace in our time"; he’s protected by an ocean from this incipient Hitler. For Zelensky, this is life or death. A ceasefire or a peace may only give Putin the opportunity to rearm and come at him again in a few years, making all of Ukraine’s present sacrifice futile. Putin has been a serial aggressor. Trump says “He won’t dare break a deal with me,” but even if this is true, Trump is only in office for four years.

A knotty problem. I feel for Zelensky. But I think Trump is right on the broad picture. The best course now is for Ukraine to take the deal, and surrender most of the ground lost, in return for European “peacekeeping” troops in Ukraine.

We must hope Putin’s nose is bloodied enough that he is deterred from further aggression.