A few weeks back our Turkish Muslim friends from the Dialogue Society brought in some ‘Noah’s Puddings’, a curious form of sweet pudding, to share after the service. This past week I heard a bit more about why they share this peculiar dish as I was invited to be a guest speaker with them at an Assembly in Maiden Erlegh School in Reading. It comes down to chickpeas! The children were asked: “If you were a chickpea, would you prefer to be in a soup, a salad, or in Noah’s Pudding?”
They explained: in a soup the chickpea is blended in and it loses its distinctive identity. This (they told the children) is a metaphor for societies which ‘homogenise’ people, removing their unique identities (think: totalitarian societies). In a salad the chickpea retains its distinctiveness (yay! good) but throw a salad in the air (i.e. add some disturbance to your society) and all the parts fly in different directions because there’s no cohesion (think: modern individualistic societies). But in Noah’s Pudding chickpeas come together with 20 other ingredients, each bringing something distinctive. The chickpeas add stickiness, the apricots bring sweetness, the barley adds some bite, etc. etc.
This was, of course, a curious and cunning metaphor about how we might approach the question of valuing diversity and maintaining social cohesion. For my part, I was asked to add a Christian reflection and I chose to introduce the concept of the ‘virtues’. Building such an idealistic society doesn’t just happen with a flick of the switch, it depends on people practising certain virtues. I then mentioned St Paul’s list the nine ‘fruits of the spirit’ (Galatians 5.22-3). I suggested we could treat these as a checklist of virtuous behaviours which might help us move in the direction of such an ideal: practising love, being joyful, working at peace, attempting patience, doing kindness, enacting goodness, being faithful, learning gentleness, and acting with self-control. None of these are easy to come by; each takes work; but authentic Christian life should and will (says St Paul), reveal these qualities ripening in us.
Mark
Rev Dr Mark Laynesmith
Vicar, Earley St Nicolas Church