Blessed is this Cheesemaker, Sister Noelle

 

There is a book called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church by Alan Kreider which helped me rethink how the early Christian communities flourished and spread in a Roman Empire which was far from hospitable. In his mixed review Bryan Liftin  summed up the premise of the book well, even if he didn't always agree with Kreider:

Christianity wasn’t a bubbling stew heated from outside, but a living, breathing mash—a yeasty conglomerate leavened with the Holy Spirit and alive with possibilities. “Patient ferment” is therefore an appropriate metaphor. With the right ingredients and sufficient time, chemistry kicks in and makes good things happen.

I appreciated Kreider's perspective in part because I'm partial to a variety of fermented edibles and potables. Fermentation is a remarkable process which is vital to bread and chocolate and coffee and cheese and beer and wine -- some of the best of foods and drink! I could add kimchi as another example but I'm not a big fan. 

I got thinking about all this because of an interview with the Benedictine sister, Noelle Marcellino who is a cheesemaker. She was featured in Michael Pollan's excellent Netflix series Cooked, in the episode which explored fermentation. The segment about Sister Noelle, who has a PhD in microbiology, was one of my favourite segments.

The interview in Plough magazine has the title Lessons from the Cheese Nun: As you read creation – in my case, it happened to be cheesemaking – you can make analogies to spirituality. 

Here is one of the interview questions and Sister Noelle's response:

Would you say that cheesemaking has helped you understand what a good human life is and grow in the virtues? 

Yes. As a part of my Fulbright scholarship, I not only studied science, but I also delved into the history and lore of the caves and the culture around them. It was quite moving to see how, for these traditional cheesemakers, especially those who lived through World War II, cheese was so connected to charity and love of neighbor. They had a sense of gratitude because they had been given this fruit of the earth. In fact, many of the dairy cooperatives are called just that in French – fruitières, from the Latin fructus, a Roman term connoting the right to use (usus) and benefit (fructus) from an asset you do not own. The cheesemakers believe that if they have this cow, this milk, then you share that with others. Cheesemaking is part of the bounty that God has given you to share.

In a time when many of us are witnessing the decline of our Christian denominations and congregations, and are getting pungent whiffs of the decay of a sense of charity and love of neighbour in many others, we might consider how God will ferment something new, even astonishingly savoury. And to paraphrase from Monty Python, blessed is this cheesemaker, Sister Noelle.

Here is the interview link: 

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/sustainable-living/lessons-from-the-cheese-nun