Pass The Salt, Please

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, what good is it except to be thrown out as useless.”

If it looks like a duck,
and walks like a duck...
That sure looks like salt, but there's only one way
to find out.  Put a little on the end of your finger
and taste it. You'll know if it's salt or not.
If it has a little zing...salt!

But how does one lose her saltiness, 
his zest?  One way is to sit on the shelf too long.
Shelf-life, they call it.  Check the expiration date.
What's the point of being salt if you
stay in the cupboard all the time?

Another way to lose it is to be scared
of pepper's demise, so that you never take
a chance, never try something new, always
start your sentences with "Well, at my age..."
Trying to grasp saltiness because of a fear
of losing it squeezes the life out of life.

You and I will never be useless, but we will, also,
never claim as our purpose the frantic fallacy
of "I must stay young to be vibrant and vital."
Can salt lose its saltiness by trying too hard
to retain flavor?  Faking it?  Sure.
It's an ego thing; life done for the wrong reasons.
Fear can drive you to the cupboard or into
a ditch.  Either way, the game is over.

We are the salt of the earth for the sake of the earth,
not ourselves.  We are salt in the name of the One
who claims us.  We are salt for our neighbor
and for the stranger.

The depth of flavor and the quality of saltiness
has less to do with age than with attitude.
Where are you on the Zing-O-Meter?
You unplugged it!