In Which We Consider the Hospitality of Beavers

It would be far too easy to skip over the domestic scene with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver and pretend that it doesn’t matter.  Deep down inside every lover of this book is a quiet desire to actually visit Mr. and Mrs. Beaver an enjoy the hospitality of their lodge.  It’s a similar feeling most readers feel when they visit the Weasley’s “Burrow” when reading Harry Potter.  One can’t imagine it not being warm, snug, safe, full of only the best smells coming from the kitchen and a guaranteed cup of tea always at the ready from the hostess.  Hobbiton, for Tolkien fans, elicits an equally familiar reaction.  I can’t really think of anymore examples from fiction of these precious places of sacred hospitality.  How peculiar.  

In our modern era, and no less in our current situation in the early days of 2021, hospitality has always been appreciated but drastically undervalued.  One of the terrible side effects of the COVID pandemic has been to distance people.  No matter what you believe about the pandemic or restrictions placed on people, it is easy to see and agree that we have treated hospitality as a minimal virtue.  

I have pooh-poohed it myself favoring to sit in my home and be undisturbed but the difficulties of social interaction.  I can’t count the number of times I couldn’t wait to get home from a birthday party, bbq, mandatory work social event, or any number of social obligations.  I’m an introvert by nature, but the truly excruciating part for me was that I suffered from rather significant social anxiety.  Those lulls common to every conversation could feel like hours as every fiber of my being cringed and wondered why the heck I wasn’t better at this, placing the blame and pain squarely on my own shoulders.  It could feel very much like being singled out by Mrs. Loring in first grade to answer a question I had no vague notion of the answer to.  Man, that was excruciating to the very core of my being.

For the Christian, sadly (I say given my reluctance), there is no excuse when it comes to minimizing hospitality.  It is one of the greatest ways that one can love their neighbor, unify the body of believers, and one of chief ways we reflect the love of Jesus.  The act of Communion is an act of hospitality.  We are told to make strangers feel welcome, to aid the orphan and the widow in their distress, to visit those in prison and sick in the hospital (which is well related to hospitality), and give of our own time, energy, clothing, and worldly goods for the comfort, well-being, the very Shalom of others.  Oddly enough, we don’t get to close our hearts or doors.  We also aren’t called to just give money to give to someone else to give to the people in those categories.  

I’m not sure I ever considered just how remarkable the hospitality of the Beavers is.  There are details here that jump out of me in a way that hadn’t before.

First of all, it really jumped out at me as I read this that one of the effects of the White Witch making it always winter but never Christmas has the the nearly complete destruction of Mr. Beaver’s livelihood.  It’s not all doom and gloom, of course, but how many repairs can he make to his dam?  How much work can he actually do to improve it?  It is his very reason, his natural occupation, and it is almost completely pointless.  She has affected his very nature by taking away the motion of the river through freezing it mostly solid.  I’m now starting to consider just how amazing it is when Father Christmas arrives and gives Mr. Beaver the quite appreciated (given the thawing of Aslan’s presence) present of the leaks being stopped, the dam mended, and a new sluice gate being installed.  

Secondly, I thought of just how different the Pevensie children are to anyone they have ever met apart from the Queen.  On top of Mr. Beaver really going out on a limb given that what he is doing is horrible illegal and likely to bring a death sentence down on his wife and his friend, everyone Mr. Beaver has likely seen that looks like these Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve has been evil.  In everything but size they have all the same features and look.  One could make the case that Tumnus the faun looked like her, but he’s got hooves, fur, and horns so he’s at least half alright.  The dwarves have all turned out to be evil.  So why should these mostly furless (but for their coats, and what animal did that come from) get a pass and supposedly sit on the thrones in Cair Paravel?  Why should he be kind to them and invite them into his home?  Like as not they’ll get the secret police put on them.

And speaking of Mr. Beaver’s current emotional state, how is he handling the reveal that Tumnus was working for Her all along?

And yet, despite all this, the pair expose themselves to accusation of treachery.  They invite these four into their own home.  They feed them, and give them direction; give them hope, wisdom, and comfort.  They are risking all so openly, and yet I fear risking awkward pauses in conversation, or saying the wrong thing by accident.  I know I’m comparing myself to a pair of fictional beavers, but I think we all know people like this; simple, warm-hearted people who don’t have much but happily give and want to make people feel loved.

There is much here that could easily pass by, but another piece that jumped out to me was the way they invited the children to work alongside them.  It’s another thing I’ve discounted before in hospitality.  Everyone asks if they can help, but I always refuse and usually for the most vain of reasons.  I don’t want them to see the state of my kitchen, or that I’m not sure what I’m doing.  I focus on the minutia, the things which matter the least.  I bat away gentle appeals for relationship because I tend to not mean it either when I ask if I can help.  Well, if needed I will, but I ask to be polite.  Man, this section is showing me the depths of my own issues here.  

The girls help Mrs. Beaver and Peter helps Mr. Beaver and those moments have a beautiful glow to them; good natured help in working to catch the fish, prepare the meal, lay out the place settings.  Its joining together to create what was already going to happen anyway.

One of my other favorite details is how every seat in the lodge is a three-legged stool except for Mrs. Beaver’s rocking chair.  I can only presume the Mr. Beaver made it for her himself and it was his joy to honor her in such away, as it is in all relationships where they adore one another.  

How is it that they can risk so much in a situation where they are already suffering loss upon loss on some people that look so much like the one who has done this to them to begin with?  Well, it’s hope, isn’t it?  Hope.  And Aslan.

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