Tea with Mao

Its not every day that you get to have tea with Mao.

We didn’t have school this week because the kiddies are taking exams (I can’t stand the emphasis that China puts on tests – my kids in middle school and my friends at the university study and live in holy fear of tests. Intelligence is not confined to a number). So on Monday my three teacher friends: Mei, Shelly, and Brita invited me to go to Fragrant Hills Park and walk around inhaling the Fall beauty, then sip tea and study the Word.

We were sipping jasmine tea in Mao’s “Camp David.” It was his secluded retreat where he could sip tea and plot his revolution. So we sipped tea where Mao did and studied something he never did. There is nothing better than breaking down the Good News into its most basic and beautiful forms: the disease, the cure, and the treatment.

So let’s raise our tea cups to Mao – the man who wiped out all religious belief then so that people have this empty cross-shaped void in their hearts that they desperately long to fill. Filling this hollow-ness is the greatest job I’ve ever had.

- m -