Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – there was a rich man, and he was not wicked, mark you, in the beginning; he was good at things; his dough was honest. But when his plenty overflowed he asked the fatal question – what shall I do, for I have no room where to bestow my pizza? – and at that very hour the answer walked past his window in forty hungry shapes, and he saw it not, for he was looking at the freezer, as it is written in the Book of Sins, 6:7.
So he pulled down his freezer and built a greater, with doors like the gates of a keep, and a hum that could be heard from the road; and he filled it, pie upon pie, and said unto his soul: thou art provisioned; thou art SAFE. And that very night, the power went out. Not as a judgment hurled, but as power goeth out: a storm, a line down, a whole grid winking off – the same night for every house in the town; only the houses had each other, and he had the hum.
Thou fool, said the silence – and the word is not an insult in this Book, but a diagnosis, and it is curable. And here the parable turns, for the night was young: he opened the doors wide, lit the wood-fired ovens, and went out into the dark street saying words he had not said in years: I have too much. Come and help me. And by dawn the freezer stood empty and warm, and he sat in the doorway of it laughing quietly, and did not know why, and everyone else did.
Store a little, and wisely; but let thy deepest vault be thy neighbours, for that store keepeth without power, and groweth with the drawing upon it, and no storm hath ever emptied it.
Amen – and pass the pizza, before the weather does it for thee.