July Meditation

There was one thing I always dreaded about being ill when I was a child. Gargling with salt water. My mother swore by it, she still does. I have distinct memories of watching her do it in the bathroom and thinking how strong her throat must have been to withstand it.

I can still remember the lingering taste of salt in my mouth that no amount of water could remove.

That healing power of salt comes with sharpness. It’s abrasive, corrosive. It removes the damage to make way for healing.

Jesus calls us to be salt and light in the world. It’s sort of easy to imagine what being light in the world looks like. Light is nice. It’s comfortable. It’s safe. It’s warming.

But salt.

Salt is the challenging words of the prophets, salt is the shock of Jesus’ touch on the unclean woman, salt is the uncomfortable generosity of the early church.

You are the salt of the earth, he said.

You are the salt of this earth that has been bruised by our over use of resources and our harmful lifestyles, leaving parts of it uninhabitable from drought, flooding and disaster.

You are the salt of this earth whose mothers and daughters and sisters have been oppressed and mistreated.

You are the salt of this earth that can no longer provide a safe home for over 65 million people who are displaced around the world.

You are the salt of this earth whose soils are also war fields, soaking with the blood of the injured and holding the bodies of those killed by conflict.

You are the salt of this earth that was once created to be a home for all, but now is owned and controlled by a small percentage of the wealthy and privileged.

You are the salt of the earth, he said.

Healing salt, cleansing salt. You are the salt that helps others live with the full flavour of life. You are the salt that keeps the fire of life alight. You are the salt that will make the world taste better for everyone who lives in it.

Don’t lose your saltiness, he warns. For if you do you will be trampled on under foot.

Don’t lose your flavour, he warns. For if you do you’ll become bland and complacent with the status quo that keeps the rich in power and the poor in poverty.

Don’t lose your sharpness, he warns. For if you do your sight will become soft and your eyes will become blind to the oppression that happen around you.

Don’t lose your abrasiveness, he warns. For if you do you’ll only be like an small plaster on a large wound, unable to heal fully the problems that are bringing suffering on the world.

It’s easy to be light; to bring warmth and safety and good news. It’s a little bit harder to be salt; to deliver the sting of challenging truth in the face of power, to withstand the sharp taste of sacrifice that makes way for the healing of others.

We are the salt of the earth.
Salty are the words of our resistance.
Salty is the sweat of our persistence.
Salty are the tears of our healing.

We are the salt of the earth.
May we season the earth with love and compassion.
May we preserve the earth with hope and the knowledge of a better way.
May we heal the world with a critical truth that opens a path for change.