When I cook I prefer not to use a salt shaker but rather a salt cruse where I can feel the weight and texture of the salt between my fingers as I put it into my cooking. Contrary to some thinking, I cannot cook without salt because it draws out the flavour, and is an essential factor in making good pasta - no salt in the water, no flavour in the pasta! My elderly friend Signora Guilia told me this many times as I sat in her cucina in southern Italy. Salt went on her oranges at breakfast, into the salsa, on the lettuce along with olive oil and lemon juice. I cannot be without my sea salt in the kitchen cupboard - impossible to cook without it.
Being by the ocean you cannot miss the scent of the salt water in the air. On one of my trips to Barbados I cut my foot on the rocks over at Bathsheba. Mamita, my friend, suggested spending plenty of time in the water at the quiet beach at end of her road, where she assured me the salt water would be the best healing agent, and she was absolutely right.
You know those times when the pain within is so intense that the only release for it is tears. Tears that well up and then begin to flow down your cheeks, soaking your face and your clothing. Soon there is no point in holding them back and they flow copiously mingling with the sobbing that gives voice to the depth of the sorrow this moment is honouring and releasing. When the tears stop flowing and have dried they leave behind the traces of salt on your skin.
Seasoned with salt.
Perhaps one of the reasons we have tears is because they season our soul with salt, giving it the essence of what God's heart tastes like. A heart that knows every emotion, feels every emotion. And perhaps the seasoning in the tears allows us to wrestle with the emotions and find the place they fit in our story, in our journey, in our image bearing of the feminine and masculine heart of God. Our God weeps with us in our pain.
Sea water, so full of salt, cleanses, heals, and seasons the life in it with flavour. This dried sea salt also seasons and preserves in our culinary world. Tears - they cleanse, heal and season our soul and there is no shame in letting them flow.
In the story of the young man who left home, returning years later broken and humiliated, the father runs out to greet him, embrace him and pour unconditional love on him. The son was wrapped in warmth, and love, and although it doesn't say so, I am sure that the kisses and hugs of welcome were accompanied by tears of joy. The salt of the fathers' tears upon his broken and destitute child must have been healing to both their souls.
The prophet Jeremiah said "The tears stream from my eyes, an artesian well of tears. Until you, God, look down from on high, look and see my tears."
Physician Luke tenderly writes that "you're blessed when the tears flow freely".
Tears and their seasoning to our souls are for now, for earth, for the healing and preserving effect they were designed for - tears that connect joy and pain within the same
soul, body and mind and allow them to exist together in this earthly journeying.
"He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good--tears gone, crying gone, pain gone--all the first order of things gone." (Revelation - Message)
The Almighty created us with tears for now, for this journey; tears that cleanse, heal and season our soul. Tears that the Almighty Himself will wipe away one day. Until then I will continue to learn to honour my own tears, and those of others, as diamonds in each soul tapestry.