Of Pickles and Cucumbers

Until recently, I hated pickles. I didn’t like the smell or the taste but mostly it was the concept. I felt queasy about eating something sitting in a jar for who knows how long. It seemed too akin to embalming, dead vegetables floating around stewing in their own juices. Why would you eat that?

As a kid I got so mad when my mother put pickles in our tuna salad sandwiches, feeling it was a personal insult (never mind that the rest of my family enjoyed pickles in their tuna). I loved cucumbers though. Every summer we would visit my grandparents and eat fresh cucumbers, corn and watermelon to our hearts’ content.

I had no idea of the connection between cucumbers and pickles until one devastating summer of betrayal when I was about 8. Walking into the kitchen, I saw my grandmother, in mad scientist fashion hovering over sanitized mason jars, tongs in hand, surrounded by my beloved cucumbers and understood for the first time where pickles come from. From then on they were indelibly linked in my mind. A pickle was just a cucumber gone bad — a terrible waste of a perfectly nice vegetable. I never looked at them the same way again.

Until recently. I’ve decided to rekindle my relationship with cucumbers and give pickles a chance. Fermentation is the theme for the next exhibit in our gallery, and artists and church members are starting to buzz about fermentation as a metaphor for the creative and spiritual process. Clearly, Jesus thought it was a useful metaphor, talking about what happens to new wine, the insidious properties of yeast and the saltiness of salt. So, I thought I should give this a closer look.

A fermented food is one whose taste and texture have been transformed by the introduction of natural beneficial bacteria or fungi. Through a period of soaking in salt-brine, anaerobic bacteria acts on the vegetable to create a new, even healthier food.

A cursory look at the process reveals connections with our own experiences of transformation. Fermentation implies agitation, excitement or tumult. It is the process by which old ideas, habits and patterns are overturned and new insight is introduced to strengthen us and ensure our flourishing.

Curious to get a deeper understanding, I spent several hours on Saturday pickling with friends — chopping, seasoning, labeling and laughing at our novice attempt at the fermentation process. As I poured my brine and added my spices I became curious about every step, eagerly anticipating the fruits of my labor several weeks from now.

It isn’t just the physical fruits I’m interested in. I’ve started to wonder what might be fermenting in me over the next three weeks. There is something powerfully resonating between what happens to that cucumber and what we perceive is happening inside our brains and hearts when we are inspired, learn and grow. I’m anticipating my own transformation as I contemplate the lessons from what’s now bubbling on my counter in glass jars.

So, here are a couple of things I’m learning so far. First, what’s on your skin and in your surroundings is what shapes you. I was surprised to discover that we didn’t need to add bacteria into our solution. Instead, the fermenting agent comes from whatever the cucumber happens to have on its skin. In fact we were warned not to use soap or wash the vegetable too vigorously or we would wash the good stuff off.

At the same time, we have to be careful to protect from bad bacteria getting in over time that could ruin the whole batch and make us sick. This made me wonder — if I were soaking in brine, waiting to be transformed what I would be bringing with me? What are the things I am regularly coming in contact with? If I were to get alone for a transformative fermentation process would it be Christ acting in me or something else?

Second, there is nothing to do in the transformation but submit to the bubbling fermentation around you. In this process, the cucumber does nothing. If anything, it starts to decompose a little bit (to die to itself) allowing the fermenting agent to act on it entirely. The kind of transformation Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount is one of fermentation — of soaking deeply in a salty brine of his Word and love, giving up all attempts at control or being a better cucumber. It is allowing him to make us something different entirely. It’s about leaving cucumberness behind and becoming pickles.

I’m curious to see what this process yields. I know at least this much has happened: I think I’ve finally forgiven the cucumber and I might just try a pickle.

Originally published in The Religious Herald, July 15, 2013