A Guide For Prospective Tea Monks
January 9, 2024 3:27 PM Subscribe
In Becky Chambers' book A Psalm for the Wild Built, Tea Monks travel across the planet of Panga, setting up their kettles to freely offer both tea and conversation to strangers wherever they stop. One pseudonymous writer, The Peaceful Revolutionary, was inspired by the idea of making this vocation a reality on Earth, and has written a guide for prospective tea monks.
I'm absolutely filled with questions and concerns but frankly I deleted all of them. Because this is lovely and good.
I wish the world was filled with people like this and I'm going to read these books.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 3:56 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
I wish the world was filled with people like this and I'm going to read these books.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 3:56 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
I'm going to read these books.
Please do. I love Sibling Dex and, honestly, everything Becky Chambers writes, and I also love this guide. It's almost as good as visiting a tea monk myself. Thank you! :)
posted by Literaryhero at 4:12 PM on January 9 [6 favorites]
Please do. I love Sibling Dex and, honestly, everything Becky Chambers writes, and I also love this guide. It's almost as good as visiting a tea monk myself. Thank you! :)
posted by Literaryhero at 4:12 PM on January 9 [6 favorites]
I'm going to read these books
Yeah, I don't usually recommend stuff to people I don't really know but you should read her books. She's a great writer and has characters that I really empathized with. Good read.
posted by Sphinx at 4:20 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I don't usually recommend stuff to people I don't really know but you should read her books. She's a great writer and has characters that I really empathized with. Good read.
posted by Sphinx at 4:20 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
This is lovely, Becky Chambers books are a delight and something very different in the world (and about other worlds).
We need fiction so that we can imagine creating better factual experiences. Here's Becky Chambers & Annalee Newitz on resisting dystopia [youtube - hosted by Long Now].
Lost opportunity here: ".. being mentored by someoneseasoned steeped in the process"
posted by unearthed at 4:31 PM on January 9 [12 favorites]
We need fiction so that we can imagine creating better factual experiences. Here's Becky Chambers & Annalee Newitz on resisting dystopia [youtube - hosted by Long Now].
Lost opportunity here: ".. being mentored by someone
posted by unearthed at 4:31 PM on January 9 [12 favorites]
I hope Becky Chambers has learned someone was this inspired by her novellas. What a beautiful tribute to them.
posted by EvaDestruction at 5:40 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]
posted by EvaDestruction at 5:40 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]
Hang on, I just need to go rearrange my life to make this happen for myself.
posted by Inkoate at 6:22 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]
posted by Inkoate at 6:22 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]
Okay as fanfic, terrible as actual life advice. I love these books but they portray a fantasy post-scarcity world. Encouraging people to become lay therapists is pretty bad for everyone involved.
posted by curious nu at 6:55 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
posted by curious nu at 6:55 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
I'm initially inclined more to agree with curious nu than not. However... minus the tea, this is pretty similar to the concept of peer counseling or volunteer-staffed crisis lines, and TFA does address the concerns that have been raised here.
Has Becky Chambers just reinvented a kind of teetotaling bartender?
(I gotta admit that when I've offered time for peer counseling, I've spent a bit of it saying a few kind and supportive things that the other person seemed to need to hear, and the bulk of it urging them to get real help from a real therapist if at all possible and finding resources for them. I also am much less available for this kind of thing than I used to be, because it can be very draining.)
posted by verbminx at 7:48 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
Has Becky Chambers just reinvented a kind of teetotaling bartender?
(I gotta admit that when I've offered time for peer counseling, I've spent a bit of it saying a few kind and supportive things that the other person seemed to need to hear, and the bulk of it urging them to get real help from a real therapist if at all possible and finding resources for them. I also am much less available for this kind of thing than I used to be, because it can be very draining.)
posted by verbminx at 7:48 PM on January 9 [2 favorites]
Has Becky Chambers just reinvented a kind of teetotaling bartender?
I really like this framing!
I have pretty complicated feelings about the whole tea monk thing because it is 100% what a younger, less experienced me would have leapt into. Having done a lot of that peer support in the last 10 years I have so much more respect/understanding for what goes into it in a sustainable way, coupled with a lot of conversations with therapists/counsellors/etc around “yeah your problem is capitalism and white supremacy and there aren’t any tools I can give you to genuinely be okay with that, just barely adequate coping.”
Like.. an entire part of the plot is Dex leaping unprepared into this and burning out. The first book is about a quarter-life crisis. It only works in our world, at all, if you are acting from a place of extreme privilege and probably some savior-complex.
Still going to reread these books many, many times — I love the philosophical dialogues that happen between these characters, and I like imagining the world they live in — but deciding to invest in your community doesn’t need a special moniker or a fabricated pedigree. Show up for your friends, as best you can. Tea might be involved.
posted by curious nu at 8:34 PM on January 9 [7 favorites]
I really like this framing!
I have pretty complicated feelings about the whole tea monk thing because it is 100% what a younger, less experienced me would have leapt into. Having done a lot of that peer support in the last 10 years I have so much more respect/understanding for what goes into it in a sustainable way, coupled with a lot of conversations with therapists/counsellors/etc around “yeah your problem is capitalism and white supremacy and there aren’t any tools I can give you to genuinely be okay with that, just barely adequate coping.”
Like.. an entire part of the plot is Dex leaping unprepared into this and burning out. The first book is about a quarter-life crisis. It only works in our world, at all, if you are acting from a place of extreme privilege and probably some savior-complex.
Still going to reread these books many, many times — I love the philosophical dialogues that happen between these characters, and I like imagining the world they live in — but deciding to invest in your community doesn’t need a special moniker or a fabricated pedigree. Show up for your friends, as best you can. Tea might be involved.
posted by curious nu at 8:34 PM on January 9 [7 favorites]
I'd give more serious consideration to this article's idea if they had spent a few weekends doing it and then wrote up their experience.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:27 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]
posted by AlSweigart at 7:27 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]
Oh, I want to be a tea monk and live in a cozy wagon. I absolutely love these books, I also recommend them to people constantly.
posted by maryellenreads at 8:35 AM on January 10
posted by maryellenreads at 8:35 AM on January 10
This doesn't really sound like my jam, but I was delighted to learn that there is an ISO standard tea preparation procedure.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 8:50 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 8:50 AM on January 10 [2 favorites]
> This doesn't really sound like my jam, but I was delighted to learn that there is an ISO standard tea preparation procedure
As a tea nerd, this totally is not my jam. There is something about tea that attracts woo and BS, and this smells like that to me.
Yes there is an ISO method, and no you don't want to use to for tea that you're actually going to drink. You use it for tea that you're going to taste, and the method is optimized to reveal defects(1). So it's pretty much the polar opposite of methods you'd use to maximize enjoyment of tea-drinking.
(1) Mothers, don't raise your babies to be connoisseurs. It mostly presents endless opportunities for disappointment.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:42 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]
As a tea nerd, this totally is not my jam. There is something about tea that attracts woo and BS, and this smells like that to me.
Yes there is an ISO method, and no you don't want to use to for tea that you're actually going to drink. You use it for tea that you're going to taste, and the method is optimized to reveal defects(1). So it's pretty much the polar opposite of methods you'd use to maximize enjoyment of tea-drinking.
(1) Mothers, don't raise your babies to be connoisseurs. It mostly presents endless opportunities for disappointment.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:42 AM on January 10 [4 favorites]
I just started reading A Psalm for the Wild Built last night right before I saw this post. Delightful coincidence!
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:33 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:33 AM on January 10 [1 favorite]
Now this, unlike 3 Body Problem in the next thread, is some enjoyable, emotionally resonant sci fi.
posted by TimidFooting at 7:17 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]
posted by TimidFooting at 7:17 PM on January 10 [2 favorites]
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posted by jessamyn at 3:32 PM on January 9