More Than Just Tea

In July of 2019, we began publishing this blog in earnest and sharing it with you as subscribers to our newsletter. For the first couple of years, publishing a blog biweekly as we do now proved a daunting task, but we persisted and have published at least 223 to date.

The first was titled, “Two Visits” and juxtaposed a visit to a typical Orange Mound rental, with insects, rodents, and decay, inhabited by many of the ladies we serve, and the environment we hoped to create at the My Cup of Tea House. We have profiled numerous Orange Mound ladies, sometimes revealing their names with permission, and on other occasions discussing their challenges and triumphs anonymously.

Another topic of more than one blog is the misconceptions some of us held about Orange Mound and its residents and how much we hoped to teach them only to discover we are most often the students. Praising our deserving volunteers and donors, housing, voting, education, relationships, gardening, life lessons, and spiritual growth are among the subjects we have highlighted.  We have consistently incorporated verses and passages of Scripture guiding our decisions and informing our perceptions.

The purpose has never been to write award-winning prose or to simply fill empty space in a newsletter template. The goal has always been to provide a glimpse of the obstacles faced by women living at or near the poverty level and the daily grind required by all – ladies and on-the-ground supporters – to realize meaningful change. The truth is that our descriptions rarely do it justice. The highs are often higher and the lows lower than we are capable of effectively articulating, but we try.

We try because we want you to understand how desperate the circumstances often are for Orange Mound women and how the simple act of buying a box of tea helps. We want readers to know that the dire predicaments of many in the community are not the result of a single, random catastrophic event. For most, despair spans generations, and therefore solutions do not come quickly. Most importantly, we want you to know without a doubt that God is at work in the lives of the ladies, the volunteers, and the Orange Mound neighborhood, even when we can’t see it clearly enough to write about it.

Perhaps you are like us; every couple of weeks we draft a piece and at 6 a.m. every other Tuesday it lands in your inbox. We, and maybe you, compartmentalize and see the writing or reading as a task to check off our list, a single event for which we receive some level of satisfaction because we completed it. It is possible there is an inspiring story, a verse of Scripture, or a humorous anecdote that brightens our day and assures us that My Cup of Tea is a worthy endeavor.

Consider, though, that each 500-1000 word blog post is a short chapter of a true story. Together, they are a work of nonfiction that so far has reached more than 180,000 published words. Collectively, they are a gripping saga of tragedy, triumph, forgiveness, and redemption. It is an account of a God who never leaves us or forsakes us, regardless of our zip code or our means.

These posts are the story of the sisterhood of Orange Mound and East Memphis ladies striving together, the vision, persistence, and faith of the My Cup of Tea founders, a community steeped in rich culture and history determined to return to its glory days, and it’s your story too. Every box of tea purchased, donation given, social media post shared undergirds the mission of My Cup of Tea. We are stronger and better servants because of you.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-12

Oksana Neitzke has been a close friend of mine for over 30 years. We met in Rivne, Ukraine, in 1992, shortly after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Doors across Eastern Europe that had been shut for generations opened, including the door to Ukraine. I joined my church friends as we walked through that door many times on a dozen mission trips to share the Gospel. Oksana, my translator, made sure every word of hope was heard.

A quick study with a servant’s heart, Oksana has steadily broadened her influence for the Kingdom throughout former communist regions, multiplying her impact far beyond what any of us could have imagined over the last 30 years.

More recently, she perfected her knowledge of a proper afternoon tea during my visit to Germany three years ago and has cultivated ideas from our website. Always a quick study, Oksana grasps not only its elegance but its spirit, the gracious ritual of tea served well.

By trade, she’s a hotelier. She and her husband own and run Hotel Kirchbuhl, in the Black Forrest of Eastern Germany, where guests check in as strangers and somehow check out feeling like family. By calling, she’s a champion for refugee children, displaced by the war in Ukraine. And by gift, she’s a journalist who believes every person carries a story worth telling, and who takes the time to tell it well.

During a delightful visit to Memphis this Summer, she cleverly tucked “Marie” into nooks and crannies at The House to share the story. This weekend she posted the delightful tribute that follows:

A BLACK FOREST LADY WALKS INTO MY CUP OF TEA…

Under the Stars and Stripes, thousands of miles from her beloved Black Forest, Schwarzwald Marie found herself on an American adventure. 

Some people travel to Memphis for the Blues. Others come for Elvis, barbecue, or a pilgrimage to Graceland. And Marie? She had an entirely different destination in mind.

A true Black Forest girl, dressed in her finest traditional costume, with a hat carrying enough cherries to bake an entire Black Forest cake. And what had brought her to the American South? She was looking for tea, naturally. What else?

Marie comes from a part of Germany where hospitality is an old and serious business. At Hotel Kirchbühl in Schönau im Schwarzwald, we have been opening our doors to travelers since 1850. We know that the best conversations often begin with a cup of something warm and something delicious on a plate. So, when Marie arrived at My Cup of Tea in historic Orange Mound, she discovered something that felt wonderfully familiar, despite the thousands of miles between Memphis and the Black Forest. A place where a cup of tea is about much more than what is in the teapot; It is about people, about stories, about making room at the table, about the beautiful, slightly old-fashioned idea that a stranger needs not remain a stranger for very long.

And suddenly, Marie's American adventure made perfect sense. Perhaps she hadn't travelled across the ocean to discover something new after all. Perhaps she had travelled all that way to rediscover something she already knew; that wherever kind people gather around a table, a little piece of home comes into being.

Memphis, you have a new friend in the Schwarzwald. And she has a very large hat.

With love, tea, and a generous slice of cake,

Your Schwarzwald Marie.

On days ending in “y”, the entire workspace for all the ladies at My Cup of Tea is an elaborate waiting room for lunch.  Daily, just before noon, a volunteer arrives with his or her version of an appetizing meal for us all. Throughout each month, thirty women and a couple of men, devoted to our mission, cook or hire good cooks to bring or send fresh offerings of sauce-cloaked, steaming perfections. The work pace dips when the meal-of-the-day transport turns into the parking lot.

Once in place, the My Cup of Tea hostess, whose job is kitchen duty, rings the lunch bell and a synchronized stampede from all directions begins. Once gathered, our benefactor greets us, describes her main course, and then prays for us.  On our best days, she will stay and join us at the table.

Occasionally the menu requires an explanation. Perhaps it is shrimp and grits, which is unfamiliar to one of our newer employees.  Crabmeat Mornay, a favorite for several, is explained to be made with simple ingredients but dressed up a bit. All of us who share our resources with the ladies of Orange Mound are gently elevating and nurturing fresh and beautiful layers of life together.

Quite often, the familiar, wholesome aroma of any version of bread baking in our oven announces, “Come quickly while it is hot.” Exquisite desserts are on a separate table to be admired, and subtly chide all to eat the main course first. 

During the recent scorching heat wave, cold salads like Nina’s chicken pasta salad or Elizabeth’s personal recipe of zesty green beans are recognized and devoured.  The heat never seems to stifle the appetites. We always serve tea, of course.

Several times a month, a meal of KFC or Hop Daddy appears at the door, and all sink into and savor the rare treat of an expensive meal from a fast food restaurant typically saved for payday or a celebration.

Lately, we have sampled cucumber sandwiches, now a favorite, and pimento cheese on pumpernickel bread.  Sourdough muffins have become a weekly extra since Debbie has begun keeping her sourdough starter alive.   

Lettuce from our garden has enhanced some of the offerings, and an abundant harvest of jalapeños from several plants outside has begged for more attention.  One of the volunteers candied them, and several of us have embroidered simple sandwiches with the hot sweet delicacy.

Some of our ladies will request a recipe, more than once or twice, which is a novel way to thank the cook, but no one ever seems to have made it at home.

“What’s for dinner” isn’t a problem for anyone because plenty of leftovers are sealed for carry-home. 

Often, the busy volunteers, who have other “fish to fry,” will request Doris to cater their monthly offering for the 10 or more women who dine daily.  Doris never needs prodding, even when the request is late the night before showtime.  Doris reaches back into her soul food on a budget muscle memory.   Translating rustic elegance with respect, last week, I simply didn’t recognize the tails of pigs nestled in the cabbage.  However, the ladies from Orange Mound knew them well and were delighted.  Doris fries baby chicken wings in her iron skillet and encourages us to chew and swallow the bones.  She garnishes cornbread, which I do recognize, with collard greens and oxtail, when it is available.  She harvests anything still on the vine in our garden boxes across Carnes on the East side of the parking lot.  She has a secret recipe to soften stringy, over-mature okra only fit for a pig trough.

Nothing says a plate of hers is balanced without two carbs, and since all the ladies brag on her mac and cheese, fried potatoes, and grits, two portions must sandwich the biscuits on each lady’s paper plate.

Obviously, The House of Orange Mound must offer more than coaching in home economics and nutrition because white bread soft enough to tear, liver cheese, Spam that tastes like childhood, and Vienna sausages that remind them of simpler times are still at the corner dollar store, affordable, and on the way home.

Though 3028 Carnes is anchored in a food desert, the House stands as an oasis where nourishment extends far beyond what addresses their hunger. Here, in this home, we have a view toward respect and dignity. Every meal prepared carries with it a message that it is brought with a servant’s heart to all here because they are valued and irreplaceable.

We are a sanctuary, and some days a five-star restaurant as well, where the ladies know they matter; they belong to a community that has refined their tastes, supported and loved them, and daily served up a feast to be enjoyed among friends.