9
Generosity

Babette’s Feast (Denmark, 1987)

Directed and written by Gabriel Axel, from the story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)

In 1871, an outsider on the verge of collapse is taken in by the unemotive inhabitants of a remote Danish island. Over time, she brings gifts of grace, especially in the form of a meal that might forever change the lives of everyone on the island.

Gareth

One Christmas Day, it was cold and rainy, and my heart was broken. A loving relationship had fallen apart the previous week, and I had stumbled through one sluggish day after another. Friends had offered direct support on each of those days, but I was in the kind of depressed fog that notices help only retrospectively. But even my self-pity couldn’t deny what my friend Kyle did for me that night.

By the time I made it to Kyle’s around 8:30 p.m., I hadn’t eaten all day. We were meeting up to travel together to see our friends Caroline and Charmaine, brilliant sisters who hosted an annual gathering for people who by 9 p.m. on Christmas Day may want to be somewhere other than under their parents’ roof. I loved that convening of waifs and strays—thirty and sometimes forty of us squeezed into a shoebox living room made for about eight, smoked salmon and wine on the table at 9:30 p.m.—the moment on Christmas Day when even those most satiated on the feast earlier that day discover a hitherto untapped second stomach. Kyle intuited that despite the fact of this much-anticipated smorgasbord only an hour away, I was hungry right now, and sad, and he could do something about it.

Retrieving Chinese takeout food from the fridge, he reheated some fried rice and lemon chicken. It overflowed a small plate, which is a lovely analogy for how boundaries can call forth happiness. There is an old joke about a grouch judging a restaurant’s bad food as even worse due to the small portions; in reverse, the joke becomes a recipe for satisfaction: if you don’t have much to give a friend, but it fills their plate, it might be even more than they need.

That night I ate like a prince, sitting on a torn old leather armchair by the fire. I was experiencing waves of love from Kyle, who may have had his own reasons to feel sad that Christmas but was giving his heart to help heal mine.

Which brings me to Babette’s Feast, a film about a religious sect that has lost the meaning of the words it has turned into idols. The members of the sect live on a cold, isolated island, where the weather never seems to stray beyond different shades of cold, damp, and gray. Their regular meetings are facilitated by two women, daughters of the now deceased pastor, who was “greatly respected and perhaps a little feared.” His followers meet to honor their founder, even though he has long since gone. Members of the sect greet each other with words like “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and delight shall kiss each other,” without ever experiencing their meaning. A soldier visits the island and tells the daughters of how “piety was fashionable at court”; legalism happens in royal palaces too. But into their midst comes an outsider—Babette (played with fierce grace by Stéphane Audran), who has fled from France with nothing but her memories and culinary skill. Having lost everything, she is broken and alone. The daughters take her in, revealing that this community has warm principles, despite its cold demeanor.

Babette stays with them for over a decade, helping around the house, providing the Dickensian gruel that they seem content to eat; then, one day, a letter arrives. She has won the lottery, and the daughters are heartbroken because they assume this means she will leave them to return to her true home. Instead, she asks to cook a meal for the sisters and the sect. As the preparations for the meal develop, the sect members suspect the worst: the food seems dangerously worldly.

The sect members fear that “the world, the flesh, and the devil” have intruded on their lives. When the meal finally happens, they have agreed to stiffen resolve: to sit upright, not to have eye contact with the food, and, at all costs, not to enjoy a single bite. But, as they say, what happens next will amaze you. . . .

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Babette’s Feast is a parable of grace, of course, and even the hardest heart might melt when all is said and done. More than just the story of one woman’s love for people who have been ungrateful, it is really about what Martin Luther meant when he said that to be a Christian is to love God and “sin boldly.”1 The sect members are so trapped in the past that when freedom is offered to them—literally—on a plate, one of their number initially responds by saying, “I’m fearful of my joy.” Their terror of the unknown and guilt for the past have left them doomed to only repeat words that have been dead for generations. Even the soldier is filled with regret; he abandoned a woman he loved to advance in the army, where he rose through the ranks and had an “honorable” career. But now, reminded of his former love, he asks, “Could many years of victory be seen as a defeat?” Babette introduces the one ingredient—sacrificial love—that helps them raise their sight line above themselves. In the near-hallucinogenic haze of the food and wine, they discover hidden depths of grace within themselves. And in the moonlight after the meal, they dance, rediscovering not only their wonder but their very humanity. And the reality of a relationship with Love breathes in them again.

Babette’s Feast might cause you to reflect on your own need for a renewing desert experience or, conversely, the need to come out of the desert for a good feed. Bombarded by information, images, and noise that distort our sense of time and place, we may lose our sense of taste, and perhaps that’s the same thing as losing our way. We look for certainties to hold amid the not knowing where to turn and seeing too many terrifying things on our phones and TVs. Wedded to religious or political ideologies that speak words (grace or freedom, for instance) without tasting them, never mind knowing how to live them, we can become convinced that our beliefs, our stories, are healing us because other people seem to feel the same way. The emperor’s new clothes can be ideas too.

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I asked a radical clergyman once what he thought the solution was to the challenges of the northern Ireland of my youth, where legalistic stiffness has coexisted with mutual enmity and even violence, although grace has continually broken through. The clergyman said, “The solution is the hard gospel. The hard gospel is not that you don’t say the F-word or that you don’t sleep with your girlfriend before you’re married. The hard gospel is that you love God and love your neighbor as yourself. End of story.” I know that this may rankle some. But he’s right. This is Babette’s modus operandi too. Her gift to the dormant community is to awaken them to say, “Little children, love one another.” That’s the hard gospel, and whether or not we call it that, it may be all we need.

Babette’s Feast is a film about priorities: about where you should put yourself, what you should do with your beliefs and with your life, and what you should do with it once you get there. There may be no more loving act than giving a glass of cold water to a thirsty stranger; and of course if the glass is full of amontillado bought with a lottery ticket you could have used to purchase a different way of life, all the more so. Having said that, Babette knows that the Parisian scene isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; she grants access to that truth for the poor folks she has come to live with and reminds the old soldier of what really mattered about his past—not fashionable piety but being seen by another and truly seeing them.

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You can experience an entire lifetime in a single day, eternity in a moment.

Such experiences can be crushing, later on, if we don’t know how to integrate the peaks of life with the mundane, the spectacular with what Kathleen has called the quotidian mysteries. Many people seem to be lost in permanent grief for the story of a prior utopian state that was never meant to last. Many, too, don’t know how to experience miracles when they are actually happening.

Babette is teaching the community, and perhaps also herself, that everyday life is truly magical. The shaking of hands, the stirring of soup, the expression of gratitude, the singing of a simple song, the sipping of a single small glass of red wine at the end of a sweaty kitchen shift—all these are as good as welcoming a stranger, falling in love, or winning the lottery.

Babette’s vision of life makes me think of the astonishing mantra of awe-liberation-pleasure activist adrienne maree brown, for me an elaboration on “Love God and do what you want.” I like to think it is also a sketch of what the islanders in Babette’s Feast might do the morning after the feast: “Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy and liberation.”2 Privilege and struggle are inevitable ingredients of life. If we don’t learn what to do with them, privilege will corrode us and struggle exhaust us. People like Babette are gifted at helping others discern how to serve from their gifts and ask for what they need. Sometimes people like Babette show this without words. Some spiritual wisdom figures know that they will always receive even in the act of self-giving love. Cultivating an inner Babette would mean sharing our portion of light to heal the people around us, but it wouldn’t mean rejecting the healing they can offer us. At the end of Babette’s Feast, we have reason to hope that Babette has not only found a permanent place of shelter but has actually given the community a recipe for becoming one she not only needs but wants.

Kathleen

I have a somewhat different take than Gareth on the meaning of Babette’s Feast. I believe it is a parable about what happens to people of faith—in any religion—when they become extremely isolated, both physically and spiritually, and are led by an individual whose rules and regulations become draconian over time. In this film, that person is a pastor serving a dwindling group of Pietistic Lutherans on the remote west coast of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula. As his group aged, he selfishly prevented his two lovely daughters from marrying so that they could help him keep the congregation going. And, grateful for the many works of charity these women provided the townspeople before and after their father’s death—feeding the poorest among them and giving them their hand-knit socks and caps—the congregation had accepted the pastor’s cruel oppression of his daughters, as they accepted much that he had taught them.

Pietism, a movement within the Lutheran Church that emerged in the late seventeenth century, emphasized personal devotion and trying to live a good Christian life. Its hymns contained words such as those the Jutland people sing: “Only when we have achieved sinless perfection can we be happy.” In its worst form pietism devolved into xenophobia, leading people to fear and reject the outside world and the people in it. That is what one might expect from this film’s villagers when strangers appear. But it’s not what we get.

Given the mutual distrust between Roman Catholics and Protestants in the nineteenth century, the capacity of these Pietists to open their hearts and offer hospitality to two French Catholics—Achille, a well-known singer from the Paris Opera, and Babette, who will eventually be revealed as a renowned Parisian chef—is astonishing. It is as if, despite their world-renouncing theology, these folks have taken the deepest message of the Christian gospel to heart: to love God means to love one’s neighbor as oneself. To my mind these people reveal themselves to be Christian humanists of the first order.

Professional singing was not a reputable career in the nineteenth century, and social norms dictated that women would not work outside the home. It is remarkable to see the town grocer and his wife renting a room in their home to the singer. And on the stormy night when Babette appears, struggling to walk upright in a fierce wind, the pastor’s two daughters welcome this weary refugee who appears at their door. She speaks French, not their native tongue, and is so exhausted it seems that she can’t take another step. The sisters offer her coffee, warm, dry clothing, and a place to stay. The film asks us if we would do the same.

I believe that the incredibly generous gesture Babette makes in preparing the villagers an extravagant meal with her unexpected lottery win is not, as some have interpreted it, a great cook offering repressed, abstemious fools a sumptuous meal. Babette’s generosity is a response to the generous welcome she has received, not only from the two sisters but from all the villagers.

Having fled the bloodshed of the 1871 Paris Commune rebellion in which her husband and son had been killed, Babette has settled in a quiet place and come to herself again. She has not forgotten who she is and feels compelled to add fresh herbs to the awful-looking bread-and-ale soup the sisters prepare for elderly shut-ins. The recipients of the flavor-enhanced soup notice the difference and are not about to complain.

Gareth feels that the villagers have lost the meaning of the words of Scripture they recite, but their actions say otherwise. And I disagree with him about the sound of their singing. It is clear from their faces that singing with enthusiasm brings these people joy. They, along with their pastor, may have forgotten that St. Paul listed joy as one of the fruits of the Spirit. But as the music of their hymns inhabits their bodies, their faces cannot help revealing the pleasure it’s giving them.

Any small religious community, especially one dominated by a single individual for a long time, faces a serious test when that person dies. Many communities don’t survive. It is not surprising that after the death of their founder, the people in this little group begin quarreling. Grudges nursed for years surface and people feel free to berate each other. While the congregation admires the sisters, it doesn’t give them the respect it gave their father. Distressed to hear harsh reprimands and old accusations being made around their table even when they try to lead the group in worship, the sisters become flustered. But Babette, who knows from bitter experience that hateful sentiments can lead to acts of violence, is having none of it. She expects better of these people and lets them know it. They listen and obey.

There is much delicious comedy in this film, none of it trivial. When Achille attends a Lutheran church service—surprising for a nineteenth-century Roman Catholic—he notices that one young woman has an exceptional voice and asks her father’s permission to offer singing lessons. I expected that this man—the congregation’s pastor—would refuse and was surprised when he did not. Singing was evidently important to him as a means of worshiping God. But when Achille and the girl rehearse the passionate seduction scene from Don Giovanni, it proves to be too much, not only for the father but for the naive young woman as well.

We laugh at the villagers’ growing consternation over the exotic ingredients for Babette’s feast as they are carried in a long procession from a small boat on the seashore to the sisters’ kitchen. Seeing the bottles of wine and champagne, large quantities of eggs, small birds in a cage, and even a live turtle, they ask themselves if they are being tempted by the devil. They will not insult Babette or the sisters by refusing to attend the meal, but they resolve to make no comment on the food. This results in hilarity, as the one person who recognizes each gourmet dish, a worldly soldier who has brought his mother to the dinner, expecting drab fare, cannot help remarking on the excellent quality of the food and wine. The villagers respond with comments about the weather.

But as the evening progresses, once again, as with their energetic singing, it is the people’s faces that give them away. Aglow with Babette’s fine food and wine, they also glow with bonhomie and begin to openly express their affection for one another. Old lovers reunite; old wounds are healed. As they leave their quarreling in the past, I sense that we are being asked to look at ourselves to discern what it takes for us to abandon our own grudges and anger. Sharing a meal can help, but we need the spirit of hospitality, generosity, and self-sacrifice exemplified by Babette and the sisters.

Maybe it’s because I have been a Benedictine oblate for many years, but Babette’s Feast keeps returning me to the theme of hospitality. The Rule of St. Benedict asks monks to receive all guests as if they were Christ. In the film we see how hospitality breeds more hospitality until Wisdom herself sits with these folks as they share a feast, and the Holy Spirit breathes life into their weary souls.

The film exemplifies another core monastic value, one that predates the Benedictines. From its earliest days, 1,700 years ago in the deserts of the Middle East, monks have stood firm against the temptation to judge others. This can be a temptation for contemporary people watching Babette’s Feast. But if we raise theological objections to the pietism of this small band of Christians and sneer at their attempts to repress their pleasure as they eat Babette’s meal, we are missing the point of the film. And similarly, we are being self-indulgent if we apply today’s standards to Babette’s menu and condemn her killing of a turtle to make soup.

I hope that the film inspires us to see its characters as flawed human beings, much like ourselves. I’m interested that the words of Psalm 85, an apparent favorite of the pastor and recited by his congregation even after his death, surface several times in the film: “Mercy and faithfulness have met; justice and peace have embraced” (v. 11).3

These words represent a vision of a future that only love and hospitality can bring about. But in the psalm, they come after a bitter lament, the people suffering from such trauma that they ask God, “Will you be angry with us forever, will your anger never cease?” (v. 6). The psalm continues with a prayer to be restored, and suddenly a voice of hope emerges, asserting that God speaks of peace and insisting that “his help is near to those who fear him” (v. 10).4 This is fear in the sense of holy awe rather than dread. It is the awe that overcomes the much-decorated soldier who in his youth had been vain, ambitious, and self-serving. Now he ponders the lack of love in his life and asks, “Could many years of victory be seen as a defeat?” It is the awe we all experience as we take stock of the choices we’ve made in our lives and where they have led us. We may harbor regrets over what might have been, but if we’ve ever witnessed a coming together of kindness and justice, or have found a simple joy in doing what is right, we might join Babette in raising a glass of Veuve Clicquot and making a toast to all the treasures life has offered us, often despite ourselves.

Questions and Conversations

  1. Does anyone in your life remind you of Babette?
  2. Have you, like the island community, experienced religion without spirit?
  3. Have you had an experience of dead or dormant religion or beliefs being transformed into something life-giving?
  4. Where do you need someone like Babette to help heal you, as an individual and in community?
  5. Inspired by Babette, what is an extravagant gift you could share with others?
  6. Have you ever received hospitality in the form of an unexpected grace that changed your life?
  7. Are there treasures that have come to you despite yourself?
  8. Looking at the quote from Psalm 85:11, would you say that mercy and truth come together for the villagers and Babette?
  9. Do “what if” questions trouble you? Do you wonder about what your life would be if you had made different choices? If so, how do you answer those questions and live with them?