Babette’s Feast

A student, Leta Sundet, gave a presentation today about gratitude in Isak Dinesen’s story, Babette’s Feast . One of the things that hit home was the fact that the disaffected members of the little religious community are reconciled when by a bodily act – by beginning to use their taste buds and by the physical act of eating together.

I was also moved, all over again, by General Lowenheilm’s wonderful (if not entirely correct) toast: “Man, my friends . . . is frail and foolish. We have all of us 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 our opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall 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. See! That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Ay, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another.”