Prune marmalade: a simple miracle when miracles matter

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding… And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy”

Khalil Gibran

This is a period of time when I need miracles.

Any miracle will do, as long as it breaks the viscious circle of regularity.

Happily, I diid not have to wait for long.

The prune tree in the back yard produced effortlessly the miracle I was asking for.

The tree is laden with fruit.

Some of the fruit was collected, washed and pitted.

The pitted fruit was then reduced to a pulp.

The pulp then passed through a sieve and placed into a big 8 liter pot.

Once reduced to 6 liters, I added 2 kilos of sugar and let it boil slowly until it was reduced to 2 liters.

While still warm, the heavy liquid was put in jars, the jars were secured with their top and then turned upside down.

The marmalade was ready.

The miracle was complete, right in front of my eyes.

Every miracle needs to penetrate all the senses.

I therefore had to taste the marmalade.

This was no hard job.

Accompanied by a large coffee freddo, the miracle became internalized.

And blessed me for a few precious moments. This is why I will repeat the ceremony.

Miracles should not be a matter of rarity or exception. And a good friend (to whom I am connected through our love of Luigi Pirandello) has reminded me:

“Things, I believe, have value to us only in proportion as they have power for evoking and grouping familiar images about them. Certainly an object may sometimes be pleasing to us in itself, through its artistic lines, let us say; but more often our delight in it comes from wholly extraneous considerations. Our fancy beautifies it with a halo, as it were, of fond remembrances, whereby we see it, not at all as it really is, but as something alive, as something animated by the images we habitually associate with it. What we love is that portion of ourselves which we recognize in it, which establishes a harmony between it and us, giving it a soul that is known only to us because that soul is the creation of our own memories.” Luigi Pirandello, The late Mattia Pascal