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from the yellow house wavered on their feet, staggered, sat down
abruptly or fell forward on their knees and hands and were covered
with snow, as if they had indeed had their sins washed white as
wool, and in this regained innocent attire were gamboling like little
lambs. It was, to each of them, blissful to have become as a small
child; it was also a joke to watch old Brothers and Sisters, who had
been taking themselves so seriously, in this kind of celestial second
childhood. They stumbled and got up, walked on or stood still,
bodily as well as spiritually hand in hand, at moments performing
the great chain of a beatified lanciers.21
Food in this story is not only an aesthetic experience. Yes, Babette is
an artistic genius who expresses her art for the sake of bringing forth the
truth of beauty. Yes, art and beauty express their own truth in one way
or another, regardless of resistance and opposition. But Babette s expres-
sion is not only aesthetic; it is also ethical, a true act of caritas. At the
end of the story we learn that Babette is the famous cook from the Café
Anglais that the general described in his speech. We also learn that in
Paris she risked her life fighting for justice and against the cruelties of
evil men who  in Babette s words   left the people of Paris [to] starve;
20
Dinesen, Babette s Feast, 54.
21
Ibid., 54 5.
SHARING IN THE BODY OF CHRIST 121
they oppressed and wronged the poor. 22 Furthermore, and more rele-
vant to the story, we also learn that she spent the whole ten thousand
francs that she won in the lottery on preparing her lavish dinner.  So you
will be poor now all your life, Babette?  Martine, one of the sisters,
expresses her concern. But Babette quickly points out that a great artist
is never poor. She has given all her riches for the benefit of others and her
caritas has transformed the community. Her art and her caritas do not
impoverish her, but, on the contrary, her gesture only reveals the reality
of superabundance, which is the gift that knows no end. Like Babette,
the one who gives self to others will never experience poverty but rather
a rich recompense and self-assurance that the gift is never impoverish-
ment but superabundance, and that the gift of caritas is the transformative
plenitude that in one way or another always returns. One of the sisters
affirms to Babette that, despite her current lack of material possessions,
her rich art and her sharing will see no end:   I feel, Babette, that this is
not the end. In Paradise you will be the great artist that God meant you
to be! Ah! she added, the tears streaming down her cheeks.  Ah, how
you will enchant the angels!  23
In the introduction to this chapter I remarked  following Cavanaugh 
that politics is an art, a practice of the imagination. Babette s feast also
imagines a sort of polis, a community that encounters fulfillment in its
most bodily practice: eating and drinking, which, paradoxically, is much
more than eating and drinking. Time and eternity, beauty and goodness,
aesthetics and ethics are interrelated and mutually constitutive in
Babette s feast. The political imagination in this story is founded upon a
narrative of the gift that shapes the individual and the community:
Babette firsts receives the gift of hospitality, and she who is gifted with
an artistic culinary skill offers her gift to others. Babette s culinary art
is her own self-giving, her own self-expression, and in this novel that
creativity reaches its climax in a lavish banquet that transforms peo-
ple s hearts and lives. Her culinary gift is both erotic and agapeic, or
 gastroerotic  to use a term I introduced in chapter 2, where I empha-
sized how the erotic and agapeic are re-created, together, in and through
food. While being an epiphany of beauty, Babette s gift is simultaneously
an expression of goodness and trust, for she does not mind sharing her
riches with others. And this kenotic act does not leave her empty. There
is a self-rejoicing in her nurturing gift. In this story, the sharing of Babette
is ecstatic, illuminating, transformative, and healing. It is a story of being
22
Ibid., 58.
23
Ibid., 59.
122 SHARING IN THE BODY OF CHRIST
both individually and communally crafted by the gift that never ends
(for, we are told, even in heaven the angels will be delighted by this
gastroerotic gift).
2 Manna from Heaven: Sources of Divine Sharing
I believe that Dinesen s story provides much food for thought, for imag-
ining God as a sort of Babette, an artistic chef generously sharing divine
superabundance with, and transforming creation by, such sharing. In the
previous chapter, I offered some taste of God s culinary art that provides
food both at the beginning of creation, and more lavishly, in the figure
of Sophia  God s Wisdom  who, like Babette, is not only the cook and
host of a banquet, but even more perplexingly than Babette s story,
becomes the food itself. Like Babette s feast, the story of God s sharing
of food is not only about aesthetics (an art, a beautiful and skillful craft-
ing); it also implies an ethical dimension. God s sharing of food, and
self-sharing as food, is the source of divine goodness that heals spiritual
and physical hungers, but in addition urges us to share with and care for
one another.
There are many instances in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
where we could find a pattern of God establishing community with
people via food and drink, and of God s invitation to feasting. Salvador
Martínez explores this trajectory within the Hebrew and Christian
Scriptures, wherein a pattern of God s desire for intimacy with people is
mainly expressed with and via food and drink.24 God wants to
communicate love and a desire to be near. Apart from direct communi-
cation (as in the Garden of Eden) through angels, prophets, and priestly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]