Savouring That Hot Drink

Can you remember the places you have sat in the early morning, or mid afternoon, or evening, with your hands folded in a prayer like manner around a mug? Did you too find the combination of warming your hands, sipping something soothing and hot, along with the quiet and stillness in that space of time was a place of utter bliss and comfort? This ritual seems to have no age, social, or cultural restrictions. It is just a universal pose that seems to say “I am resting and I am waiting” with a posturing that is looking out beyond where one is today.

I was sitting here with my hands wrapped around my cup of hot water with lemon slices and a chunk of ginger. I seem to be finding myself quite cold these days, even though the weather is getting sunny and very spring like and so wrapping my hands around a mug of hot soothing and healthy lemon ginger water moves heat into my fingers, my hands and up my arms. In essence it is just a plain cup, perhaps china or maybe ceramic, filled with a very ordinary beverage such as tea, coffee, hot milk, or hot water, and yet, it also holds an ingredient that allows us to savour the extraordinary ingredient of stillness. Somehow stillness also holds hope and there is not one of us who doesn’t need moments of hope I am sure.

When we were children my Mom used to make us hot chocolate or a cup of weak tea when it was cold outside. Each of us had a special mug and we would wrap our hands around it to hold it tightly so as not to spill. But I discovered that this had another advantage - it would warm up my hands and that heat would spread up my arms and such a cozy comforting feeling became associated with a warm beverage. I don’t think this feeling has changed many years later! Life was very busy in our growing up years but I treasure the memories of our early Saturday morning trips to Puslinch Lake. It was a time when church trauma had isolated us from a close knit community and all we had was each other. Dad would start the Coleman stove and first thing was the coffee to be made for Mom. I remember her sitting in the lounge chair with her hands wrapped around that beautiful cup of coffee as she sat for a moment, holding her grief at losses and holding her love for her family as she watched us play. Perhaps this is where my memory of the posture of “prayer and the coffee mug” was first drawn.

No matter where you travel to, in your own community, or far from home, you will find a coffee shop or tea room where someone will be sitting in this prayerful pose, hands wrapped around their warm beverage. They are sinking into this moment of stillness, waiting and watching, inviting us to embrace our own moment of stillness.