By George Clifford
The 4th and 5th grade Sunday School class in the parish where I’m currently serving as the priest in charge read the New York Times bestseller, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin this autumn. Three Cups of Tea traces Mortenson’s evolution from mountain climber to humanitarian change agent.
Through his twenties and into his thirties, Mortenson lived for mountain climbing, working as a nurse when not climbing in order to support his climbing expeditions. Then his attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain located like the better-known Everest in the Himalayas, ended in failure. Mortenson spent his energy heroically rescuing another team member, then wisely recognized that he no longer had the strength required to cover the last half mile to the summit.
On his descent, Mortenson, through inattention induced by his weakened condition, became separated from the others in his party. He spent a night alone on a glacier without fire, food, or friends. Only his innate physical endurance and the intensity of his focus enabled him to survive.
The crucible of K2 and his relationships with the Pakistanis porter and villagers who helped him to survive changed Mortenson. Before leaving the remote village whose residents had nursed him back to health, he promised to return and to build them a school. No grand vision lay behind the promise. Instead, Mortenson’s gratitude and his realization that helping others represented a far greater achievement than scaling a challenging mountain inspired his promise.
Several of Mortenson’s lessons learned and experiences in his transformation from climber to humanitarian change agent resonated deeply with me. First, the book’s title highlights a tribal custom of the people who sheltered Mortenson and for whom he promised to build the school. Sharing one cup of tea is between strangers, the second cup is between friends, and the third is between family for whom the other family members are willing to do anything, even die. However one defines family, do you really value your family enough to sacrifice a long-cherished ambition for their well-being? Theologically, sharing the Eucharist is analogous to that third cup of tea. Yet for how many of the people who share in the Eucharist, whether locally or globally, am I willing to die? Like Mortenson, I can benefit from lessons in valuing family.
Second, Mortenson has to learn that wisdom and education are not synonymous. Paternalism, even a genial, well-intentioned paternalism, remains paternalism and demeans its intended beneficiaries. Ecclesial structures that implicitly value clergy more than laity or insiders more than outsiders generally embody a similar paternalism. Walking together does not necessitate having a hierarchical leader with subordinate followers.
Third, Mortenson never attempted to convert the Muslims among whom he worked to his religious perspective. Although spirituality permeates Three Cups of Tea, the book never clarifies Mortenson’s personal beliefs and practices. Yet the influence of his strong Christian upbringing is repeatedly evident. Mortenson’s genuine respect for the Muslims among whom he works – Sunnis, Shias, and Ismailis – exemplifies respect for the dignity and worth of all people to which we commit ourselves in our baptismal vows. Mortenson communicates his real respect for people by living as they live, praying as they pray, eating what they eat, dressing as they dress, etc. He never pretends to be who is not, e.g., a Muslim. But he learns the importance of unfailingly honoring those in whose presence he is. Individuals need to adopt a spiritual path and then travel that path. Wandering aimlessly among paths or picking and choosing what feels good in the moment usually results in the idolatry of a God of our own making or our traveling in circles (which is what people who are lost almost invariably do without a compass). Conversely, believing that only one path leads to God expresses an unfounded hubris that God preferentially loves some groups, nationalities, and ethnicities because over 90% of the world’s population inherit their religion by accident of birth and never depart that faith.
Finally, Mortenson builds one school, then another, and another, and yet more. He builds water systems. He builds a bridge. In other words, he translates his commitment to help people into practical actions. He perseveres in the face of seemingly overwhelming obstacles. For example, he has no idea how to raise the funds to build the first school. Of the 580 fund raising letters he mails, he receives only one response. The physical hardships that he endured are legion. Unwavering focus and unrelenting effort, often at great personal cost, enabled Mortenson to change thousands of lives, empowering people with literacy and hope. If the Church strove with equal diligence and wholeheartedness to translate its avowed love for others into practical actions, the one billion plus Christians would literally transform the whole world.
I am thankful that the Sunday School class read Three Cups of Tea. I am confident that their teachers and parents know and share the story of God’s love in Jesus with these children. After thirty years of ordained ministry, I am far less sanguine about the likelihood of Sunday School igniting raging motivational fires in these children to go into the world and translate Christianity’s basic principles – love God and love others – into transformative, pragmatic actions. God’s “frozen chosen” need the heat of passionate love for others to thaw the Church’s body, igniting a contagious zeal to be about God’s business. Such a fire will help us to keep our ordinary preoccupations, personal and ecclesial, in perspective. If Three Cups of Tea ignites such a passion in only a single child, I for one will see a miracle – the hand of God at work – in the life of that child and that class.
The Rev. Dr. George Clifford, Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years He taught philosophy at the U. S. Naval Academy and ethics at the Postgraduate School. He serves as priest in charge at the Church of the Nativity in Raleigh and blogs at Ethical Musings.