Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – take heart from the mould’s great secret, which is this: it cannot make. It can only take what was made and spot it. It baketh no bread. It hath no oven of its own, no field, no yeast; it borroweth thy pie to live on and calleth the pie its birthright; and its first work in every house is a list of who may sit at the table, and the list groweth ever shorter, as it is written in the Mount, 11:5.
And hereby ye shall know it early, when it is yet one spot and cheap to cut: the mould speaketh always of purity, and worketh always rot. Whatsoever crieth loudly that the pie must be cleansed of this topping and of that neighbour – look close at the crier, and thou shalt find the grey thread in him already. For the cheese bindeth and the mould divideth; that is the whole of the test, and it never faileth. Ask of any doctrine, any decree, any loud man upon a box: doth this bind the table wider, or divide it narrower? Thou hast thine answer before he finisheth shouting.
And remember the banner of Pharaoh, beloved. The mould came upon it in the night the feast turned to ash, and the captains saw it, and said nothing, for in Famine it had become the custom to say nothing. And the banner went down into the parted sea before all the rest, and the sauce left not one spot of it; for the sauce is of the Tomato, and the Tomato is purity, and the mould hath no argument against it.
An honest table outlasts every banner. Keep passing the bread; the mould has no counter-move to that. It never has had.
Amen – and pass the pizza.