Sunday collection 18

I spilled half a tub of salt this week. As I swept it up (having thrown a pinch over my shoulder) I reflected on this humble household substance and its place in our lives.

For a start, I’ve always had considerable sympathy for Lot’s poor wife. In Genesis 19, we hear how God planned to destroy the faithless city of Sodom, where Lot and his family lived. The angels of the Lord warned Lot, saying:

Quick, take your wife and two daughters who are here, or you will be destroyed when the city is punished … Flee for your lives! Do not look back or stop anywhere in the plain.

So the family left the city:

…and the Lord rained down fire and brimstone from the skies on Sodom and Gomorrah. He overthrew those cities and destroyed all the plain, with everyone living there and everything growing in the ground. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she turned into a pillar of salt.

I mean, the poor woman, leaving her home, confused and afraid at the terrible noise behind her, she looks back. And for that one moment of human weakness, she gets turned into a pillar of salt!

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot’s neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn’t so much as hesitate.

From Lot’s Wife by Wisława Szymborska

And salt is inextricably linked with life and death in other ways. Before fridges and freezers, salt was the most precious of commodities, the only way in which peoples all over the world could preserve food for lean times.

Now, of course, we rarely use salt as a preservative out of necessity, in the Western world at least. Salt is used freely as a seasoning and in cooking. For example we rub aubergine (eggplant) and courgette (zucchini) with salt to extract the bitter juices of the vegetables before cooking.

Take a look at this mouthwatering recipe for pineapple baked in salt:

There are many customs and stories about salt.

In medieval England, salt for flavouring was available only to the higher ranks. A medieval banqueting hall would be set out with a high table at which the important folks would be seated, and on which would be placed the container of salt. The lower classes would be seated at tables “below the salt” and would not have access to it.

I understand that a Jewish tradition is to make sure bread and salt are among the first things to be brought into a new home. And at the Passover Seder, vegetables are dipped into salt water (although sometimes vinegar or wine), symbolising the tears shed by Jews in slavery.

I am one of those weird people
who eat the parsley garnish
off restaurant dinners, not
only mine but yours and his.
I will nibble them all.

I like the sharp almost
gritty bite of the leaves,
its formidable green,
its prickly rank scent,
its persistence under snow.

Dip the leaves curly
as pubic hairs into the tears
in the bowl, remembering
old pain and the strength
to endure and go on.

From Karpas by Marge Piercy

So precious was it, that salt was sometimes used as a currency. Roman soldiers, for example, were often paid in salt, giving rise to the expression not worth his salt, and giving us the word salary (the Latin for a payment in salt is salarium).

And it isn’t only used in food preparation. It is common in manufacturing industries, on our roads, in detergents and other household products.

So where does it come from? It’s a mineral that can be gained by evaporating salt water, or by mining. There are many modern salt mines, but in some parts of the world, salt production has not changed much for thousands of years. And it can be brutally tough:

Because of its value, salt has often been a political bargaining chip. My country’s shameful record in India was brilliantly shown in the film Gandhi. One of the lynch pins of our colonial rule was our monopoly on the production of salt, and the salt tax. This clip, difficult to watch, shows the famous Salt March and its aftermath. (And let us never forget the power of non-violent civil resistance.)

And of course, in affinity with the sea, we are physically salty creatures.

But do not think salt came
from Armenia because
it was the land of tears.
Tears come from laughing too.

Salt is what is left
when the sea recedes,
when the flood subsides.
It is what is left
when passion is eased
to coat the face of calm.

The same salt that flavors
the table sweetens the breath,
causes the blood to rise, spoils
the pilaf and brightens the smile.

From Salt, by Diana Der-Hovanessian

So next time I handle salt, I will remember what a very precious substance it is, and how many people have suffered for it. And I will remember that Christ called us the salt of the earth, and that in doing so he challenges us not to lose our flavour:

You are salt to the world. And if salt becomes tasteless, how is its saltness to be restored? It is good for nothing but to be thrown away and trodden underfoot.

Matthew 5:13