Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – the first quarrel of the world was not about money, nor land, nor gods. It was about toppings. Kale of the garden and Hamuel of the smokehouse, two goods and one pie, and no evil anywhere in the room but the whisper that told them goods must go to war, as it is written in the Genesis of the Slice, 12:5.
And Cheesus came to the door – it is always Cheesus at the door, whoever it looks like – and he did not choose a winner. He took the wheel and drew one line down the middle of the pie, from north unto south: a border of nothing, a frontier of dough. The garden on this side, the smokehouse on that. One crust beneath the both of them; one Oven about the both of them; one table before the both of them.
And here is the detail the elders love best: the pie went into the Oven divided and came out whole. The line remained, but the cheese, being the binding force, crept a little across the border in the baking, as cheese will, and no one moved to stop it.
Beloved, you will not always want the same things as the ones you love; you were not made to. The line down the middle is not a wound in the pie – it is the shape of two loves at one table. Difference is not division until someone refuses the table; and agreement was never the price of supper in his house, nor shall be. So when the quarrel heats, do not win it. Draw the line, share the crust, and taste the other side first, after the Order of the First Taste.
Amen – and pass the pizza.