The Stranger at the Door
Nolan's Odyssey and the monastery vigil
Two announcements: Notre Dame University Press is doing its summer sale. Everything (including my book) is 40 percent off with the code NDPSUM26. I’ve got Medieval Holy Women and the Desire for Death on my “to-read” shelf—thought I’m still working through this year’s slate.
Also, I’ll be speaking at the big conference Fairer Disputations is organizing in Rochester, NY this September. They’ve got an incredible lineup: Angela Franks, Gloria Purvis, Ivana Greco, Leah Jacobson… and this will be how I meet Stephanie Murray (of the Great Baby Swap) for the first time in person! If you want to attend, you need to apply on the website.
I have seen the two summer blockbusters! My husband correctly said that Spider-Man is completely, unambiguously Spider-Man in his film, and Odysseus… is not, but the movie is still a pleasure to watch and great to keep discussing. (Nolan’s Odysseus does not love lying).
I got to write about one element of Nolan’s choices in The Odyssey for the Dispatch, with a particularly Other Feminisms focus: How does Zeus’s Law (hospitality to strangers) protect even strong men?
Nolan’s film offers two reasons why people might commit to this kind of openhanded hospitality. First, there is a reason that points beyond the needs of men: Any beggar you entertain might be Zeus in disguise. Welcome him and receive his reward, or spurn him and suffer his wrath. Hospitality is not ultimately a way of receiving men—it’s a way to be prepared for the unannounced inbreaking of divinity. The stranger and the beggar are the beneficiaries of ambiguity—they receive what is owed to Zeus.
When the Greeks explain Zeus’ law to each other, their explicit reasoning always turns on the threat of the divine. But, as the story unfolds, their adventures suggest a second, unspoken reason to hold to Zeus’ law. The Greeks are a seafaring people, and Odysseus’ men, again and again, wash up on unknown shores. They want to live in a world that welcomes the stranger, because they expect to be that stranger. […]
However, Odysseus and his men keep hoping to rely on Zeus’ law even when they are at the peak of their strength. They are warriors, approaching coastal huts with weapons and armor. They are able to take what they want violently (and, in one of their first landings after they leave Troy, they do). But for the most part in this adaptation, part of their journey home is deliberately breaking their habits of rapine and pillaging. When they arrive on Circe’s island, for example, she anticipates beastly behavior, but the men make a point of disarming themselves and assuring her they will not harm or threaten her. Odysseus and his men want to be received as guests. Zeus’ Law even protects the strong, who can rely on it to avoid living by violence. They want strangers to choose to offer them what the crew could take by force.
If you are interested, I am running an Odyssey reading group on facebook, and we start next week! It’s two books a week, starting next week and running to Halloween. All translations welcome.
I enjoyed seeing many people share this story of how cloistered nuns keep company with mothers in the night:
The Norbertine Canonesses, an order of Roman Catholic nuns in the Tehachapi Mountains of California, are famous for their selflessness. They sleep for an hour or two before their alarm goes off at 11:45 p.m. every night. They climb out of bed, pull habits over their hair and walk to a cold chapel for the first of their seven daily prayers. They wait in the pews, quiet, for midnight to arrive. When it comes, they begin to chant and pray for anyone who may need help — with insomnia, addiction or a crying newborn.
“Just as the mother rises in the middle of the night, so we rise,” the leader, Mother Mary Oda, told me.
That night, I rose with them. I’d come to visit the nuns because they had gone viral. New mothers online had been moved that someone, somewhere, would get up each night to feel their pain.
Some years ago, when I was writing a feature on the Trappists of New Melleray Abbey, I heard a similar story from one of the religious brothers. (Content warning: the feature is about the Trappists ministry of providing coffins to bereaved parents and includes multiple stories of child loss).
They were a silent presence beside me and my husband, even if they didn’t know we were relying on them. They are used to their prayers reaching further than they know. Fr. Albrich, a 62-year-old Trappist, told me that one of his favorite prayers he offers in community is the one they offer at three in the morning. They recite together, “Lord as we keep watch with you this night, we commend all people and their lives to you.” The monks list the categories of people they remember, ending with “those who use the night to do evil, those who are afraid of the day about to dawn. May they all come out into the light of your Day.”
I couldn’t help but picture a cartoon mugger, sneaking up on a victim, and, in his shadow, a silent monk, stooped with age, matching his steps. Did he suspect he was accompanied, and for such a purpose? This, Fr. Albrich said, is the “paradox of cloistered orders.” Although they withdraw physically from the world, they remain present in prayer.
The monks themselves have been surprised by how much fruit has been borne by their prayer and work, or at least by how generous God has been in revealing this to them. By pledging their lives as monks, they trust that God will use their service for good, and they don’t assume that they will see what He does with their offering.
Perhaps that’s why they were so unprepared for the crowds that came when the monks offered their first public memorial mass for all those who had been buried in their coffins. “It was like the Vietnam War memorial,” Br. Joseph recalled. “People stood in line for an hour to look through the books on the altar.” He saw one woman drop to the ground, overcome when she touched the name of the person she had lost. The books record, by hand, the name of everyone who is buried in the monks’ coffins, and prayers are said for every person.
Getting to visit their workshop and interview these men has been the greatest gift my freelance writing has ever given me.
In your own lives, I’d be curious to know:
Woohoo for finally meeting in person!!
A friend of mine became a cloistered nun a few months before the birth of my first daughter. A few years later she sent me a little colored pencil drawing of a rose with a note on the back reminding me of her unceasing prayers for me. I keep it on my fridge.
Last winter, we welcomed our sixth daughter while my friend was caring around the clock for a dying sister in her community. We prayed for each other through our sleepless nights.