Enemies at the Gate

Spear 'em with your knitting needles.

From my recent post on hospitality-as-heroism, I learned two things: 1) that my readers agree there’s something important about the work we do at home, especially as it pertains to radical forms of welcome, and 2) you have lots of questions about boundaries. I also have lots of thoughts about boundaries and will try to tackle some of them in my next newsletter. But before we can talk about boundaries meaningfully, I think we need to discuss some ways to think about defending our homes, and how that work actually *extends,* rather than curtailing, our ability to welcome risky strangers.

Let’s do this with stories and pictures. I’m very much a member of the Harry Potter generation: the first book was published while I was in middle school, and the final installment came out during the first year of my PhD program. Of course I began the series identifying primarily with fellow A-student Hermione, but these days I think a lot more about Molly Weasley and Professor McGonagall.

In their own ways, both these woman are models of hospitality. Molly Weasley’s hospitality is warm and maternal, and the cozy, comforting Burrow the Weasley family calls home embodies Molly’s willingness to gather a lonely boy like Harry into the security of her own large brood.

Minerva McGonagall is more stern, but as a professor she plays a crucial role in welcoming, orienting, serving, and empowering the students who not only learn, but live, in the rambling home called Hogwarts.

It’s not surprising, then, that when dark forces gather at Hogwarts, threatening not only the students there, but the very ability of the school to serve as a haven and home, that Molly and Minerva are on the front lines of the battle. While it is usually men who leave home to fight on distant battlefields, when hostile armies threaten the native city, you will often find women on the battlements, leading the attack against the invaders. (There’s a long and ancient testament to this kind of defensive warfare, which classically-educated J.K. Rowling knows well.)

Molly and Minerva fight not to shut down the arrival of strangers to their home, but to protect those strangers from evil, and to preserve the ability of the Burrow or Hogwarts to extend any kind of welcome in the first place.

Here’s another: medieval monks (stay with me!) were known for their marginalia — little drawings, often amusing, which the scribes would use to fill the blank spaces of the texts they so scrupulously copied. One of the pictures that appears quite often is that of two figures jousting. We all recognize this from the movies: a knight on horseback gallops ahead, fatal lance in hand. Normally he rides against a similarly-equipped knight. However, in the medieval marginalia his enemy is sometimes a woman holding a distaff instead of a sword. A distaff is an ancient tool that women used when they were spinning wool or flax into yarn. It holds the unspun fiber, which the women would then use a hand-powered spindle to twist into yarn. Few modern people would recognize a spindle and distaff today, but in the medieval and ancient world, they were ubiquitous. In fact, if you’ve ever watched a movie set before the year 1500 or so, every woman who appears in the film ought to be holding a distaff and spindle. We have ancient illustrations of women spinning while feeding chickens, herding sheep, tending a pot, wearing a baby. It was necessary for women and girls to spin constantly in order to create fabric for clothing, ship’s sails and the thousands of other ordinary objects that require textiles.

But back to our jousters. The image of a woman trying to joust with a distaff instead a lance is, at first glance, absurd. She stands no chance against the warrior’s weapon, right? And yet, I can’t get enough of these pictures. There’s something wonderfully defiant about them, as the mounted women ride ahead with confident smiles, using the most humble tools of their daily work to face their enemies. A modern version of the conflict might show a women using her knitting needles as a sword.

What does all this have to do with hospitality? Well, I know that I have felt beleaguered lately by my ability to create a home I want to welcome others into; I’ve struggled with feeling like I have nothing left to give, mentally, emotionally, or financially. My first instinct-as always-is to blame myself: failure! hypocrite! But after worship yesterday I was reminded that those words are the arrows of my enemies. They are the dementors’ kiss - and so this morning I renewed my prayers, drank my hot tea with joy, and began to think about how I could drive these enemies from my gate. How I might clear the path to my door for the needy ones, the lonely ones, the beautiful ones God is sending. So far, the battle has involved dishes, scones, and knitting some gifts in wool as pink as a March sunset. My knitting needles might not look like much against the sharpened lances of my enemy, but they have no idea what’s coming for them: there’s a sword of the Spirit hidden within.