Salt Makes You Better

Phyliss had perfect pitch.  A great pianist.  Phyliss also drew the short straw.  For many years she heard me sing the hymns each Sunday.  Not always, but sometimes, well, enough of the time, Phyliss would shoot me a look; I could see her wince.  I was singing loud and clear for all to hear, and she would look in my direction.  Her look was an invitation, come over here; the key is over here; come join us.  Think harmony, not solo. 

              Once, when the grand piano of the church was being tuned, I asked her about the process, the need, when you knew a piano needed tuning.  What she said was so surprising.  She said, as soon as you start playing a piano it starts to go out of tune.  Simply by striking the keys the instrument will lose perfection.  To make her point she conjured a memory.  She asked, have you been to a performance of a great pianist?  I had.  Did you notice someone came and tuned the piano during intermission?  I had noticed that.  A great pianist, she said, can hear the instrument losing its tune by the end of a piece. 

              Kathy and I saw this with James Taylor.  We saw him perform years back. We were told, watch what happens at the end of each song.  He will be handed a new guitar.  Sure enough at the end of each song, a young fellow would walk onto the stage, take the guitar just played and hand James Taylor a perfectly tuned guitar.  He has perfect pitch and he is obsessive compulsive.  He will delay a concert to retune a guitar.  We saw this.  At the end of a song, there was no fellow walking from the back and sure enough, James Taylor started to tune his instrument.  And then, from the back of the stage the man came running because once he started tuning it was unlikely he would stop.  There was an argument and luckily an exchange.

              I am fascinated by this image of being retuned.  Losing the tune and then finding the tune.  Part of my fascination is how close this is to grief and loss.  When we lose people we love, it is as if we are instruments out of tune.

              The most current theory of grief is close to this.  Grief is not simply loss but also regaining life.  In death we lose the joy of life; it goes away. This is grief.  But then, after time, with distance we regain life.  The loss of a loved one is not forgotten, nor are they no longer mourned, but there is a distance gained from the loss and life is restored, retuned.

              I heard this theory lived out when a group of nuns were interviewed about a tragedy.  A man in a psychotic event broke into their convent and killed and wounded many of the sisters.  Terrible tragedy.

Years later, when interviewed about the tragic event, the nuns spoke of loss and grief and tragedy, but then they also spoke of beauty and distance. 

              The beauty mentioned was a foot washing.  As the details of the violence and reasons came clear, the nuns reached out to the young man's family and told them they forgave their son and they were not angry with them.  One nun said, they didn't believe us, couldn't believe us.  So we invited the family to come to the convent on Maundy Thursday.  When we washed their feet, she said, in the moment of tenderness and humility, when we washed their feet, they believed us.

              Yet, the comment that always sticks with me is the description a nun offered of an enormous bell in Rome.  Their mother house in Rome has a massive bell.  One nun said, if you are in the convent and near the bell when it is rung, the sound is painful, crushing.  But, she said, if you go out into the country, if you gain some distance, the bell is the most beautiful sound.  My life has enough distance from the loss to hear beauty again. She was restored in a way.

              I remember watching my grandmother find this distance.  She lost a son.  A terrible loss.  I watched all the joy of life leave her.  As a teen this loss seemed to me irredeemable.  There was a vacancy in her eyes; her laughter, once deep, became shallow.  Then, years later, dancing with her I could see her eyes were no longer vacant, her laughter was deep again.  She had not forgotten; she gained some distance. She was restored to life.

              The Quaker theologian Parker Palmer writes of this loss of joy, his loss, when twice he was clinically depressed.  He was lost.  Unable to work, to live, to move, he laid in bed for months.  He was lost and then he said, a friend started to come to his house twice a week.  The friend let himself in; didn't greet him or speak to him.  The friend came to his bedside, uncovered his feet, and for an hour massaged his feet.  Then he covered him and let himself out.  Parker Palmer said, this saved me.  He could feel, feel something again.  Slowly, he came back to life.

              There is a Hasidic saying, it goes something like this.  For those who have left the circle of the dance, it is the hardest step to return, to join the circle of the dance once more.  So true to life.  There is a dance; there are losses, moments, events leading us away from the dance; and, how hard it is to rejoin.  It happens though.  Like the Psalms, mourning can turn to dancing.  Or weeping may tarry through the night, but joy comes with the morning.  The question is: how many mornings will it take before joy returns?

              In our lesson today, Jesus speaks of salt.  Salt is good he says.  But then a curious question, what do you do when salt loses its saltiness?  What happens if you lose the tune of life, lose beauty, lose your way?  What happens if you are lost?  Can life be restored, come back; can you join the dance again?

              For us salt is really about food.  Salt is flavor, bringing out the flavor of ingredients in a dish.  Salting a sauce, salting meat, salting vegetables is a basic skill of cooking. 

              A chef/friend told me long ago, you must taste the dish again and again; taste the sauce at each stage.  In this you learn to know when and if to add salt.  Too little salt and the sauce is bland; too much salt and the ingredients are lost; it simply tastes like salt.  I know a sauce is ready when I stop tasting for the salt and I just keep tasting.  I forget I am tasting; I am simply enjoying the taste.  I start eating.  It's ready.

              For centuries though salt was key not just for taste but for preserving.  Meat was cured in salt and kept from rot.  Salt was key not only in households, but for travel.  If you preserve meat with salt, you can take it with you. 

              Historians have long noted salt was the key to military victory because this allowed food stuffs to become portable.  Armies need to move; food needs to move with them; food moves with salt.  Scholars argue our own civil war was won and lost with salt.  The North controlled the salt; they held the salt reserves.  The Confederate states didn't have enough.  Salt preserved food; made leather, kept horses alive, the salt lick; and salt peter was a key element of gun powder.  The outcome of the civil war was determined by salt.  The South never had enough salt.  They were stuck; they couldn't move without salt.

              We don't think of salt as mobility, but in Jesus' time it was the value.  Salt itself was so important for mobility it became a currency.  Soldiers were paid in salt.  Business was conducted with salt.  Hence, we get the adage, not worth your salt.  You didn't work enough, bring enough worth, you are not worth your salt; you didn't earn your keep.

              We can read the teaching of Jesus here simply as taste.  What happens when we lose the taste of life?  Great question.  We can lose our taste for life.  Life becomes bland, uninspiring.  Yet, when I read the question: what can you do when salt loses its saltiness, when I read this question, I find myself with Phyliss and the piano.  Salt loses saltiness; life loses its tune. 

George Herbert described prayer as a series of images, one being a tune.  Prayer, he says, is

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss.

Prayer, life, can be a blissful tune.  And then not so much; we can lose the tune.  Can't hear it anymore.  How can we be retuned?  How can our soul stop and find the tune again?

              Like the nuns washing the feet of the family, like the massive bell at the mother house whose ringing is terrible when you are close, but beautiful at a distance, how can you gain the distance?  How much time does it take before you rejoin the dance of life?

              When I hear Jesus' question of saltiness, in my mind I am tasting a sauce, seeking the moment of bliss, wanting to taste readiness; take this to the table.  Motion. But I also remember Parker Palmer and his inability to move, to feel anything, to live.  Salt is taste, but it's also motion and worth.  How worthless he felt lying in bed month after month unable to move. He must have felt like he had been tossed on the trash heap. And then, life came to him— kindness, compassion, tenderness.  Strange, isn't it, he didn't reach out, find it, move toward life, life came to him; and then, he came back.

              Maybe Jesus is teaching us about salt to bring a message of hope.  If you have lost the taste of life, if you are out of tune, if the sense of motion and worth of life has been lost and you are not sure where to find it, if you are outside the circle of the dance, you can come back, life can return; the wonder, awe, bliss of life can be restored.  Who hasn't suffered loss, grief, and wondered when will I feel whole again; when will life be effortless?  How many mornings until joy comes again?  There is a subtle hope in the teaching about salt.  Beauty will find you again; life will be restored.  You can be healed.

              This is a good message, but I find a better one in this: we restore each other.  We offer healing, restoration, bring life back to bliss together. Offering restoration, salt become salty again.  This maybe the very purpose of a church.  We gather to sing, to hope, to rejoice to find the presence of the friend, to welcome the stranger, to invite those who feel estranged from life to find joy.  It can happen here.

              I love the memory of Phyliss and her perfect pitch and the idea of a piano going out of tune as soon as a key is struck.  I love that because it means beauty comes from imperfection, not perfection.  But mostly I love the memory of her eyes, the meeting of our gaze.  She was salty let us say.  Hey, harmony, harmony is over here.  Join our song; join your voice.  There was certainly some self-preservation in her eyes.  You need to stop hurting my ears.  But there was also an invitation.  Her salty gaze was such a beautiful image of the church.  Hey, find the tune over here with us.  The tune we all can hear.  Amen.