Hope's Cafe

Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café

Yesterday was my birthday, or as the Buddhists describe it, my “continuation day.”  This is a concept popularized by Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen master.  Instead of focusing on and celebrating a single day, one acknowledges the continuous flow of life.  In this tradition, one celebrates interconnection, the continuation of the legacy of ancestors, of our parents, of the environment.  As Hanh described it, just as a cloud does not die when it transforms into rain, a person is constantly transforming in form, energy and presence rather than being created or destroyed. Thus the way to honor continuation is to reflect on the present moment, express gratitude to one’s ancestors and to celebrate the privilege of continued life and growth.

Being very fond of my birthday—I look forward to it every year—I am unlikely to give up my celebrations.  But a hybrid model very much appeals to me.  I do find as I am ageing that I am naturally feeling more drawn to reflection, to gratitude, to the awareness of what a gift it is to have life.  I have had so many experiences that could have cut my life short.  But here I am.  In some sense, I feel obligation to make the most of my life to honor all those who have had their lives cut short as well as those who gave me life and those who have provided care that spared me when I might otherwise have died. 

As I think about it, while my birthday marks my continuation day, every day is a continuation and deserves our gratitude and our investment in making the most of it.

“The day you call your birthday is really a day to remember your continuation. Every day you transform. Some part of you is being born and some part is dying.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate

Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s CafeIllusion/Delusion

Somewhere (“in a galaxy far, far away”) this great expanse of leisurely space will open up before me (I tell myself) and I will write, read,  really learn French, sew, play the piano, and discover my most creative self,  all with abandon!  (This will, of course, be taking place in a perfectly clean and organized home though it is unclear who will have done all that.  Nor is it apparent how the mundane chores like laundry and dishes will be accomplished or by whom).

When reality dares to step in to disrupt this idyllic notion, I consider what in reality  prevents my life from being more like the illusion?  (“I have commitments! I have responsibilities!” I sputter in protest.  Some truth there but not the heart of the problem. )

Some honest reflection reveals two particular components to the question:  1) I waste a lot of time, some of it searching for things I can’t find! (Refer to previous mention of the imaginary perfectly clean and organized home.) Factor 2 is the priority I place on maintaining connection.   A week clear of a lot of appointments and extra duties will stretch ahead of me and suddenly I have filled it with lunches with friends or planned a little dinner party at the house. (Oops! Gotta get busy preparing for company!) Or I will  use the time playing “catch up,” calling or texting folks to keep up with how they are doing.

Somehow I think this is not unique to me. This can be a problem at any age.  But retirement and aging contribute a nagging sense of borrowed time.  I am not going to live forever.  Time is not on my side. 

How do I use the hours allotted my “wild and precious life,” as Mary Oliver has so poetically described it?

Here is the fallacy in my thinking, the pernicious reality that deflates the illusion:  the only way that my life looks different requires I make different choices.  Will I quit having lunches and phone calls with friends?  Not likely! Will I refuse taking on commitments to things I value?  Once again, no I will not.  What I recognize is that I can balance my life more effectively.  I can allot my time a little differently that allows me to create something more pleasing to me.  Either I am in the driver’s seat of the vehicle of my life or I am forever confined by an image of a life that magically evolves with no effort on my part. Or as that famous “philosopher” Dolly Parton once said:

“ If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”

I had trouble getting blog to post last night. I was trying to repost an old blog in addition to one I had just written and that is not what is showing up. But the old one is still available as Mercy Now. I’m searching for a way to send correctly. My apologies for the confusion. Kate

Mercy Now

Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café

Up early making muffins, out of the blue, the words practically sting my brain: “The quality of Mercy is not strained.” I am no literary scholar, am not well versed in Shakespeare.  Yet the power of these classic words resonate in some powerful, inexplicable way. 

You may recall the quote from a famous monologue by Portia in The Merchant of Venice, which emphasizes the power and virtue of mercy over strict justice. In Act 4, scene 1, during the trial scene Portia pleads for mercy on behalf of Antonio, who owes a debt to Shylock, the moneylender.  Portia’s argument is justice demands strict adherence to the law yet mercy transcends justice.  She calls mercy “twice blest,” as both giver and receiver benefit. Further, she suggests It is more befitting of a king to rule with mercy.  Portia believes that when people behave mercifully tow,ards one another they are demonstrating a divine quality reflecting God’s own heart.

Her argument is quite cogent and worthy of consideration in these days of deportation, detention, destruction of lives and livelihoods, property and infrastructure and countries.  Even Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the Civil War in the United States, said “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice, “ emphasizing the transformative power of mercy over rigid enforcement of rules.

Why these words landed in my head on this particular day escapes me.  But I use them as another reminder that we can cultivate mercy in our lives daily, regardless of what is going on in the world.  In fact, what is going on in the world makes such efforts critical to the survival and wellbeing of the world we inhabit. 

The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate

P. S.  I am sending a bonus blog, a repeat of “Mercy Now,” previously published in September 19, 2025, as it is related.

Two Cups af Tea at Hope’s Café

May 1, 2020, I launch kateshopecafe.net.  What were my goals at the time? I wanted to take advantage of the time afforded me by the pandemic when so many of my normal activities were suspended.  I thought a blog would require me to be more disciplined at a time when a lack of structure had descended into my typically scheduled life.  I don’t think I really expected to still be doing this six years later.  Thus every year when May 1 rolls around, I ask myself, “Do I keep this going?”

What have I accomplished? I have never done much promotion of my site.  In the six years, only a few more from the original group have become followers of kateshopecafe. However, in the past week, there were people from 49 countries who read it.  Over the six years folks from 75 countries have dropped into kateshopecafe to share “a cup of tea.”  Stunning to me.  Yet, what really keeps me going are the occasional comments encouraging me to stay the course.

While I have altered the blog a bit over time—longtime followers may remember when a recipe of some sort was included at the end of Hope’s Café—it remains my intention to offer something of interest and, in the best case, something uplifting, something hopeful.  As the world has become more inexplicable to me, greed, hate, fear growing like the kudzu that abounds in  the southern regions of the United States, the opportunity to continue the blog to scatter even the tiniest seeds of hope seems worthwhile. Perhaps someday I will feel a different direction.  But that time is not now.

When I pastored we had a yearly planning meeting with 3 month, 6 month and 9 month reviews of where we were with the goals we had set. While this “annual review” is directed to my blog, regular assessment —not necessarily yearly!—of how we spend our time, how we conduct our lives, is a worthwhile effort. 

P.S. My apologies to those who have had a hard time getting comments posted.  I monkeyed with the settings trying to make it easier.  The outcome of that was that one person who frequently comments under her name now shows up as “anonymous.”  I am only aware of that because she let me know that happened.  I thought I had gained someone new! 

The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.Two Cups af Tea at Hope’s Café

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate

Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Cafe

Some years ago a friend gave me the book this is getting old by Susan Moon.  Being older now, some of its wisdom resonates more readily!  She modifies Thich Naht Hahn’s quote “Present moment, wonderful moment” (still relevant of course) to “Senior moment, wonderful moment.” She describes these as “little coffee breaks of the brain.”  What a delightful reframing of what can otherwise be quite annoying or even troublesome.

“A senior moment is a stop sign on the road of life,” she wrote. “It could even be a leg up toward enlightenment.  So I stay calm, let the engine idle, and enjoy the scenery. What happens next will be revealed in due course.”

Her lighthearted approach as an asset in aging is well supported in medical research.  Humor and laughter can promote social connections, increase oxygen levels and foster lung health,  stimulate endorphins which are natural pain killers,  decrease stress and cortisol in the body, increase blood flow to enhance cardiovascular health.  Even the act of telling a joke involves cognitive skills which sharpen the brain.

Humor can also be an apt assistant in helping us accept limitations we encounter as well as when we take on  challenges to learn something new. When our brains and bodies are not as responsive as they once were, humor can be a lifesaver. 

An Associated Press article I came across mentioned that the modern study of laughter—gelotology—began emerging in the 1960s.

According to the AP, Stanford University psychologist William F. Fry, one of gelotology’s founders, drew blood samples from himself while watching Laurel and Hardy. He discovered that laughter increased the number of immune-boosting blood cells.

In 1995, Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician in Mumbai, got wind of the emerging research as editor of a health magazine while researching an article on stress management. To combat his own stress, he started the first daily laughter club in a park. It ballooned from a handful of participants to more than 150 within a month, he said.

There is actually a Global Laughter Clubs Directory (help@laughteryoga.org).  But if you don’t find that intriguing or suited to your needs, perhaps just shooting for more laughter in your life seems doable.   I recall as a therapist I came across a suggestion to make it a goal to have 10 chuckles and three good belly laughs a day.  When I googled it for the blog, I found a recommendation of two to five times a week to engage in belly laughter. 

This is such a difficult time in our fractured world.  Finding things to laugh about doesn’t sound like a reasonable goal.  Perhaps, counterintuitively, that only elevates its importance.

The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate

Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café

This week a friend who had been out gardening sent a message that working there had left her feeling like a “gardener of hope.”  The phrase has stayed with me.  I have had the opportunity to sit in that delightful space she and her husband have created and even the memory of it incites a hopeful spirit in me.

Such a hopeful spirit is not easy to come by these days.  Yet there are those moments when hope seems present and available. I experienced it at a restaurant last night in a playful exchange with a baby at the next table over. I experience it anytime I am walking the quiet paths at Harrison Bay or sitting watching the water lap softly against the shore.  Even a cup of tea in a favorite mug sends a message to my brain to be peaceful, hopeful.

Yet hope can be such a fragile, thin thread.  Think of those fleeing war and famine, or worse yet trapped by it.  I remember those folks daily and support charities whose efforts are engaged on their behalf.  But I have worked with people in such dire straights that I wondered if I had even a tenth of their courage.  It seemed the more difficult their circumstances the more they maintained some corner of hope in their downtrodden spirits to keep going.

My friend’s words cause me to think not only about the cultivation of her garden.  What about the actions we take to cultivate the gardens, the atmosphere, of our lives?  My great niece posted on Facebook this week the quote: “Pray for a good harvest but keep hoeing.”  We have the dual challenge to focus on developing hopeful spirits, conveying that sense in our daily lives, and also to take the actions that reinforce that, multiply the effect. 

Let us pray for a good harvest but keep hoeing, folks.  Just a tip:  you might start right now by googling Mary Oliver’s “The Garden .”

The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate

Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café

“Hope is a muscle,” I read recently.  Elsewhere I heard on a podcast to “practice hope.”  Maybe they are onto something.  This topic is especially relevant at a time when there are so much uncertainty that despair would seem to be a more reasonable response. 

“To hope in a world so fractured, so cynical, so tired—that’s not foolishness. That’s defiance. That’s strength. That’s survival,” wrote Muhammad Tuhin in “Science News” in his article “The Psychology of Hope:  Why It’s More Important Than You Think.”

Tuhin describes hope residing in the brain.  “The feeling of hope activates areas like the prefrontal cortex—the same region responsible for goal-setting, decision-making, and problem-solving. When we feel hopeful, our brains light up with activity that helps us plan, persist, and persevere. In other words, hope is not passive. It is profoundly active.”

“Hope changes the brain—and the brain changes the body,” Tuhin continues. “This is why hopelessness can be so deadly. It’s not just a feeling. It’s a shutdown of the system. A neurological collapse. When hope disappears, so does the signal to keep going.”

If we thought hope was some pie-in-the-sky-wishing-on-a-star kind of thing, the stakes are much higher!  We owe it to ourselves to practice, practice, practice hope.  Think of any skill you have invested in developing.  That effort involved repeated efforts to learn.  If you are inclined toward despair, it is not too late to alter your course.  Your brain, your body will thank you.   

Just a reminder: “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it,” said Helen Keller, who had no small amount of suffering and challenge in her own life.  And this quote was one of 33 quotes put together by a Ukrainian who wrote that she was collecting them on the day that her university where she had spent six years, as had her husband, had just been destroyed.  She wrote: “With everything that’s happening in the world, I feel like hope is sometimes the only thing we can hold on to. This is why I created this collection of inspirational quotes about hope in hard times.”

The invitation is open to share two cups of tea anytime at Hope’s Café or anywhere you share companionship and conversation.

May we be bearers of hope, the “wait staff” at Hope’s Café, for each other and all those we encounter.  Shalom, Kate