This book felt like a hug! The definition of a cozy, comfort read! I only wish it were longer and I can't wait for the sequels!
I also did not expect this sci-fi fiction novella to be so relevant to pastoral ministry!
Dex wants to be a tea monk and help people. On their first day of trying to actually do this, a woman comes to him crying because her beloved cat just died. If this passage doesn't speak directly to those entering some kind of pastoral ministry after seminary then I don't know what does:
"Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing. They’d been a garden monk until the day before, and in that context, their expressions of comfort to the monastery’s visitors came in the form of a healthy foxpaw crawling up a trellis or a carefully pruned rose in bloom. It was an exchange expressed through environment, not through words. Dex was not actually a tea monk yet. They were just a person sitting at a table with a bunch of mugs. The wagon, the kettle, the red and brown, the fact that they were clearly well past apprentice age—all of it communicated that they knew what they were doing. They did not.
Dex did their best to look sympathetic, which is what they wanted to be, rather than lost, which is what they were. “I’m sorry,” they said. They scrambled to recall the written advice they’d spent hours consuming, but not only had the specifics evaporated, their basic vocabulary had as well. It was one thing to know people would tell you their troubles. It was another to have an actual flesh-and-blood stranger standing in front of you, weeping profusely as means of introduction, and to know that you—you—were responsible for making this better."
Pastor Kathy Escobar's short devotional is sure to be a balm to many a weary soul. I only wished it was longer. Kathy's pastoral heart shines through even as she is speaking from her own deep grief and pain in losing one of her children to death by suicide.
If your grief and sorrow feel like too much, I think you will find at least a little comfort as you read this book.
The book has 28 daily reflections with prayers and suggested practices to honor our pain and struggles during the holiday season. This might be a good devotional for small group studies also.
I will definitely be coming back to this one again.
