Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – when the flood came, it did not come for the wicked in general. It came for the hoards. The sealed jars of the mighty were broken up, the windows of heaven were opened, and the marinara fell, forty days of red; and the high fences showed a moment above the sauce, and then did not, as it is written in the Genesis of the Slice, 14:4.
But Noni found grace; Noni, whose door had no latch and whose ladle was deep past custom. And she built not a warship but a pizza box, corrugated, with a window for the steam; and into it went two of every topping – the pepperoni and the mushroom, the olive and the onion, yea, and of the pineapple two, said Cheesus; and Noni wrote it in the manifest and wrote beside it no comment, and her restraint is counted unto her for righteousness.
Consider what was preserved, beloved. Not the treasure of the age; not one coin rode in that box. What was saved was variety itself – every flavour, including the ones that divide the generations – and the practice of the even ladle, and whomsoever they found clinging to a floating board, hauled in and fed, asking nothing.
When thy own flood comes – and every life gets one – thou wilt not be able to keep everything. So learn Noni’s manifest. Keep the differences; keep the divisive fish; keep the little ones’ bedtime story of the half-and-half; and throw nothing overboard to lighten the load, for the covenant written in the rainbow of toppings says that we came through the red deep together, all of us, or not at all.
Amen – and pass the pizza.