The Community of Salt (II)
[the process of becoming a community]
A lot has rain here since last March. The community of salt is evolving. It is not a traditional community with members, it is more like a communality of experiences.
It doesn’t come into form with people but with happenings and places, with relationships and paths, with encounters and wanderings. Shaping into the resemblance of a network?
Sana has made her own salt. Her experience has become part of the community. More will be joining, of that, I am sure. The performance of making our own salt, or sharing the salt we make, is clearly part of the path, a ceremony. Nothing transcendent. Liminal if you want. As common as salt, as extraordinary.
Others have started to know about us. We have popped out of the inner protection of our “brine” and reach out… time will tell us what happens next.
Salt preserves. We are beginning to grasp how this common, minuscule, vital mineral has made way from the beginning of times, to nowadays with clarity and consistency. Even when our culture tries to warn us about her devastating effects for our health. Salt preserves herself from all these stories. Very clever.
It has been a turn in our path… we are brewing, fermenting, curing. Such a wonderful delight. With fermentation there is opening, transformation, shifts, and bubbles!!! Place, time, and magic are now part of this community too.
It seems clear… a map [not just any map] a map made with the experiences, the relationships, the paths, the wanderings. Looking forward, looking backwards might transform us in a “pillar” of salt.
It happened to Lot’s wife [Genesis 19:26], named Edith in the Midrash, she looked back to Sodom when leaving the doomed city behind and, in doing so, became a sculpture of salt, a “pillar” of salt. A punishment?
Fascinating story. Lot and his family are gone in the memories of time… Edith is still there. A pillar of salt with her name is located near the Dead Sea at Mount Sodom in Israel. To not forget? Yes, salt is a preserver. A preserver of memories perhaps too.
We are moving forward, in the pilgrimage toward our encounter, faster than we thought. Faster? It has been brewing slowly. My entire body trembles with excitement. Shaking my thoughts of impossibility. What was a dream is now closer to reality. Our paths will join for an instant and salt will be present, of that I am also sure.
Poets. Pilgrims. Wanderers of a path that we make…