One of the great joys of belonging to multiple book clubs is revisiting books with a different group of people. After thoroughly enjoying Margaret Kennedy’s “The Feast” last summer—and then handing it off to many friends who all also enjoyed it—a different book club took it up this summer.
In returning to the characters of this uniquely well-crafted book that is equally allegory, thriller, domestic novel, and comedic fun, I was struck by one character who makes it to the feast at the end of the book through a sheer sense of obligation. There are several people who go to the heavenly feast out of obligation rather than joyful desire, but this particular character is motivated by sheer diligence, a need to complete a task that could be done.
It’s interesting to see how each of the sinful characters is in a dance with spouses and family, the people around them enabling through sins of omission or commission. The particular woman in question is no different; she is not an innocent bystander but bears some responsibility for the moral decay of those around her, especially her husband. Her overzealous conscientiousness allowed him to atrophy to the point of fatal inactivity. He made his choices, but she helped him along the way. How easy it is to see someone of great activity and think that they should just do less.
And yet, it is her zealous need to be diligent and conscientious that brings her to the feast. Consistently completing a task is a fertile ground for the growth of virtue. The passive person of great ideas, the one who “could have” done so much, receives no credit.
By consistently doing tasks to completion, we have the possibility of positive development, the growth of virtue, and the way of life-everlasting. In little things like exercise and daily reading, consistency bears outsized results. In big things like marriage and the life of faith, consistency and the practice of remembering make life worth living.
