Blog post 15 January 2025
I love a road trip, especially in summer. Even the very slow, traffic-jammed rush out of Auckland didn’t dampen my enthusiasm today. I was getting out of the city and heading to the mighty Waikato to work on the site for Festival One. My happy place.
I am particularly partial to the internal reflection the rhythm and relative quiet of a solo road trip can offer.
I hadn’t had breakfast (intermittent fasting) and by around 1pm I was feeling peckish (I don’t think a middle-class Kiwi can ever describe themselves as hungry. We don’t know what that actually feels like. We just think we are hungry. )
The breathy Mrs Waze held me on the Expressway and so we avoided all the interesting little villages and towns that may have held a cafe.
Then I made my first mistake. I was almost at my rural airbnb and, afraid of having no place to eat, I pulled into a McDonalds. You have to be computer literate to order at McDonalds these days. Two kiosks later I had made an order and was sitting at a table in the sun with my planet destroying contribution to greenhouse emissions and waste in front of me.
I took out of my pocket a leaflet named “Tea & Be Communion: a portable liturgy”. This gorgeous little eight-paged concertina-ed pamphlet provides a liturgy (pattern of words and actions for worship) that enables a person or group of people to make any food and beverage in any setting, into a Communion ritual. Ideally it uses making a cup of tea, but any less sophisticated beverage, and any food will suffice.
(At this point, any Episcopal, Anglican, Roman Catholic, “real-presence”, and Augustinians who are reading should skip to the last sentence.)
As per the instructions in the liturgy I laid out my serviette as a marker of a sacred space, and added Mighty Angus, fries and chocolate milkshake to it. These would be my Communion elements.
Following the liturgy I then wiped my hands on a second serviettte while saying, “I wipe off the dust of the world and prepare myself for what God has for me.” I admit at this stage I was struggling a bit with the wooing smell of fat rising off the fries. But determined to see the liturgy through and to make this my Communion for today I persisted.
So for the next 15 minutes or so, concentrating over the sounds of trucks going past and the intermittent female Indian accented call to worship at a different altar of, “order one hundred and thirty six”, “one hundred and thirty seven”, “one hundred and thirty eight”, I said the words provided in the liturgy and enacted the actions suggested as my meal became a Communion with God for me.
Breathing prayer, scripture reading and reflection, an invitation to Communion, and very inclusive words of institution took me aside from my road trip and the scene of my meal.
A finally ritual of confession and forgiveness (which could have included for my choice of venue and food, but didn’t) closed out my time of being set aside to listen for God in my day.
As I sat at the table following the liturgy I received a text from a friend. In reply I told her what I had just done. She responded, “I’m having trouble putting those two worlds together!” My response was, “Its not my usual combo either.”
(This is the point at which Episcopal, Anglican, Roman Catholic, “real-presence”, and Augustinians may start reading again.)
I think we live in a world where as followers of Jesus we have to devise new combos. We have to understand the heart of traditional Christian rituals and spiritual practices and reframe them for the apocalyptic setting we find ourselves in. That will mean discomfort, disppointment, frustration and even anger on the part of some Christians. Some old beliefs will need to be let go. It will lead to abuse, derision and cancel culture toward the honest-hearted reframers of the tradition. The scribes and pharisees have never been far from those following Jesus.
If we aren’t able to make this transition, its my opinion that we (Christians, churches and Christian organisations) have zilch to offer the world. Nada. Nothing. In fact we should close our doors and give our buildings and money to a secular cause that at least doesn’t pretend to be committed to building a new world where love and forgiveness prevail and humans created in the image of God can flourish and the Kingdom of God be built.
That’s the God I saw in my chocolate milkshake and Mighty Angus. (The fries were a side issue.)
[The Inside Running: The pamphlet “Tea & Be Communion: a portable liturgy” was written by me. Its purpose is exactly as described in the opening paragraphs – “…to make any food and beverage in any setting, into a Communion ritual.” It was published just before Christmas, and sent to a few friends and through the Rhythms of Grace congregation. People have reported using it at their work desk and lunch room, in a retirement village with neighbours, on Zoom with a friend, as an individual daily mindfulness exercise, with a group of friends, in a home group, at a holiday home, and someone used it in McDonalds with a Mighty Angus burger, fries and milkshake.
It’s a project under Rhythms of Grace church where I am currently Lead Pastor and Curator, but was privately funded. (There’s no organisational patron here.) Hard copies are available but its tricky posting them out as postage is so expensive in New Zealand. ($2.30 for a letter across Auckland.) I am in the process of getting a digital version to make available. Hard copy production cost (concept, design and printing, no writers fee) is about $2.50 inc GST each. We can negotiate if you’d like a hard copy or three. Keep in mind that ideally each person needs their own copy. The Good News is free, but only because someone paid the price!
Tea & Be is the name of tea rituals I do at churches, festivals, conferences, online and in person as well as in kissakomy teahouse. mark@markpierson.org.nz . A few others in the International Guild of Tea Liturgists may use the name sometimes as well.
Finally: there was no other mistake made that I am aware of. ]

