In my list of obscure gratitude notes, I have placed editors, patient mothers, and a few others on a pedestal for their tireless efforts and their unseen virtues in the public square. But not to the same degree, and certainly not as an equal in the gratitude scale, it is past time we pause our national impulses and express our undeserved thanks to “cheese.”
But you might say, “Why spend any precious time on the virtues of cheese? Turophiles (cheese lovers) like myself have tried to diminish the appreciation one ought to have for that buttery and salty substance, except that it keeps showing up in a variety of places. For instance, when Jesse wanted his young sons and captains replenished for the fight against the Philistines, he asks his young son, David, to take to them and the captain a variety packs of cheeses (I Sam. 17:18). I’d like to think that behind David’s courage was his incessant favor upon Israelite cheeses. If you push it, it may have been his morning toast with emek cheese that built his reservoir of righteous anger against God’s enemies. Goliath had no chance the morning David consumed his slices of cheese.
And then when reading Chesterton’s “Alarms and Discursions,” he utters the most insane thing: “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” How dare poets remain silent on such a sublime subject! There is so much to opine and poetize about. Halloumi cheese, roquefort, burrata, and any other variation with jalapenos are worthy of Shakespearean agony over them.
My entire point is that we take too many things for granted. In fact, the point of a recent homily I delivered detailed the futility of grumbling. We grumble, in my estimation, because we don’t look at the world with eyes of thanksgiving. We simply plaster our cheeses on our burgers and assume that’s what we do on Superbowl night, and there goes that moment; lost forever because we failed to ponder what adorns our burgers and crackers and wine and fellowship; the overlooked pantheon of flavors.
I beseech you with all the allowed dairy-ness of the day to stop and give thanks. Don’t let cheeses go to waste. Like David, make haste and deliver them at the next church party to strengthen the soul of man to fight giants and dispel boredom. Cheese makes life good, satisfying, and fattening like the joy of the Lord. Give thanks for cheese.
There’s a place in Nicaragua that makes a cheese with live worms in it. I saw this on the Travel Channel on Andrew Zimmerman.
I’d be willing to try it.