It is a long time since I have done an Art of Tea post, but it just seemed the morning for it.
I have a sense of joy today, “it’s raining”, this make me very happy. Summer is not my favourite season, especially the middle of summer. When heat weighs down mind, body and soul.
I started my day with my favourite brunch, wholemeal toast with nutritional yeast, sautéed mushrooms and Covelo Nero, topped with Haloumi cheese and poached eggs. A rich, earthy combination. Accompanied with pear juice {fresh and crisp} and Iron Goddess of Mercy (love that name} Oolong tea. To match that deep, rich, salty, savoury flavour combination I used my red, cast-iron teapot and cup. All in all, a lovely way to start the day.
The other thing about mid-summer is that I am very busy harvesting and preserving the bounty from my garden. In 2020 when I started the edible garden, I set a goal to get 50% of my food from my garden by 2027. It has been a learning curve in growing, companion planting, gathering, bottling and preserving. I am getting there, today 40% of my brunch was from my garden.
For Christmas, for myself, I purchased a set of Susan Seddon Goddess cards (beautiful art work, I love her goddess art}. To enjoy and appreciate her art I decided that each month I would blindly select a goddess avatar and work on myself relating to the aspect that the goddess represents. For January, the goddess selected was Persephone. When I saw the card, my first thought was ‘ooh, the maiden, what am I going to learn here’.
Persephone is about the dark and light side of self, the things you don’t want to admit to about yourself, the aspects of yourself you hide, showing to the world only the shiny, acceptable façade that is palatable to everyone. Our world is about fitting in, for society to work there has to be a median of behaviour that we all adhere to. We learn it for the moment we begin to be taught as babies. It has been an interesting month looking internally, do I like who I am? Can I accept those hidden aspects? I can answer yes to those questions. With forty years of working on my spiritual development I like who I am.
While I have been writing this Khepra has been driving me nuts walking back and forth between and the laptop. He just about sat in my cup of tea (twice). He is close to 17 and a half years. As he has aged, there have been a number of changes. He has become much more vocal I think he has spoken more in the last year and a half than he did in the previous 15 years. He has also become very demanding. For all that he is still as sweet and gentle as he always has been, it just takes him sooo much longer to make up his mind. I love my “God of the Rising Sun” Khepra, and I am aware I am not going to have his company for a lot longer, so I appreciate every day I have with him.
May you all be refreshed on this cool and rainy Sunday.
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