To Bear (& Bare) the Beams of Love

Duty, and Nothing More
The year is 1885. The place is Frederikshavn, a small village on a fjord on the northeast coast of the Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark. The environment is austere: treeless land; chilly mist; rocky shore; harsh winds; cold, forbidding sea; heavy, gray clouds that hang low; and pale, icy green cliffs. The place and the weather are perfectly reflected in the character of the people who live in the village: puritanical, bitter, tormented by remorse, and filled with enmity for anyone outside their circle. It is reflected in their food: pasty, glutinous ale-bread and heavily salted, dried cod fish boiled enough to make it edible, though not palatable, and served in wooden bowls. It is reflected in their religion: a grim, pious Lutheranism. Wendy Wright observes, “The disciples’ moral uprightness has become small-minded pettiness, their close community insular, their luminous vision shriveled down to pious routine, even their ongoing works of charity feed the body but not the soul. Something must enter to release them for the realization of the fullness of life to which their doctrines point but which they merely await.” The founding minister of the church, referred to as the Dean, died years ago. The leadership of the congregation was bequeathed by him to his two daughters, now in their late fifties. Martine, was named after Martin Luther, and Phillipa, after Luther’s friend, Philip Melanchton.

Love Lost
Each woman spurned the love of a suitor when young due to the strong influence of their father who taught that earthly love and marriage were trivial, mere illusions. Yet those long ago decisions are a source of continuing and troubling doubt as they imagine other lives they could have lived. They have lived in the shadow of their father’s austere and joyless faith, renouncing worldly pleasures, tending his flock of parishioners, and using what little money they have to fill the soup-pails and food baskets of the poor. Despite these good works, the number of congregants is dwindling and they are becoming increasingly quarrelsome. The sisters worry that, “their ever-faithful father will look down on his daughters and call them by name as unjust stewards.” They decide, perhaps more out of guilt than love, to celebrate the 100th birthday of their long-deceased father with a simple dinner for his remaining disciples.

Paradise Lost
The year is 1870. The place is Paris. Another woman is living a life filled with considerable joy. Unlike Martine and Phillipa, she has said yes to life, yes with a passion. She loves her husband and son and finds immense satisfaction in her work as head chef at the famous Café Anglais. She is considered “the greatest culinary genius of the age.” It was said that she “had the ability to transform a dinner into a kind of love affair... a love affair that made no distinction between bodily appetite and spiritual appetite.” But in 1870-1871, France went to war against Prussia and its army suffered a devastating defeat. The humiliating terms of the peace treaty resulted in civil unrest and the formation of the Paris Commune, an alternative government intent on resisting the national French government and the Prussian Army. In the end, this civil revolt was horribly crushed and both the woman’s husband and son were killed in the rioting, an uprising in which she took part. She escaped, taking nothing because, in a real sense, there was nothing of value left to take. This is when Babette Hersant came to the home of Martine and Phillipa, offering to work as their maid and cook for nothing.

Prelude to a Feast
These are the two story lines that converge in the 1987 film, Babette’s Feast, directed by Gabriel Axel, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The film is based on a short story by Karen Blixen, who is better known by her pseudonym, Isak Dinesen. (Dinesen's story actually takes place in Berlevaag, Norway, but Axel changed the location to Jutland, Denmark, because it was a more austere setting.) For fourteen years, Babette lives isolated and obscure in that home, fitting in by almost disappearing, such is the magnitude of her loss and grief. Then, in 1885, as the plans for a dinner to observe the 100th anniversary of the birth of the revered minister are being made, Babette wins 10,000 francs in the French national lottery and offers to pay for and prepare a “real French dinner.” The sisters reluctantly agree.

Babette leaves for a few days and returns to Paris where she purchases everything required for the dinner and arranges for it to be shipped to the village. In addition to the food and wine, she lovingly selects the dishes, glassware, silverware, and tablecloth necessary to create the artistic setting that she envisions.

The Devil is in the Details
As the purchases begin to arrive, the anxiety of the sisters regarding their decision increases and they share it with the members of the small congregation. The ingredients are bountiful and extravagant, even exotic. As Babette begins her preparation, the villagers are overwhelmed by things that they have never seen before, and can scarcely imagine. (This is not your great-grandmother’s salted cod and ale-bread.) The sisters fear that partaking of the meal will be a profound sin of sensual luxury, but they can hardly back out now. They believe that the devil is at work and suspect that Babette may be a witch. The sisters call a hasty meeting of the congregation. They reluctantly decide that they will eat the meal, but they promise to take no pleasure in the experience, and will make no mention of the food during the entire dinner.

As is the Divine
The artistry in the preparation and the presentation of the meal is divine. The congregants strive to resist the majesty of the meal and the love that infuses it, fearful that somehow they will lose their spiritual purity, but their refusal hardly matters. What matters is that love is being served, more love than can be consumed or understood. They are profoundly impacted despite their resistance by a depth and breadth of love that they can scarcely fathom. What begins as a celebration of the minister’s 100th birthday becomes a celebration of love and beauty, a spiritual reality far deeper and more profound than the minister ever preached. The meal is a work of art, but, in the end, it is a work of love and the impact on the diners is profound. These quarrelsome congregants are transformed, though they hardly understand what has happened. They leave the sister’s home walking hand-in-hand, stumbling through the deep snow forgiving and blessing each other.

In many reviews of Babette’s Feast, there is a focus on the Christian symbolism of the film. The dinner, as an example, is compared to the last supper. I want to suggest, however, that this feast is the first supper. The theology of the sister’s father was perverse and all who came under its influence were not saved, in the sense of achieving wholeness. They were deceived by practices that were life denying, and it showed in their joyless lives. This meal was, in fact, their first experience of the holy, of the profound gift of love, a glimpse of what spiritual purity might actually feel like and look like.

Not for Love Alone
In the aftermath of the meal, the sisters are concerned that Babette has driven herself back into poverty because all the money she won in the lottery is gone. Babette responds, “I shall never be poor. I am a great artist. A great artist is never poor.” The gift of the feast was not created for love alone. She says, “Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me the chance to do my very best.”

My question is this: “What if you chose love as your art?” What canvas would you use? What poem or aria would convey the depth and breadth and power of your love? What acts of kindness? What empathy? What sympathy? What compassion?

And the Greatest of These
Paul of Tarsus, the architect of Christianity, gave us some timeless clues about the nature of love in a letter that he wrote to the church in Corinth. He said: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” He concluded by saying, “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

Lip Service, but No Kisses
Have you experienced that kind of love? Have you bestowed that kind of love on another? I hope your answer is yes, but I expect for many people the answer is either “not enough” or “no.” Our culture pays lip service to the kind of love Paul described. It is not a quid pro quo kind of love. It is unconditional. More to the point, this kind of love is a not a response to the actions of another, it is a quality of being and doing that emanates from us because we are committed to creating beloved community whenever, wherever, and however we can.

The French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard De Chardin wrote in his book, The Phenomenon of Man, “Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we will harness …the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, [we]...will have discovered fire.” This is the central task of the beloved community.

Bearing the Beams of Love
The mystical poet William Blake concluded, “...we are put on earth a little space/ That we might learn to bear the beams of love.” Because Blake was a poet of considerable ability, we find ourselves sifting through his metaphors for meaning, which is the task of religion. By beams, Blake is likely asking us to visualize the beams of love as light. Light so powerful that we must learn how to bear it without being blinded. Light that illuminates our existence and shines into the darkest recesses of our being.

But what if we were to visualize beams of love that are more substantial, like the wooden beams out of which a home is constructed? Those beams are heavy and difficult to carry, but we could use them to build a love that was abundant, one that provided shelter for others, a sanctuary. As a line in one our hymns reminds us: “By faith made strong the rafters will/ withstand the battering of the storm (from May Nothing Evil Cross This Door).” The words of the covenant that we say as part of the worship service week-in and week-out begin, “Love is the spirit of this church.” They suggest that we should be using the beams of love to build something here that is truly remarkable, if only we can bear them.

Baring the Beams of Love
Gerald May does his own riff on Blake’s use of the word bear. He suggests that we are to “bear” love in three distinct metaphorical senses:
(i) We are to grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and love’s pain.
(ii) We are to carry love and spread it around – “as children carry and spread measles and laughter,” he adds, because both are infectious.
(iii) We are to bring love to birth.

All of these are compelling, but I want to consider the meaning that Ric Masten intended in his song, Let It Be A Dance. In the third verse it reads, “Let the sun shine, let it rain, share the laughter, bear the pain….” Masten did not write bear –B-E-A-R. In his original song it read bare—B-A-R-E, the invitation to share your pain. (This unauthorized word change may explain why neither Masten nor his family have never permitted the song to be sung at the UUA’s General Assembly.) What if we were to bare the beams of love for all to see, to reveal how love operates within us and among us? To do so, we must be willing to go deeper in the ways we share with one another.

I don’t know about you, but I am not content with my love; its depth, its breadth, or its power. If love is the spirit of this church, then we must ask, “What does love require?” This question has been a constant companion for me for a while. I want my love to grow, to become a great beam that can be used alongside the love of others to build the beloved community. My contemplation is beginning to question how I respond. As I go through my days and attend to both my experience and corresponding emotions, I notice judgment and ask, “Why not love?” I notice anger or fear and ask, “Why not love?” I notice apathy and indifference and ask, “Why not love?” I notice competition or pride and ask, “Why not love?” Each time I ask the question, love seems the best answer. And slowly, because of an emerging spiritual practice, love is becoming the answer, as well as my response.

What Does Love Require?
I have begun to consider what tools I need to work with this great beam of love that I seek to become. Those tools include empathy, compassion, respect, hospitality, and listening, to name just a few. I also know that a mature and deep love requires resilience, the presumption of good will, forgiveness (at least 70 times 7), and courage. This kind of loving requires daily practice with the sure realization that I will fail. One of our hymns is by the 13th century Sufi mystic Jelalludin Rumi. As with Ric Masten’s song, someone changed the words, so we sing: “Come, come, whoever you are /Wanderer, Worshiper, Lover of Leaving, /Ours is no caravan of despair … /Come, yet again, Come.” What we don’t sing is an essential line that was omitted—“Though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, Come.” If we are unwilling to fail, then whatever success we do achieve will be largely meaningless. So I am willing to fail at love (to break my vows a thousand times) and to begin again and again—in love.

The kind of love that I have in mind requires the willingness to have my heart broken again and again, not out of some masochistic tendency, but in radical solidarity with the world. The kind of love that I have in mind…. Well, I hope you get the picture. So let me end asking, “What kind of love do you have in mind (and in heart)?”