Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – the table had divided over a pineapple pie, and they that cared least shouted loudest, as they will; and one had the pie itself in his hands as if to cast it out of doors, and the man who brought it stood shamed and small at his own gift. And they demanded a verdict of the Lord; and he took of the pineapple pie, and ate, and said: It is not to my taste – and I have eaten it, and I am not diminished, and this man’s mother is at this table in every bite of it, and ye would have cast her out of doors, as it is written in the Gospel, 17:8.
Hear the ruling entire, for ages hence men are still getting it wrong. The question was never the pineapple. The question is the table. Ye ask, what may be forbidden? and the Oven asks, who may be fed? and these two questions build two different worlds, and ye must choose which world to lay places in.
Thy taste is thine, beloved, and it is honest, and no man need eat what he mislikes. But the border of thy taste is the edge of thy plate, and not the edge of the table. Whoso maketh his palate into a law hath seasoned his food with his neighbour’s shame; and it shall sit in his stomach accordingly.
And when thy neighbour’s pie is truly strange to thee, thou hast the liturgy ready: say, Tell me the story of it. For every strange pie hath a story – a grandmother, a shortage, a long road – and at the end of the story thou wilt love the pie, or at the least the neighbour, which was ever the point.
Amen – and pass the pizza, whatever is on it.