Salt
Salt: 15 February 2025
Jack’s friend, Max, wants to be a chef. He’s teaching Jack how to cook. This has been especially helpful as they try to navigate wrestling weight classes—bulk up! Lose 9 pounds in 3 days! Feast! Don’t drink water until after weigh-in!—I disagree with so much of this, both nutritionally and mentally, but for now, the good of the team (and the fact of a time-limited season) outweighs, so to speak, the individual’s comfort or preferences. There’s value in that.
Anyway, they often cook chicken for its high protein/ low fat profile. I’ve never cooked chicken, but I’ve enjoyed watching their forays. Especially their attempts to add flavor without adding calories. Jack was batch-cooking for the week (honestly, who is this child?) and we talked about how important it is to add salt at the right time. How it’s better to add salt while cooking than to add it afterwards. How it enhances and brings out flavor in the cooking process but can easily overwhelm.
I started to rhapsodize about how when the sodium ions break apart from the chloride ions it changes the properties of the proteins involved….but luckily I stopped myself in time to be able to stay in the kitchen while he cooked.
Point being, salt is super important but in proportionally small amounts and when added at the right time. Salt can enhance, amplify, deepen, and balance flavors. It can change textures, act as a preservative, influence colors. But too much can overwhelm and ruin.
So far, the second Trump administration seems designed, as predicted, to overwhelm and ruin many of the norms and institutions that I value. Too much salt! I’m not saying those norms and institutions don’t need inspection or reform. But so far, the intent seems to be destruction for the sake of pain, power for the sake of intimidation, tear it down because someone else built it up.
I listened to a recent interview with Steve Bannon, who spoke about the strategy of flooding the zone, especially in these first early days, to unsettle and overwhelm the opposition. Clearly, it’s working. It’s creating the chaos and uncertainty that they desire. It does make me want to drop out, hunker down, put my fingers in my ears. But from the first Trump administration I learned to pace myself. To pay enough attention to know what’s happening, but not so much that I’m constantly in flight, fight or freeze. To discern when my actions can make a difference.
I’m paying attention to how I ingest news, the amounts, the sources, the timing. I decided to start with poetry. Instead of waking up and ratcheting up my blood pressure with news headlines, I’ll start with lighting a candle, sipping a warm cup of something, and reading a poem.
A new poem arrives in my inbox while I sleep, and it’s the first thing I ingest. I savor it, tasting and exploring the ways the poem resonates. If it doesn’t resonate then I pause to wonder why, and to marvel at all the millions of expressions of how to be human in this world.
Small note: when I signed up for the daily poem email, I was prompted to confirm my humanity, which at first I thought said confirm my humility, and then I was disappointed. Wouldn’t the world be better if occasionally we were asked to confirm our humility? Oh wait, maybe that’s church. Or teenagers.
After the poem I turn to the Flip Side. Each day I get an email focused on one topic with a short description and a selection of the best points from liberal and conservative media on that topic. Because all of these issues are complex and multi-faceted and shouldn’t be debated by tweet. Most days I agree with points made by each ‘side’, and most days I disagree with others. It’s called reality. Nuance. I encourage you to check it out. From their description: The Flip Side is on a mission to bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives. A less divided future begins with all of us getting on the same page – literally.
So much of what bothers me about current evangelicalism and the ‘Christian right’ is the call for conformity, the claim that there’s only one way to be Christian, and that it happens to be their way. Christian nationalism ramps this up to eleven. No. That’s not being God’s people in the world. That’s creating an empire of like-mindedness which happens to conform to what feels safe to you. Too much salt! Lot’s wife comes to mind.
I was thinking of this last Sunday while we were all saying the Lord’s Prayer. It was a jarring segue for me, too, but hear me out. I was thinking of how wonderful it is that with all of the millions of ways to be human in the world, and with all the myriad ways to worship in the Christian tradition, and for all the arguments and spats and splits Christians have fought about, we’re mostly on the same page about including this prayer in most of our worship services.
I also thought about that request for daily bread. Flour, water, salt. That’s how you make bread. But not too much salt. Jesus called us to be the salt of the earth and cautioned us not to lose our saltiness. But a little bit of salt goes a long way. Everyone needs a lot of water (and Jesus is the living water), but no one wants a lot of salt. It overwhelms, it ruins. But at the right time and in the right amount it enhances—making something better than it would have been. That’s how Christians are called to act.
There are many salts and many ways to honor God. May we use our saltiness to bring out the best of what is already present, not to destroy it. May we be the ones who preserve, who add texture, who enhance flavor, who offer daily sustenance to everyone. Every. One.
“ In our time, when many seem to think that Christianity goes hand in hand with right-wing visions of the world, it is important to remember that there has never been a conservative prophet. Prophets have never been called to conserve social orders that have stratified inequities of power and privilege and wealth; prophets have always been called to change them so that all have access to the fullest fruits of life.”
