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We've laid out our best teaware on a handdyed cloth and prepared a favorite tea for you, making this a celebratory tea session. This is a gathering and reunion for us all: our twelfth Global Tea Hut! And let it indeed be a celebration, for this has been an amazing year full of sharing, insight, wisdom and fun. This hut has grown tremendously in this year, literally spreading tea round the world. And now here we all sit at this much, much larger table. Make some room, introduce yourself and pass the bowls round!
This year we have worked very hard to make this Global Tea Hut experience an important part of your month, and a memorable new addition to the whole of your 2012 experience. We hope to make 2013 an even better year, with a greater variety of articles, gifts and all new teas to explore together. Are there any teas you'd like to see repeated? How about any of the gifts? Is there anything you'd like us to write about? If so, send us an email or post on the GTH forums and help us make the second year in this hut better than the first!
This year is promising to be magical for us: as most of you now know, we have been donated three beautiful acres of land with a waterfall, river, cliffs and gorgeous views on which we hope to start building a bigger and more permanent center this year. As a result, each and every issue of this magazine from now on will include an article called "Light Meets Life" in which we will update you on this glorious project. We chose this name for our new center as it expresses all that we hope to create: a place where the sacred light meets every aspect of life, from daily work to meditation, from seed to tea tree and from leaf to bowl. Also, as most of you know by now, we love the word "light" since it implies both purity and divinity as well as levity and humor.
This year we will also see the restart of our free online magazine The Leaf. In the next couple months our new editor, Lindsey Lulaloo, will be revamping the website and posting the long-overdue ninth issue. We will be offering a new print-on-demand option for those who want a physical copy of the issues. The content of The Leaf and this newsletter will be different, in order to distinguish the two. We will try to keep The Leaf more focused on tea and teaware with a bit of Dao, while this newsletter will focus more on this tradition, spirituality through tea and our personal experiences. It too will contain a lot of tea information, of course, but it will be in a less formal tone than The Leaf.
When we began Global Tea Hut, we did so as a one-year subscription. This means that for many of you the time has come to re-subscribe. We will be sending out notifications and reminders, which we hope aren't too tiresome. We plan on sending extra gifts to those that sign up for a second year. Also, at this important time when our new center is about to be under construction, we want to offer you the chance to increase your monthly donations and show our gratitude if you do. Therefore, anyone who increases their support for the coming year will be given a packet of 1970's Puerh in the following month's envelope as a token of appreciation. However, do not feel in any way obligated to do so. We are incredibly grateful for all your support this year, and as we mentioned will be sending extra gifts along anyway. Every month of this journey has been incred
ible and meeting so many of you in person, here and abroad, has given meaning and spirit to this center. We pray that this next year we continue that sharing of tea and spirit around the world, and that this center be the first of many, as this gathering also spreads to more people and countries around the world. May each of you find great joy in this tea, recognizing the communal spirit shared by other tea lovers such as yourself all over this beautiful world of ours...
