“Mercy and truth, my friends, have met together,” said the General. “Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another. Man is frail and foolish. We have all been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness, we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason, we tremble. We tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong.”
“But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realise that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty.”
These words are from Babette’s Feast, a short story by Danish writer Isak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen, whose birth anniversary is on April 17. She is best known for her memoir, Out of Africa, on which the film of the same name was based. There is a Karen Blixen Museum in Nairobi, Kenya.
Babette’s Feast, made in Denmark by director Gabriel Axel who also wrote the screenplay, won the Oscar in 1987 for Best Foreign Film. I found myself going back to both story and film for spiritual sustenance, driven by sadness about the ongoing food wars and inter-faith acrimony, gladness at the coincidence of several religious festivals, and desire to retell this beautiful story to a new generation of readers.
So, if you, like me, missed this classic of world cinema when it debuted, perhaps because it never came your way or you were the wrong age or not even born yet, I’d suggest you read Blixen’s short story on the net and then watch the film on YouTube.
In sum, the story is about ‘conflicting values, symbolised by food’, as The New York Times put it back then. The action centres on the preparation and serving of a grand French dinner by a famous Parisian chef, Babette Hersant, a refugee in Denmark. Her art challenges ‘the dietary staple of a rural Danish community of ascetics. The enjoyment of superb food, or of other sensual pleasures, is anathema to the two spinsters who lead the pious sect. Suddenly confronted with the arrival of Babette, who has fled France in the Communard uprisings of 1871, they reluctantly allow her to do the cooking’. One day, Babette wins 10,000 francs in a lottery, giving her the resources to show her artistry.
If ever a story taught that “the one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them” (Bible, Romans 14:3), it is Babette’s Feast. It transcends to a metaphor for God’s generosity as the General, the only gourmet at the table, recognises.
This recognition of food as part of God’s grace is found in all religions. Since we’re sharing Babette’s Feast, let’s look again at the Bible. Jesus drew from a compassionate vision of God, from divine commands as in Deuteronomy 24: 17 – 19: “Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this. When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”
Bible scholars say that the chief crops in the old Judeo-Christian land were wheat, barley, olives, grapes, lentils, fava beans, chickpeas, onions, leeks, garlic, grapes, dates, apples, melons, pomegranates and figs. The people there also raised cattle, sheep and goats, and fished in the Mediterranean Sea and the Sea of Galilee. They made wine from grapes and ate unleavened bread. Olive oil, vinegar and a mint-like herb called hyssop were used as flavourings and bean-stews like cholent were made for Sabbath. We know Jesus ate fish because in Luke 24:41 – 43, he asks, “Have you any food here?” “And they gave him a piece of broiled fish. And he took it, and did eat before them.”
Jesus is said to have passed bread and wine around the table to his twelve disciples at their last supper together, saying the bread was his body and the wine his blood. This is the origin of Communion, the Christian ritual where the priest administers a wafer and a sip of wine to each believer in symbolic union with Christ.
Jesus called himself “the true vine” in John 15:1 – 6 and said in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Such belief leads to grace even if we pray differently or are different, as witnessed in this story. A blind old man was tottering uphill to the temple at Tirupati. Some passersby could not resist asking him the obvious question. “We are climbing for Balaji’s darshan. Why are you bothering to make the effort when you can’t see?” they joked, not out of malice but with the unthinking condescension that is often handed out to those who don’t get to tick all the boxes. The old man knew how to answer them. A radiant smile swept across his wrinkled face and he said, “So what if I can’t see the Lord? He can see me.”
With both fasting and feasting thick this month, does it not seem like a message from on high to show grace to each other? Because the Lord sees us?
(Views are personal)
(shebaba09@gmail.com)
Renuka Narayanan