May 11, 2011
By Frank Logue

With the first cup of tea, you are a stranger. With the second cup of tea, you are an honored guest. With the third cup of tea, you become family. This Balti proverb lends Greg Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea, its name. But with a class action lawsuit filed against him in early May following investigations by writer John Krakauer and 60 Minutes, what is needed now is three cups of compassion.

The first cup of compassion is for Mortenson who has admitted that some of his 2006 book compressed several visits into one and otherwise simplified a complicated story for his readers. The recently hailed humanitarian has been eviscerated by one-time supporter John Krakauer whose diatribe Three Cups of Deceit leapt to the top of the Kindle Bestseller list soon after it was posted online on April 18. Both Krakauer and 60 Minutes aim serious accusations at Mortenson concerning the financial dealings of the Central Asia Institute (CAI). They also pick at some facts in the book, including whether Mortenson was abducted by the Taliban. These concerns are not trivial. However, no one has impugned the central fact that a mountain climber became a school builder. None of what has been revealed changes the certainty that Mortenson's book gave millions of people hope that education, particularly the education of girls, could build a better, more peaceful, future for all of us. He may have proved to have feet of clay, but that need not topple the central message he shared in his writing and public speaking. The first cup of compassion is for a man who arrived a stranger in Pakistan, and no matter what else has happened, left behind both schools in the mountains and hope in human hearts.

The second cup of compassion is for us, the readers who have been disappointed by the unraveling of a story we needed to believe. The feeling is familiar. He is not the first memoirist to craft his own history in ways that stretch the truth to the breaking point. He will not be the last. We want stories of hope and though skeptical as individuals, the book-reading public is, as a group, hungry for heroes. We know within ourselves how flawed we can be and so we crave the one who rises above the crowd as a shining example of what can be accomplished. Krakauer wrote to lay bare the "image of Mortenson that has been created for public consumption ... an artifact born of fantasy, audacity, and an apparently insatiable hunger for esteem." Yet, everyone we put forward as a role model will inevitably prove flawed. This second cup of compassion makes us the honored guest in a gathering of fallen idols – those we revered who share with us the innate human capacity to disappoint.

The third cup of compassion is for the billions in developing nations who have endured an endless stream of First World solutions to the problems that vex them. Trillions of dollars have been wasted along the road paved with good intentions. Many of the schools the CAI built in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been repurposed or sat empty. The educational needs of the first village in Korphe, Pakistan, were identified by local leaders. In that village there was a school operating in the open, with children writing their lessons in the dirt. Creating a building for an existing school can help improve education through providing a better environment for the learning already taking place. But buildings alone are not a solution to education needs. And placing buildings in communities with scant support for staffing and other ongoing support is a short-term action that does little to address the long-term problem. Rather than applying lessons learned elsewhere, any development projects must include an element of listening deeply to those in the area.

Developing nations are dotted with the rusting hulks of machinery considered indispensible elsewhere and repurposed buildings imagined as containing the source of salvation from some problem or another. These are the tangible reminders of what happens when we fail to listen to and partner with those we seek to aid.

The story of Greg Mortenson's journey in his first book, Three Cups of Tea, tells the story of a young man listening and learning from those in a distant valley in Pakistan and the good that came from it. Krakauer in his Three Cups of Deceit tells how this story of a heart in the right place has been prettied up for publication and followed with financial mismanagement, as well as building schools in places unprepared to begin educating students in the buildings. As we act on Jesus' teaching in Matthew 25 that we are to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, we must not lose sight of those in developing nations as fellow members of the Body of Christ with gifts to offer and wisdom born of a deeper understanding of the local geography, weather, and culture. We must learn from each other and work together, not merely applying a solution from elsewhere, even another valley in the same mountains, to a new setting unthinkingly.

This third cup of compassion is for those in dire need who we have failed to aid by failing to listen and in wanting to serve as directors rather than partners. The third cup is the one which makes us family.

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Frank Logue is the canon for congregational ministries in the Diocese of Georgia.