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Waiting for God
"My dear father, I have made up my mind to write to you....I have been wondering lately about the will of God, what it means, and how we can reach the point of conforming ourselves to it completely I will tell you what I think about this." SIMONE WEIL, LETTER I, WAITING FOR GOD
Emerging from the thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains the renowned philosopher and social activist's most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendent. An enduring masterwork and "one of the most neglected resources of our century" (Adrienne Rich), Waiting for God will continue to influence spiritual and political thought for centuries to come.
"Simone Weil has become a legend, and her writings are regarded as a classic document of our period." THE NEW YORKER
"Her example, her achievements, her frustrations, her intellectual or moral or religious impasses, and her failures, self-described or apparent to us from hindsight, all can serve to focus the mind, enlarge the heart, and stir the soul." ROBERT COLES
Emerging from the thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains the renowned philosopher and social activist's most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendent. An enduring masterwork and "one of the most neglected resources of our century" (Adrienne Rich), Waiting for God will continue to influence spiritual and political thought for centuries to come.
"Simone Weil has become a legend, and her writings are regarded as a classic document of our period." THE NEW YORKER
"Her example, her achievements, her frustrations, her intellectual or moral or religious impasses, and her failures, self-described or apparent to us from hindsight, all can serve to focus the mind, enlarge the heart, and stir the soul." ROBERT COLES
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
About the author
Simone Weil
247 books1,467 followersSimone Weil was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist. Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. Her brilliance, ascetic lifestyle, introversion, and eccentricity limited her ability to mix with others, but not to teach and participate in political movements of her time. She wrote extensively with both insight and breadth about political movements of which she was a part and later about spiritual mysticism. Weil biographer Gabriella Fiori writes that Weil was "a moral genius in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense revolutionary range".
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February 14, 2017
After reading her books, you have to ask, is Simone Weil a saint or is she crazy? After all, when she was ill with pneumonia, she allowed herself to eat just the amount she thought would be available to residents of German occupied France in the early 1940s – and starved herself at age 34.
Why should we read Weil? Susan Sontag tells us we often measure truth in terms of the suffering of the author. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Genet—and Simone Weil have their authority with us partly because of their conviction, their self-martyrdom.
Modern readers could not embrace the life choices or ideas of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but ‘we read them for their scathing originality, for their personal authority, for the example of their seriousness, and for their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their truths.’ Simone Weil belongs in this category, ‘one of the most uncompromising and troubling witnesses to the modern travail of the spirit.’
Simone Weil was born into a family of wealthy, intellectual, secular Parisian Jews. In her early twenties she had a spiritual birth when in a Portuguese village she heard the wives of fishermen singing religious hymns. She felt Christianity was the true religion of the oppressed. Later she was moved by a chapel where St. Frances served, and by poem from Herbert.
Although she accepted Jesus as truth and beauty, she would never be baptized because she believed the same truth and beauty existed in the Greek philosophers, in Taoism, in Buddhism, in the Bhagavad-Gita and in ancient Egypt.
She also believed ‘The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin. . . It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.’
She was also appalled by what organized religion could do when it became powerful, citing the Catholic Church’s record of the crusades, banning, and inquisition. She was similarly suspicious of Protestantism, which she felt to be too closely linked with individual nations. Plus, she felt too many parishioners assign importance to the rituals instead of striving to attain a personal understanding with God.
Weil saw Jesus as the perfect model of suffering. Weil believed that God's love becomes born or personified in us when we pay attention to others. This requires emptying ourselves of our own our interests and projections in order to be truly present to another person – similar to the kenosis of the early Gnostics.
She left her position as a philosophy professor where she was constantly in trouble with school administrators because of her involvement with the unemployed, her participation in labor protests and her difficulty dealing with authority. She worked in an auto factory, then in the fields working a farm.
Simone Weil tells us that the first principle of helping another is not action. It is to see and respect the other. She repeatedly notes that the greater the suffering of the other person, the harder it is truly to see and hear that person.
Weil reminds us how glibly we can talk about compassion, as if it were an easy thing, sometimes making it sound like little more than pity. However, true compassion requires us to allow suffering to disturb us and even sometimes to take us over.
Weil wrote ‘There should not be the slightest discrepancy between one's thoughts and one's way of life.’ Sontag responds that sanity requires some compromising, some evasions and even lies. Maybe that why Weil’s relentless searching makes us uncomfortable.
T.S. Eliot wrote ‘A potential saint can be a very difficult person. One is struck, here and there, by contrast between (Weil’s) almost superhuman humility and what appears to be an almost outrageous arrogance.’
Kenneth Rexroth wrote ‘Simone Weil was one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth, or indeed of any other century. She could interject all the ill of the world into her own heart. . . Her letters read like the more distraught signals of John of the Cross in the dark night.’
Pope Paul VI (who corresponded with Weil and tried to get her baptized) said that Weil was one of his three greatest influences, and Albert Camus said ‘Weil was the only great spirit of our time.’ I believe Sontag, Eliot and Rexroth are right. We may disagree with parts of what Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Weil said, but we can’t help but be struck by their searing insights.
Waiting for God is a collection of Weil’s letters and essays that were compiled after her death, and it is a full array of Weil’s thinking from baptism to friendship and from school studies to the nature of love. It doesn’t flow well because she never wrote a book in her lifetime; her books are all compilations of her letters.
I like one of Weil’s spiritual insights: 'An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.'
I initially rated this book lower due to the lack of cohesiveness among the essays, but after time and reflecting on today’s reactions against immigrants, and with Brexit and Trump, I felt perhaps the world needs to hear more from someone who truly understood compassion and actually lived with genuine empathy for those less fortunate.
Why should we read Weil? Susan Sontag tells us we often measure truth in terms of the suffering of the author. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Genet—and Simone Weil have their authority with us partly because of their conviction, their self-martyrdom.
Modern readers could not embrace the life choices or ideas of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but ‘we read them for their scathing originality, for their personal authority, for the example of their seriousness, and for their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their truths.’ Simone Weil belongs in this category, ‘one of the most uncompromising and troubling witnesses to the modern travail of the spirit.’
Simone Weil was born into a family of wealthy, intellectual, secular Parisian Jews. In her early twenties she had a spiritual birth when in a Portuguese village she heard the wives of fishermen singing religious hymns. She felt Christianity was the true religion of the oppressed. Later she was moved by a chapel where St. Frances served, and by poem from Herbert.
Although she accepted Jesus as truth and beauty, she would never be baptized because she believed the same truth and beauty existed in the Greek philosophers, in Taoism, in Buddhism, in the Bhagavad-Gita and in ancient Egypt.
She also believed ‘The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin. . . It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.’
She was also appalled by what organized religion could do when it became powerful, citing the Catholic Church’s record of the crusades, banning, and inquisition. She was similarly suspicious of Protestantism, which she felt to be too closely linked with individual nations. Plus, she felt too many parishioners assign importance to the rituals instead of striving to attain a personal understanding with God.
Weil saw Jesus as the perfect model of suffering. Weil believed that God's love becomes born or personified in us when we pay attention to others. This requires emptying ourselves of our own our interests and projections in order to be truly present to another person – similar to the kenosis of the early Gnostics.
She left her position as a philosophy professor where she was constantly in trouble with school administrators because of her involvement with the unemployed, her participation in labor protests and her difficulty dealing with authority. She worked in an auto factory, then in the fields working a farm.
Simone Weil tells us that the first principle of helping another is not action. It is to see and respect the other. She repeatedly notes that the greater the suffering of the other person, the harder it is truly to see and hear that person.
Weil reminds us how glibly we can talk about compassion, as if it were an easy thing, sometimes making it sound like little more than pity. However, true compassion requires us to allow suffering to disturb us and even sometimes to take us over.
Weil wrote ‘There should not be the slightest discrepancy between one's thoughts and one's way of life.’ Sontag responds that sanity requires some compromising, some evasions and even lies. Maybe that why Weil’s relentless searching makes us uncomfortable.
T.S. Eliot wrote ‘A potential saint can be a very difficult person. One is struck, here and there, by contrast between (Weil’s) almost superhuman humility and what appears to be an almost outrageous arrogance.’
Kenneth Rexroth wrote ‘Simone Weil was one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth, or indeed of any other century. She could interject all the ill of the world into her own heart. . . Her letters read like the more distraught signals of John of the Cross in the dark night.’
Pope Paul VI (who corresponded with Weil and tried to get her baptized) said that Weil was one of his three greatest influences, and Albert Camus said ‘Weil was the only great spirit of our time.’ I believe Sontag, Eliot and Rexroth are right. We may disagree with parts of what Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Weil said, but we can’t help but be struck by their searing insights.
Waiting for God is a collection of Weil’s letters and essays that were compiled after her death, and it is a full array of Weil’s thinking from baptism to friendship and from school studies to the nature of love. It doesn’t flow well because she never wrote a book in her lifetime; her books are all compilations of her letters.
I like one of Weil’s spiritual insights: 'An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.'
I initially rated this book lower due to the lack of cohesiveness among the essays, but after time and reflecting on today’s reactions against immigrants, and with Brexit and Trump, I felt perhaps the world needs to hear more from someone who truly understood compassion and actually lived with genuine empathy for those less fortunate.
December 11, 2023
Simone Weil’s Waiting for God was a Christmas gift for me in 2013, but one I received in time for Advent. As any serious reader knows, when one encounters a significant book/author—much like when you meet the right person—can be almost as important as the book itself.
Waiting for God is an unlikely but apt Advent read. It is improbable in the sense Weil lived a more vibrant Christianity than most who claim to be ardent members of any known Christian denomination and yet she stopped short of receiving the sacrament of Baptism. It is pertinent as in the first word of the title; ‘waiting’ is a function of Advent.
As the ‘arrival of something anticipated’, the Christian liturgical season of Advent is necessarily a waiting time. Weil was by nature as well as choice a lifelong wait-er. She was waiting literately on God, on His guidance and His instructions as she perceived them.
This is a difficult concept for most of us to grasp. We get up in the morning and do what we’ve always done, what’s required by the day’s schedule or for those without benefit of discipline, whatever strikes the fancy. For the rest, if the routine varies it’s usually due to input from others, circumstances beyond our control such as accidents, emergencies, and other major events, good and bad, major or minor.
Weil’s approach to life and the writing she shares in this book is completely different. First of all, there’s intensity to everything she says and does. It’s as if she can never forget, not even for a second, the temporary nature of our earthly existence. She’s in a race with time and while you are with her so are you. And yet, at the same time, she is deeply contemplative. Nothing is superficial or insignificant to/or about her. She’s completely real and yet an enigma because as she continues to learn and grow, she constantly changes. I could sense these things about her in my reading but it was so intuitive that as I would go back over what I’d just covered, I’d often find it almost impossible to put my finger on exactly what it was that led me to these conclusions. Also, I felt protective of her. Perhaps I am wrong in this, but I found myself reluctant to share her writings with certain individuals who would dismiss her ideas outright simply because of her choices, especially her choice not to be baptized. Or maybe what I mean is that I lament my own inability to defend her choices because although instinctively I agree with her, I don’t understand her writings well enough to defend her against critics. And I couldn't bear the thought of her being criticized. Let them make fun of or insult me, but not her.
Waiting for God is a collection of writings which are only loosely related. There are her six letters to Father Perrin, apparently a devout priest, friend and spiritual confidant who she entrusts with her reasons for loving yet refusing to join the Church. These all-too brief letters read like the most unusual and deeply moving love story I can imagine. Sometimes the situation reminded me of an arranged marriage between God and Simone, where she was only waiting to hear her dearly Beloved tell her He loved her and that would be enough for her to go ahead (with Baptism). Other times I had the feeling she really saw herself as God’s Missionary to those outside organized religion. Either way, she was content to be what He wanted her to be, because she belonged to Him and Him alone.
The second part of the book is a collection of essays. These left me spellbound and changed me at every encounter. At some point in time I want to go back and try to summarize my notes on them—but after I have had some time to let the ideas Weil proposed gestate. As I was reading these essays, I would read for a while, then pause, reflect, pray or jot something in the margins or highlight a section. If pressed to say which was my favorite essay I would reluctantly choose Forms of the Implicit Love of God looking back wistfully at Concerning the Our Father, only because the former contained so many divine (no pun intended) mini-essays.
I am thoroughly frustrated with this review, but then I know I would be disappointed with anything I could write about Weil’s work. But eventually I have to finish it and let it go. As to the book, well this is just an introductory read. God willing, I’ll be back!
Subsequent thoughts although not a final review – December 7, 2013: Have been reading Simone Weil’s Waiting for God in bits and pieces. (Interestingly enough as I was typing those words Oklahoma experienced a 4.5 earthquake. We also happen to be in the middle of the biggest college football game of the season (OU v. OSU)—which my daughter is watching in the other room—while our state is under a blanket of snow and temperatures below 20 degrees.)
Weil is both frustrating and deeply satisfying. She is frustrating in the sense that her extreme intelligence enables her to be so far ahead it’s not easy to keep up with her or know where you are when you get there and yet as/when her meanings come into focus, I enjoy that addicting ‘ahah!’ and resulting tremendous kinship with the one who gifts insight. So often I wanted her to be here so I could ask, “What do you mean by this?” or, “Where have you gone now?”
So far I’ve read and reread the Introduction, her letters to Father Perrin, her essay, “The Love of God and Affliction”—which is totally amazing – and prayed “Concerning the Our Father”*. I’ve also skimmed the other two essays but not actually sat and read them as the writing merits. I don’t believe it’s possible to do Ms. Weil’s philosophy justice in one perusal, well at least not for me.
Her thoughts are not organized in any conventional sort of way. On refection I believe this to be because of her proximity to the Infinite, her total surrender in humble obedience to the God she is waiting for. How can our little words ever articulate the vastness of Eternity? Find clarity in a funnel cloud or a hurricane. Rather wait. She is telling us there will be total clarity tomorrow. Now there is only the whirlwind. His Power. Waiting for God.
But then I’m not finished either...
*Actually this is so powerful I haven't even managed to get all the way through praying the entire meditation at one time, so I'm working on just one phrase each day.
This book is a gift from a friend here on GR and I cannot thank the kindness of that dear friend enough!
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Initial Impressions – November 2013: Waiting for God begins with Weil's letters. I have found it necessary to read and reread parts of these a number of times, her mind and thoughts being so much more subtle than mine. Clumsily my eyes follow along her words on the page but she has escaped me. So I go painstakingly back over the sentences again. Perhaps I have grasped her concept. Perhaps not. Still reading...
Waiting for God is an unlikely but apt Advent read. It is improbable in the sense Weil lived a more vibrant Christianity than most who claim to be ardent members of any known Christian denomination and yet she stopped short of receiving the sacrament of Baptism. It is pertinent as in the first word of the title; ‘waiting’ is a function of Advent.
As the ‘arrival of something anticipated’, the Christian liturgical season of Advent is necessarily a waiting time. Weil was by nature as well as choice a lifelong wait-er. She was waiting literately on God, on His guidance and His instructions as she perceived them.
This is a difficult concept for most of us to grasp. We get up in the morning and do what we’ve always done, what’s required by the day’s schedule or for those without benefit of discipline, whatever strikes the fancy. For the rest, if the routine varies it’s usually due to input from others, circumstances beyond our control such as accidents, emergencies, and other major events, good and bad, major or minor.
Weil’s approach to life and the writing she shares in this book is completely different. First of all, there’s intensity to everything she says and does. It’s as if she can never forget, not even for a second, the temporary nature of our earthly existence. She’s in a race with time and while you are with her so are you. And yet, at the same time, she is deeply contemplative. Nothing is superficial or insignificant to/or about her. She’s completely real and yet an enigma because as she continues to learn and grow, she constantly changes. I could sense these things about her in my reading but it was so intuitive that as I would go back over what I’d just covered, I’d often find it almost impossible to put my finger on exactly what it was that led me to these conclusions. Also, I felt protective of her. Perhaps I am wrong in this, but I found myself reluctant to share her writings with certain individuals who would dismiss her ideas outright simply because of her choices, especially her choice not to be baptized. Or maybe what I mean is that I lament my own inability to defend her choices because although instinctively I agree with her, I don’t understand her writings well enough to defend her against critics. And I couldn't bear the thought of her being criticized. Let them make fun of or insult me, but not her.
Waiting for God is a collection of writings which are only loosely related. There are her six letters to Father Perrin, apparently a devout priest, friend and spiritual confidant who she entrusts with her reasons for loving yet refusing to join the Church. These all-too brief letters read like the most unusual and deeply moving love story I can imagine. Sometimes the situation reminded me of an arranged marriage between God and Simone, where she was only waiting to hear her dearly Beloved tell her He loved her and that would be enough for her to go ahead (with Baptism). Other times I had the feeling she really saw herself as God’s Missionary to those outside organized religion. Either way, she was content to be what He wanted her to be, because she belonged to Him and Him alone.
The second part of the book is a collection of essays. These left me spellbound and changed me at every encounter. At some point in time I want to go back and try to summarize my notes on them—but after I have had some time to let the ideas Weil proposed gestate. As I was reading these essays, I would read for a while, then pause, reflect, pray or jot something in the margins or highlight a section. If pressed to say which was my favorite essay I would reluctantly choose Forms of the Implicit Love of God looking back wistfully at Concerning the Our Father, only because the former contained so many divine (no pun intended) mini-essays.
I am thoroughly frustrated with this review, but then I know I would be disappointed with anything I could write about Weil’s work. But eventually I have to finish it and let it go. As to the book, well this is just an introductory read. God willing, I’ll be back!
Subsequent thoughts although not a final review – December 7, 2013: Have been reading Simone Weil’s Waiting for God in bits and pieces. (Interestingly enough as I was typing those words Oklahoma experienced a 4.5 earthquake. We also happen to be in the middle of the biggest college football game of the season (OU v. OSU)—which my daughter is watching in the other room—while our state is under a blanket of snow and temperatures below 20 degrees.)
Weil is both frustrating and deeply satisfying. She is frustrating in the sense that her extreme intelligence enables her to be so far ahead it’s not easy to keep up with her or know where you are when you get there and yet as/when her meanings come into focus, I enjoy that addicting ‘ahah!’ and resulting tremendous kinship with the one who gifts insight. So often I wanted her to be here so I could ask, “What do you mean by this?” or, “Where have you gone now?”
So far I’ve read and reread the Introduction, her letters to Father Perrin, her essay, “The Love of God and Affliction”—which is totally amazing – and prayed “Concerning the Our Father”*. I’ve also skimmed the other two essays but not actually sat and read them as the writing merits. I don’t believe it’s possible to do Ms. Weil’s philosophy justice in one perusal, well at least not for me.
Her thoughts are not organized in any conventional sort of way. On refection I believe this to be because of her proximity to the Infinite, her total surrender in humble obedience to the God she is waiting for. How can our little words ever articulate the vastness of Eternity? Find clarity in a funnel cloud or a hurricane. Rather wait. She is telling us there will be total clarity tomorrow. Now there is only the whirlwind. His Power. Waiting for God.
But then I’m not finished either...
*Actually this is so powerful I haven't even managed to get all the way through praying the entire meditation at one time, so I'm working on just one phrase each day.
This book is a gift from a friend here on GR and I cannot thank the kindness of that dear friend enough!
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Initial Impressions – November 2013: Waiting for God begins with Weil's letters. I have found it necessary to read and reread parts of these a number of times, her mind and thoughts being so much more subtle than mine. Clumsily my eyes follow along her words on the page but she has escaped me. So I go painstakingly back over the sentences again. Perhaps I have grasped her concept. Perhaps not. Still reading...
April 7, 2019
Veruje se da je Simon Vej umrla 1943. usled posledica neuhranjenosti i tuberkuloze nakon što je odbila da uzima hranu iz saosećanja prema ljudima pogođenim Drugim svetskim ratom. Takva smrt najbolje svedoči o ekstremu zvani Simon Vej i njenoj težnji ka dostizanju apsolutnog, čak i po cenu potpunog apsurda.
Iščekivanje Boga pripada njenoj poslednjoj fazi stvaralaštva, fazi kada je ova Jevrejka agnostik i filozofkinja marksističko-anarhističkog usmerenja doživela neočekivano mističko iskustvo i svoju ekstremnu veru u Marksa zamenila još ekstremnijom ljubavlju prema Hristu. Knjiga je objavljena posthumno, kao i sve njene ostale teološke knjige. Sastoji se iz šest pisama i pet eseja.
Teologija Simon Vej je mešavina hrišćanskog misticizma, starog Egipta, Sokrata, Platona, stoicizma i Mahabharate. Vej nije mnogo marila za crkvu. Odbila je da bude krštena, a ni o ostalim svetim tajnama nije pisala sa velikim entuzijazmom. Smatrala je da je pametnije da se umesto praznim ritualima, vernik okrene rešavanju matematičkih zadataka i prevođenju sa latinskog i starogrčkog jer se kroz ove delatnosti najbolje razvija pažnja, a pažnja je za Simon najveća vrlina koju čovek može da razvije.
Stil ovih eseja je čaroban. Vidi se da ih je pisao neko ko je u potpunosti ovladao pažnjom u izrazu. Mogu se čitati zbog svoje lepote, ali i lucidnog nadahnuća (recimo o Bogu koji se nalazi u centru lavirinta lepote sveta gde guta ljude i vari ih). Vej nas podseća da se najdirljiviji pozivi na pravednost ne nalaze u Jevanđeljima već u drevnom Egiptu, gde je svaki čovek mogao postati Bog ako bi Ozirisu na onom svetu mogao da kaže: Gospodine istine, donosim ti istinu, poradi tebe uništio sam zlo. Nikad nisam zahtijevao da se za me preko vremena radi. Nikad nisam isticao svoje podrijetlo poradi časti. Nikada nisam naveo gospodara da kazni svog roba. Nikog nisam poslao u smrt. Nikog nisam ostavio gladna. Nikoga nisam zastrašivao. Nikoga nisam ucvilio. Nikada nisam povisio svog glasa. Nikad se nisam oglušio na pravedne i istinite riječi. Mogu da zamislim Simon kako posle smrti izgovara ove reči.
Iščekivanje Boga pripada njenoj poslednjoj fazi stvaralaštva, fazi kada je ova Jevrejka agnostik i filozofkinja marksističko-anarhističkog usmerenja doživela neočekivano mističko iskustvo i svoju ekstremnu veru u Marksa zamenila još ekstremnijom ljubavlju prema Hristu. Knjiga je objavljena posthumno, kao i sve njene ostale teološke knjige. Sastoji se iz šest pisama i pet eseja.
Teologija Simon Vej je mešavina hrišćanskog misticizma, starog Egipta, Sokrata, Platona, stoicizma i Mahabharate. Vej nije mnogo marila za crkvu. Odbila je da bude krštena, a ni o ostalim svetim tajnama nije pisala sa velikim entuzijazmom. Smatrala je da je pametnije da se umesto praznim ritualima, vernik okrene rešavanju matematičkih zadataka i prevođenju sa latinskog i starogrčkog jer se kroz ove delatnosti najbolje razvija pažnja, a pažnja je za Simon najveća vrlina koju čovek može da razvije.
Stil ovih eseja je čaroban. Vidi se da ih je pisao neko ko je u potpunosti ovladao pažnjom u izrazu. Mogu se čitati zbog svoje lepote, ali i lucidnog nadahnuća (recimo o Bogu koji se nalazi u centru lavirinta lepote sveta gde guta ljude i vari ih). Vej nas podseća da se najdirljiviji pozivi na pravednost ne nalaze u Jevanđeljima već u drevnom Egiptu, gde je svaki čovek mogao postati Bog ako bi Ozirisu na onom svetu mogao da kaže: Gospodine istine, donosim ti istinu, poradi tebe uništio sam zlo. Nikad nisam zahtijevao da se za me preko vremena radi. Nikad nisam isticao svoje podrijetlo poradi časti. Nikada nisam naveo gospodara da kazni svog roba. Nikog nisam poslao u smrt. Nikog nisam ostavio gladna. Nikoga nisam zastrašivao. Nikoga nisam ucvilio. Nikada nisam povisio svog glasa. Nikad se nisam oglušio na pravedne i istinite riječi. Mogu da zamislim Simon kako posle smrti izgovara ove reči.
December 8, 2013
The Truth:
I have given it five stars and I have included it in my 'favorites' shelf and surely I will add her to the list of my favourite authors. The truth is I have read only this book and even in this book I have not understood many of the passages. Let me explain or at least try to explain.
Simone Weil: The Person:
There was a short biographical sketch at the end of this book. It was really short and yet it was a life story that moved me. She was born in France in 1909 and she died in 1943. She had a short life. She was a student of philosophy and studied along with Simone de Beauvoir. She was attracted to both Marxism and Catholicism. She was blessed with lot of mystical visions (A leftist mystic !). She was attracted to Catholicism and interestingly she never became a Catholic. For becoming a Catholic would mean that she will be excluded from the groups that are in opposition to the Church. She wanted to be a member of the universal humanity. She did not want herself excluded from any group and that would have been her greatest suffering. She took a voluntary annual leave from her teaching job to become an ordinary factory worker and lived in the condition a factory worker lived. She was convinced that to know the struggles of a factory worker one needs to be a factory worker. She gave up extra rations (though it was advised to her by the doctors) and ate what was permissible to the French soldiers in the occupied France during the Second World War. As soon as she heard of a famine in China she could not contain herself - she wept for them.
Her Writings:
The book contains six letters that she wrote to a Catholic priest regarding her reason why she did not want to enter into the Catholic Church and there are three essays and a reflection on the Lord's Prayer. On these I am not sure how to make my review......
It is better that I let Weil speak her mind.
1. Her reason for not entering the Church: "What frightens me is the Church as a social structure.....I feel that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without exception.....To be lost to view in it is not to form part of it, and my capacity to mix with all of them implies that I belong to none."
In another place she writes: "The love of those things that are outside visible Christianity keeps me outside the Church."
2. On the Way to reach Salvation: "....desire directed toward God is the only power capable of raising the soul. Or rather, it is God alone who comes down and possesses the soul, but desire alone draws God down."
She advocates that the most important part a soul can do to reach God is to wait with its complete attention turned towards God. She writes: "We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them."
In another place she writes: "The infinity of space and time separates us from God. How are we to seek for him? How are we to go toward him? Even if we were to walk for hundreds of years, we should do no more than go round and round the world.....We are incapable of progressing vertically. We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us."
In another place she writes:"One of the principal truths of Christianity, a truth that goes almost unrecognized today, is that looking is what saves us...To long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save us....Seeking leads us astray.......This waiting for goodness and truth is, however, something more intense than any searching."
How such attention is possible? She has an interesting reflection on school education that aids in preparing us in such process. To be fully attentive in dealing with a mathematical sum or to be attentive in dealing with the grammatical nuances in Latin is in fact a preparation for a person to have a complete attention only on one Being in his later stage. She writes: "Every school exercise, thought of in this way, is like a sacrament."
3. Biblical Reflections: There are some Biblical passages that get reflected upon by Simone Weil and they are superb.
Some examples:"It is true that we have to love our neighbor, but, in the example that Christ gave as an illustration of this commandment, the neighbor is a being of whom nothing is known, lying naked, bleeding, and unconscious on the road. It is a question of completely anonymous, and for that reason, completely universal love."
"Christ did not however prescribe the abolition of penal justice. He allowed stoning to continue. Wherever it is done with justice, it is therefore he who throws the first stone."
Concluding Remarks:
There are also some interesting reflections on Love of Neighbour, Eucharist, School Exercises, Conversion, Atheism, Human Suffering, Friendship, Importance of Religious Practices/Rites, etc.....
I have given it five stars and I have included it in my 'favorites' shelf and surely I will add her to the list of my favourite authors. The truth is I have read only this book and even in this book I have not understood many of the passages. Let me explain or at least try to explain.
Simone Weil: The Person:
There was a short biographical sketch at the end of this book. It was really short and yet it was a life story that moved me. She was born in France in 1909 and she died in 1943. She had a short life. She was a student of philosophy and studied along with Simone de Beauvoir. She was attracted to both Marxism and Catholicism. She was blessed with lot of mystical visions (A leftist mystic !). She was attracted to Catholicism and interestingly she never became a Catholic. For becoming a Catholic would mean that she will be excluded from the groups that are in opposition to the Church. She wanted to be a member of the universal humanity. She did not want herself excluded from any group and that would have been her greatest suffering. She took a voluntary annual leave from her teaching job to become an ordinary factory worker and lived in the condition a factory worker lived. She was convinced that to know the struggles of a factory worker one needs to be a factory worker. She gave up extra rations (though it was advised to her by the doctors) and ate what was permissible to the French soldiers in the occupied France during the Second World War. As soon as she heard of a famine in China she could not contain herself - she wept for them.
Her Writings:
The book contains six letters that she wrote to a Catholic priest regarding her reason why she did not want to enter into the Catholic Church and there are three essays and a reflection on the Lord's Prayer. On these I am not sure how to make my review......
It is better that I let Weil speak her mind.
1. Her reason for not entering the Church: "What frightens me is the Church as a social structure.....I feel that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without exception.....To be lost to view in it is not to form part of it, and my capacity to mix with all of them implies that I belong to none."
In another place she writes: "The love of those things that are outside visible Christianity keeps me outside the Church."
2. On the Way to reach Salvation: "....desire directed toward God is the only power capable of raising the soul. Or rather, it is God alone who comes down and possesses the soul, but desire alone draws God down."
She advocates that the most important part a soul can do to reach God is to wait with its complete attention turned towards God. She writes: "We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them."
In another place she writes: "The infinity of space and time separates us from God. How are we to seek for him? How are we to go toward him? Even if we were to walk for hundreds of years, we should do no more than go round and round the world.....We are incapable of progressing vertically. We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us."
In another place she writes:"One of the principal truths of Christianity, a truth that goes almost unrecognized today, is that looking is what saves us...To long for God and to renounce all the rest, that alone can save us....Seeking leads us astray.......This waiting for goodness and truth is, however, something more intense than any searching."
How such attention is possible? She has an interesting reflection on school education that aids in preparing us in such process. To be fully attentive in dealing with a mathematical sum or to be attentive in dealing with the grammatical nuances in Latin is in fact a preparation for a person to have a complete attention only on one Being in his later stage. She writes: "Every school exercise, thought of in this way, is like a sacrament."
3. Biblical Reflections: There are some Biblical passages that get reflected upon by Simone Weil and they are superb.
Some examples:"It is true that we have to love our neighbor, but, in the example that Christ gave as an illustration of this commandment, the neighbor is a being of whom nothing is known, lying naked, bleeding, and unconscious on the road. It is a question of completely anonymous, and for that reason, completely universal love."
"Christ did not however prescribe the abolition of penal justice. He allowed stoning to continue. Wherever it is done with justice, it is therefore he who throws the first stone."
Concluding Remarks:
There are also some interesting reflections on Love of Neighbour, Eucharist, School Exercises, Conversion, Atheism, Human Suffering, Friendship, Importance of Religious Practices/Rites, etc.....
January 7, 2015
Is ‘mystic’ a polite way of saying ‘unintelligible’?
I first encountered Simone Weil while reading The Long Loneliness, the autobiography of Dorothy Day; Weil came recommended to me as another Catholic woman writer and social activist. Like Day, she is intellectually rigorous and contemplative about the nature of faith and its relationship with the world militant. However, there similarities drop off – Day is grounded in the mechanics of the physical world, the demands and oversights of its players, and remains driven and active against the prevailing injustices; Weil shutters herself away, playing ascetic and writing an awful lot about it. That Weil, de Beauvoir (Weil’s contemporary at the Sorbonne), and Day are lumped into the same category speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of the three women’s contributions and outlooks and an intellectually lazy glossing-over of what each represents: they are grandly divergent individuals, only their sex and religious affiliation are common.
Waiting for God left me underwhelmed: it fell squarely into the category of literature that, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how or why it’s earned the attention and accolades of so many. It is unevenly written: a collection of letters to a Priest (and confident) and essays on faith that ��� while dense – are occasionally so circuitous as to be unintelligible. I don’t subscribe to the common notion that to be difficult to understand is equivalent to brilliance, nor am I especially inclined to believe I’m incapable of understanding Weil’s work. It’s an emotionally and intellectually immature work, thrumming with ambition, but failing to find focus.
Her naiveté is exasperating, which sporadically crept into delusion, about the nature of faith and her slavish devotion to the Church. She is dramatic, overwrought and even maudlin, lamenting her status and constantly delving into exhaustive, verbose bouts of spiritual introspection. Even if private, to make such a show of her faith and the ‘ecstasy’ contained therein is contrived: the lady, as it were, doth protest too much – I don’t doubt her faith or its sincerity, nor do I understand the compulsion to write at such great lengths about it.
It seemed contradictory to chronically harping on Christ and divinity while writing excessively about oneself. For an individual so obsessively passionate about the suffering of others, perhaps I have little patience for her choice to – rather than contribute actively in charity or outreach – self-inflict similar suffering in solidarity with the oppressed.
Certainly, theology – especially personal theology – lends itself to doublespeak and ambiguity, because the nature of the spirit (and of sanctity itself) often eludes the confines of language. There are throngs of worthwhile 20th century apologists, individuals who thoughtfully and incisively delve into spiritual matters without becoming weighted down with solipsistic dirges about their internalized beliefs.
Waiting for God creates the distinct impression that Weil was psychologically unwell, if not experiencing bouts of psychosis or mania. I'm also likely not the 'right' reader for this book - it's steeped so heavily in excessive self-involvement and examination that I found it oftentimes difficult to find where, in fact, God comes into play - other than as a vessel for her to delve deeper into her own psyche and proclamations of enduring faith.
I first encountered Simone Weil while reading The Long Loneliness, the autobiography of Dorothy Day; Weil came recommended to me as another Catholic woman writer and social activist. Like Day, she is intellectually rigorous and contemplative about the nature of faith and its relationship with the world militant. However, there similarities drop off – Day is grounded in the mechanics of the physical world, the demands and oversights of its players, and remains driven and active against the prevailing injustices; Weil shutters herself away, playing ascetic and writing an awful lot about it. That Weil, de Beauvoir (Weil’s contemporary at the Sorbonne), and Day are lumped into the same category speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of the three women’s contributions and outlooks and an intellectually lazy glossing-over of what each represents: they are grandly divergent individuals, only their sex and religious affiliation are common.
Waiting for God left me underwhelmed: it fell squarely into the category of literature that, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how or why it’s earned the attention and accolades of so many. It is unevenly written: a collection of letters to a Priest (and confident) and essays on faith that ��� while dense – are occasionally so circuitous as to be unintelligible. I don’t subscribe to the common notion that to be difficult to understand is equivalent to brilliance, nor am I especially inclined to believe I’m incapable of understanding Weil’s work. It’s an emotionally and intellectually immature work, thrumming with ambition, but failing to find focus.
Her naiveté is exasperating, which sporadically crept into delusion, about the nature of faith and her slavish devotion to the Church. She is dramatic, overwrought and even maudlin, lamenting her status and constantly delving into exhaustive, verbose bouts of spiritual introspection. Even if private, to make such a show of her faith and the ‘ecstasy’ contained therein is contrived: the lady, as it were, doth protest too much – I don’t doubt her faith or its sincerity, nor do I understand the compulsion to write at such great lengths about it.
It seemed contradictory to chronically harping on Christ and divinity while writing excessively about oneself. For an individual so obsessively passionate about the suffering of others, perhaps I have little patience for her choice to – rather than contribute actively in charity or outreach – self-inflict similar suffering in solidarity with the oppressed.
Certainly, theology – especially personal theology – lends itself to doublespeak and ambiguity, because the nature of the spirit (and of sanctity itself) often eludes the confines of language. There are throngs of worthwhile 20th century apologists, individuals who thoughtfully and incisively delve into spiritual matters without becoming weighted down with solipsistic dirges about their internalized beliefs.
Waiting for God creates the distinct impression that Weil was psychologically unwell, if not experiencing bouts of psychosis or mania. I'm also likely not the 'right' reader for this book - it's steeped so heavily in excessive self-involvement and examination that I found it oftentimes difficult to find where, in fact, God comes into play - other than as a vessel for her to delve deeper into her own psyche and proclamations of enduring faith.
Read
August 17, 2016A few years ago I encountered Weil and she had an immense effect on me. I try and revisit her periodically and am still very far from coming to any definite views on her life and thought. If she were fictional she'd probably be the greatest literary character of the twentieth century. The fact that she literally existed is endlessly haunting and strange. I go back and forth about whether she was serious philosopher. Her thought is violent and often shudders on the verge of utter incoherence. At the same time, real wisdom is apparent in almost every line. It's possible to read this book as a confession of madness - as no doubt modern psychiatrists would have a field day diagnosing Weil and giving her drugs; all the same I think she ultimately resists any efforts to dismiss her or explain her away.
Weil emphatically agrees with Nietzsche that Christianity is a religion for slaves. From there the two of them went in radically different directions. Reading Nietzsche one gets the impression he's frantically trying to convince himself he's not a slave; Weil came to accept the truth of Christianity after recognizing herself as one. Where Nietzsche would hysterically assert his own freedom and strength, Weil's self-loathing at times borders on a kind of megalomania.
I appreciate Nietzsche but find his rants tiresome at times. The absolute need to be an individual can lead to a lot of romantic clichés. By contrast, Weil's intense focus on what is anonymous, impersonal, uncreated in herself results in a stunningly unique self-portrait.
*
It's clear Weil was not opposed to food itself, only the act of eating; somehow she knew that was not part of her earthly vocation
She'd always justify her extreme asceticism in terms of a need to mingle with all of humanity. Even after coming to believe the Gospel, she refused herself the comfort of entering the Church on the grounds that it was not truly universal. She did not want to limit herself in any way or exclude non-Christians from her understanding. Her final self-starvation was meant as an act of solidarity. She literally could not live with herself being separate from the masses suffering through war.
*
"Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, and without coming any nearer, the very being who is necessary to him as food."
"It is impossible for two human beings to be one while scrupulously respecting the distance that separates them, unless God is present in each of them. The point at which parallels meet is infinity."
*
For future study: compare Weil's 'affliction' (malheur) to Paul Ricoeur on the servile will, the involuntary at the heart of freedom.
Weil emphatically agrees with Nietzsche that Christianity is a religion for slaves. From there the two of them went in radically different directions. Reading Nietzsche one gets the impression he's frantically trying to convince himself he's not a slave; Weil came to accept the truth of Christianity after recognizing herself as one. Where Nietzsche would hysterically assert his own freedom and strength, Weil's self-loathing at times borders on a kind of megalomania.
I appreciate Nietzsche but find his rants tiresome at times. The absolute need to be an individual can lead to a lot of romantic clichés. By contrast, Weil's intense focus on what is anonymous, impersonal, uncreated in herself results in a stunningly unique self-portrait.
*
It's clear Weil was not opposed to food itself, only the act of eating; somehow she knew that was not part of her earthly vocation
The relation of hunger to food is far less complete, to be sure, but just as real as is that of the act of eating.
It is perhaps not inconceivable that in a being with certain natural propensities, a particular temperament, a given past, a certain vocation, and so on, the desire for and deprivation of the sacraments might constitute a contact more pure than actual participation.
She'd always justify her extreme asceticism in terms of a need to mingle with all of humanity. Even after coming to believe the Gospel, she refused herself the comfort of entering the Church on the grounds that it was not truly universal. She did not want to limit herself in any way or exclude non-Christians from her understanding. Her final self-starvation was meant as an act of solidarity. She literally could not live with herself being separate from the masses suffering through war.
*
"Friendship is a miracle by which a person consents to view from a certain distance, and without coming any nearer, the very being who is necessary to him as food."
"It is impossible for two human beings to be one while scrupulously respecting the distance that separates them, unless God is present in each of them. The point at which parallels meet is infinity."
*
For future study: compare Weil's 'affliction' (malheur) to Paul Ricoeur on the servile will, the involuntary at the heart of freedom.
January 28, 2022
I wanted to love it, but found it incoherent overall. Also, her self-abasement and fetishization of suffering (like saying, just as one example, "every time I think of the crucifixion of Christ I commit the sin of envy") became so self-important and egotistical (even as she attested to her ostensible unimportance) that I had to bail.
November 16, 2007
The story of one young woman who attempted to replace food with Jesus, with predictable results.
June 15, 2012
How does one offer an opinion much less a critique of a "classic" book? A number of my mentors, thoughtful friends, and respected teachers have noted Simon Weil's influence and have urged me to read her essays--but I resisted. I confess now my reluctance sprang from suspicion, an unfounded suspicion as it turns out that Simone Weil was simply another spiritual fad. It was the admonition by a respected friend to not buy the book unless I was prepared to be seriously challenged that, of course, was bait needed to spur this "contrarian" into a purchase. Warren Farha, the wise owner of Eighth Day Books, smiled as he handed me "Waiting for God" and said, "an all-time read." And so it was.
My first reading occurred during a long day of air travel. This long and uninterrupted time to read was fortuitous. This is a book reading that cannot be digested quickly, needs frequent review and pondering of sentences and paragraphs, and does not tolerate interruption.
The irony of reading a starving young aesthetic's painful and honest thoughts about wholly loving God while cruising at 30,000 feet was not lost, Weil's thoughts about beauty seemed prophetic as we flew over the Rockies at sunset. "The love we feel for the splendor of the heavens, the plains, the sea, and the mountains, for the silence of nature which is borne in upon us by thousands of tiny sounds, for the breath of the winds or the warmth of the sun, this love of which every human being has at least and inkling, is an incomplete, painful love, because it is felt for things incapable of responding, . . . Men want to turn this same love toward a being who is like themselves and capable of answering to their love, of saying yes, of surrendering. . . . The longing to love the beauty of the world in a human being is essentially the longing for the Incarnation. . . .The Incarnation alone can satisfy it."
As a teacher, I think the essay "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God" should be required reading for all students and teachers. However, be forewarned. Weil would not be a fan of "No child left behind" or for that matter, much else on our contemporary educational scene. For instance these politically incorrect words, "Quite apart from explicit religious belief, every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit." Weil was no Thomas Dewey-oid utilitarian educator.
Weil is much quoted but I suspect like many thoughtful writers exploring difficult topics is less often read. In addition, to quote her thoughts on education or art without including her clear call for expanded compassion and service and suffering is to misconstrue by omission. Her prose is of an old fashioned and slightly inhospitable academic style, an odd combination of rigorous philosophic rationalism combined with an unapologetic mystical sensibility. Perhaps, some of the lumpy sentences would become more lyrical if read in the original French
To be clear, I view this review as a first pass on Weil's thought. I hold my first two readings of "Waiting for God" as insufficient to understand all of what this thin volume holds. Yet, there is a thick and compelling force in Weil's words, a wisdom beyond what is possible to say and a palpable presence encrusting her printed words. Weil does not treat easy subjects and offers no pat "bullet-point" answers. The faith she describes speaks of suffering more than certainty and acts of contrition rather than acts of assertion. Like Flannery O'Connor, Weil the artist "uses[her] reason to discover an answering reason in everything [she] sees. . . to find [truth] in the object, in the situation, in the sequence." Weil treats her words as art rather than utility. And as she points out, "Every true artist has had real, direct, and immediate contact with the beauty of the world, contact that is of the nature of a sacrament."
Sacraments are visible rites that signify and make present the grace of God. How like the God who favored children, the dispossessed, and the lowly to use a young woman's words in the midst of war as a vehicle for grace. A woman who had virtually no impact while alive and did not feel worthy to partake of God's sacraments has become the means by which others, and I am in that number, have found a far richer and larger available stock of reality.
My first reading occurred during a long day of air travel. This long and uninterrupted time to read was fortuitous. This is a book reading that cannot be digested quickly, needs frequent review and pondering of sentences and paragraphs, and does not tolerate interruption.
The irony of reading a starving young aesthetic's painful and honest thoughts about wholly loving God while cruising at 30,000 feet was not lost, Weil's thoughts about beauty seemed prophetic as we flew over the Rockies at sunset. "The love we feel for the splendor of the heavens, the plains, the sea, and the mountains, for the silence of nature which is borne in upon us by thousands of tiny sounds, for the breath of the winds or the warmth of the sun, this love of which every human being has at least and inkling, is an incomplete, painful love, because it is felt for things incapable of responding, . . . Men want to turn this same love toward a being who is like themselves and capable of answering to their love, of saying yes, of surrendering. . . . The longing to love the beauty of the world in a human being is essentially the longing for the Incarnation. . . .The Incarnation alone can satisfy it."
As a teacher, I think the essay "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God" should be required reading for all students and teachers. However, be forewarned. Weil would not be a fan of "No child left behind" or for that matter, much else on our contemporary educational scene. For instance these politically incorrect words, "Quite apart from explicit religious belief, every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit." Weil was no Thomas Dewey-oid utilitarian educator.
Weil is much quoted but I suspect like many thoughtful writers exploring difficult topics is less often read. In addition, to quote her thoughts on education or art without including her clear call for expanded compassion and service and suffering is to misconstrue by omission. Her prose is of an old fashioned and slightly inhospitable academic style, an odd combination of rigorous philosophic rationalism combined with an unapologetic mystical sensibility. Perhaps, some of the lumpy sentences would become more lyrical if read in the original French
To be clear, I view this review as a first pass on Weil's thought. I hold my first two readings of "Waiting for God" as insufficient to understand all of what this thin volume holds. Yet, there is a thick and compelling force in Weil's words, a wisdom beyond what is possible to say and a palpable presence encrusting her printed words. Weil does not treat easy subjects and offers no pat "bullet-point" answers. The faith she describes speaks of suffering more than certainty and acts of contrition rather than acts of assertion. Like Flannery O'Connor, Weil the artist "uses[her] reason to discover an answering reason in everything [she] sees. . . to find [truth] in the object, in the situation, in the sequence." Weil treats her words as art rather than utility. And as she points out, "Every true artist has had real, direct, and immediate contact with the beauty of the world, contact that is of the nature of a sacrament."
Sacraments are visible rites that signify and make present the grace of God. How like the God who favored children, the dispossessed, and the lowly to use a young woman's words in the midst of war as a vehicle for grace. A woman who had virtually no impact while alive and did not feel worthy to partake of God's sacraments has become the means by which others, and I am in that number, have found a far richer and larger available stock of reality.
August 1, 2024
«بر زمین نیز ،همان گونه که در آسمان»
بر میگردم پیشت خیلی زود
بر میگردم پیشت خیلی زود
September 19, 2024
I read this passage by Weil and sensed that my perspective would forever change:
"There is only one way of never receiving anything but good. It is to know, with our whole soul and not just abstractly, that men who are not animated by pure charity are merely wheels in the mechanism of the order of the world, like inert matter. After that we see that everything comes directly from God, either through the love of a man, or through the lifelessness of matter, whether it be tangible or psychic; through spirit or water. All that increases the vital energy in us is like the bread for which Christ thanks the just. All the blows, the wounds, and the mutilations are like a stone thrown at us by the hand of Christ. Bread and stone both come from Christ and, penetrating to our inward being, bring Christ into us. Bread and stone are love. We must eat the bread and lay ourselves open to the stone, so that it may sink as deeply as possible into our flesh. If we have any armour which is able to protect our soul from the stones thrown by Christ, we should take it off and cast it away" (106).
To be in the presence of genius like this is a delight and an honor. Words like a honed sword. Reading Weil revives my faith, and here she offers a reminder of the holiness of attention and waiting, to turn towards the divine. Reading this made me habitually stand in the kitchen in the mornings, clutching a cup of tea and staring out the window, pondering irresistible phrases: "there are degrees of silence," "the point at which parallels meet is infinity," etc. What does it all mean??? The yearning and the seeking is also a drawing near.
I love Weil's audacity because it is counterbalanced by immense humility. Also, wowza, she definitely has critiques valid for the Church today, especially how it can foster a dangerously blind sense of patriotism as "for a terrestrial country." On page 176, she writes, "The whole world is uprooted and widowed of its past, and this is so because the new-born Christianity did not know how to detach itself from a tradition which, after all, had ended up with the murder of Christ." Weil also breaks down The Lord's Prayer in a breathtaking analysis (e.g. because of "Thy will be done," we must "desire that everything which has happened should have happened, and nothing else" because "God has permitted it" and "the obedience of the course of events to God is in itself an absolute good" [!]).
One of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.
"The beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter" (112).
"There is only one way of never receiving anything but good. It is to know, with our whole soul and not just abstractly, that men who are not animated by pure charity are merely wheels in the mechanism of the order of the world, like inert matter. After that we see that everything comes directly from God, either through the love of a man, or through the lifelessness of matter, whether it be tangible or psychic; through spirit or water. All that increases the vital energy in us is like the bread for which Christ thanks the just. All the blows, the wounds, and the mutilations are like a stone thrown at us by the hand of Christ. Bread and stone both come from Christ and, penetrating to our inward being, bring Christ into us. Bread and stone are love. We must eat the bread and lay ourselves open to the stone, so that it may sink as deeply as possible into our flesh. If we have any armour which is able to protect our soul from the stones thrown by Christ, we should take it off and cast it away" (106).
To be in the presence of genius like this is a delight and an honor. Words like a honed sword. Reading Weil revives my faith, and here she offers a reminder of the holiness of attention and waiting, to turn towards the divine. Reading this made me habitually stand in the kitchen in the mornings, clutching a cup of tea and staring out the window, pondering irresistible phrases: "there are degrees of silence," "the point at which parallels meet is infinity," etc. What does it all mean??? The yearning and the seeking is also a drawing near.
I love Weil's audacity because it is counterbalanced by immense humility. Also, wowza, she definitely has critiques valid for the Church today, especially how it can foster a dangerously blind sense of patriotism as "for a terrestrial country." On page 176, she writes, "The whole world is uprooted and widowed of its past, and this is so because the new-born Christianity did not know how to detach itself from a tradition which, after all, had ended up with the murder of Christ." Weil also breaks down The Lord's Prayer in a breathtaking analysis (e.g. because of "Thy will be done," we must "desire that everything which has happened should have happened, and nothing else" because "God has permitted it" and "the obedience of the course of events to God is in itself an absolute good" [!]).
One of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.
"The beauty of the world is Christ's tender smile coming to us through matter" (112).
August 4, 2022
I don’t know even where to begin with this review except to say that Simone Weil is one of the most challenging and brilliant thinkers (and writers, even in translation) I have ever encountered. Thank you David James Duncan for bring her to my attention - I hope that other readers of your “God Laughs and Plays” will make the effort to seek her out and read her.
Briefly, this book is composed of two sections - the first, a series of six letters to Father Perrin, a Catholic priest for whom she has an abiding affection and friendship. Taken together, in these letters she presents a sort of apologia of her religious and intellectual beliefs and why - to his disappointment and chagrin - she is a Christian but has refused to be baptized or to join the Catholic Church. As to the latter, she cites the Catholic Latin phrase “sit anathema” - by which the Church dismisses and excommunicates those whom it regards as heretics. The letters are written to Fr. Perrin in anticipation of her departure from Europe with her parents to escape the coming war (WW II) but there are no direct references to the circumstances in Europe. And so the letters are “timeless” expressions of her belief to a close friend without being chained to historical (and therefore limiting) context.
The second part of the book is a collection of four essays (including five “sub-essays” within the essay “Forms of the Implicit Love of God”). Each of these essays, particularly, the aforementioned “Forms of the Implicit Love of God” are some of the most profound and intellectually challenging writings I have experienced. Heavy lifting at its heaviest, but absolutely worth the effort if you have any interest in the subject of God (yes, she believes in the Holy Trinity) from both the metaphysical/philosophical and theological standpoints. Some of her insights into Scripture I found quite interesting - one in particular as to how Jesus deliberately obscured the identity of the individual attacked by robbers and left for dead in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 to emphasize the universality of the encounter between the afflicted stranger and the unconditional love and care of the compassionate neighbor.
The final essay contained in the book is “Concerning the Our Father” and the six petitions within the Lord’s Prayer (the Catholic version that ends with “but deliver us from evil”, not the Protestant version). I finished the book this morning reading this essays and it blew me away. She ends this remarkable exegesis by saying: “The Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity. It is impossible to say it through, giving fullest possible attention to each word, without change, infinitesimal perhaps but real, taking place in the soul.” I would place her commentary on the Lord’s Prayer right up there with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount in “The Cost of Discipleship”.
Simone Weil’s writings never earned her an imprimatur or “nihil obstat” from the Church authorities for its orthodoxy, and many Christians will continue to find (and have found) her brand of philosophical/mystical theology troubling if not heretical. So be it. Nevertheless, her writing deserves thoughtful reading and consideration, in my humble opinion, and I commend her to anyone who wants a serious but ultimately rewarding challenge. I’m looking forward to reading her “Gravity and Grace” in the near future.
Briefly, this book is composed of two sections - the first, a series of six letters to Father Perrin, a Catholic priest for whom she has an abiding affection and friendship. Taken together, in these letters she presents a sort of apologia of her religious and intellectual beliefs and why - to his disappointment and chagrin - she is a Christian but has refused to be baptized or to join the Catholic Church. As to the latter, she cites the Catholic Latin phrase “sit anathema” - by which the Church dismisses and excommunicates those whom it regards as heretics. The letters are written to Fr. Perrin in anticipation of her departure from Europe with her parents to escape the coming war (WW II) but there are no direct references to the circumstances in Europe. And so the letters are “timeless” expressions of her belief to a close friend without being chained to historical (and therefore limiting) context.
The second part of the book is a collection of four essays (including five “sub-essays” within the essay “Forms of the Implicit Love of God”). Each of these essays, particularly, the aforementioned “Forms of the Implicit Love of God” are some of the most profound and intellectually challenging writings I have experienced. Heavy lifting at its heaviest, but absolutely worth the effort if you have any interest in the subject of God (yes, she believes in the Holy Trinity) from both the metaphysical/philosophical and theological standpoints. Some of her insights into Scripture I found quite interesting - one in particular as to how Jesus deliberately obscured the identity of the individual attacked by robbers and left for dead in the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37 to emphasize the universality of the encounter between the afflicted stranger and the unconditional love and care of the compassionate neighbor.
The final essay contained in the book is “Concerning the Our Father” and the six petitions within the Lord’s Prayer (the Catholic version that ends with “but deliver us from evil”, not the Protestant version). I finished the book this morning reading this essays and it blew me away. She ends this remarkable exegesis by saying: “The Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity. It is impossible to say it through, giving fullest possible attention to each word, without change, infinitesimal perhaps but real, taking place in the soul.” I would place her commentary on the Lord’s Prayer right up there with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount in “The Cost of Discipleship”.
Simone Weil’s writings never earned her an imprimatur or “nihil obstat” from the Church authorities for its orthodoxy, and many Christians will continue to find (and have found) her brand of philosophical/mystical theology troubling if not heretical. So be it. Nevertheless, her writing deserves thoughtful reading and consideration, in my humble opinion, and I commend her to anyone who wants a serious but ultimately rewarding challenge. I’m looking forward to reading her “Gravity and Grace” in the near future.
February 8, 2021
Weil moves you towards God in a way that transcends words. Her desire to know God is an inspiration. Her ability to challenge us to do so a gift of grace.
July 9, 2017
Divided into a bio/intro, a series of letters to a Catholic priest (though not the replies), and several essays, "Waiting for God" is a very uneven and choppy book, and not at all easy to get through (it's taken me 6 attempts in the past year to finally read it). The introduction is unsatisfactory because it only serves to describe the life of Simone Weil, rather than explain it, and she most definitely longs to be explained. The collection of letters are filled with some interesting conundrums and thoughts but served to only frustrate this reader even further as they leave questions unanswered about both the author and the topics covered. To be fair, they were personal letters and were not expected or intended by Weil to be included in this posthumously-collected work. She remains as much of a mystery at the end of the book as she did at the beginning.
The essays are the real heart of the book though they too can be very difficult to follow as Weil not only had trouble keeping organized in her presentation, often drifting back and forth between ideas, but she also had such a complete grasp of literature and history, she would wander on a single page quoting through Pythagoras, Socrates, Aeschylus, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Life of the Buddha in order to make a minor point on a perennial perspective of the Christian God before moving on. However, Weil is eminently quotable and I often found myself drifting through a paragraph before stopping abruptly over a beautiful sentence to go back and reread it again and again.
Her "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God" (a very surprising position from a politically-leftist philosopher) and her "Forms of the Implicit Love of God" give much food for thought in contemplating the relationship between man and Creator. The final chapter, "Concerning the Our Father," breaks down each line of the Lord's prayer with a mature insight that dissects and reassembles it into a cohesive spiritual whole.
The most brilliant section of the book though is a 20 page essay tucked right in the middle, "The Love of God and Affliction." It is a profound attempt at explaining the plight of so many people that lived through horrific and inhuman wars of the early 20th century. She herself practiced such extreme forms of self-denial in sympathy for their suffering that she greatly damaged her own health so much (both physical and mental) that she died at only 34 years of age. But her thrust was that this "affliction" was the most powerful force in the universe to experiencing the love of God if understood in the proper way:
"Affliction is a marvel of divine technique. It is a simple and ingenious device which introduces into the soul of a finite creature the immensity of force, blind, brutal, and cold. The infinite distance separating God from the creature is entirely concentrated into one point to pierce the soul in its center.
The man to whom such a thing happens has no part in the operation. He struggles like a butterfly pinned alive into an album. But through all the horror he can continue to want to love. There is nothing impossible in that, no obstacle, one might almost say no difficulty. For the greatest suffering, so long as it does not cause the soul to faint, does not touch the acquiescent part of the soul, consenting to a right direction."
And it is through understanding this that man, through his gaze, can cross time and space and meet his Creator. This is a chapter I will be going back to over and over again and I have no doubt I'll gain new insight with each reading.
"Waiting for God" is mystical and frustrating. I want more. It deserves to be reintroduced to a spiritually-starved world.
Edited to add, after several re-readings:
The short chapter on "The Love of God and Affliction" is still the most profound piece ever written on suffering and affliction. Also, upon the reread, I found the Introduction by Leslie Fiedler much more insightful and well written than during my first read. Though Weil in later life retained socialist sympathies and toyed with naive political theories unrelated to her spiritual and moral explorations, it came as a surprise to me that Fiedler, a vocal Marxist, could capture her thought so well.
The essays are the real heart of the book though they too can be very difficult to follow as Weil not only had trouble keeping organized in her presentation, often drifting back and forth between ideas, but she also had such a complete grasp of literature and history, she would wander on a single page quoting through Pythagoras, Socrates, Aeschylus, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Life of the Buddha in order to make a minor point on a perennial perspective of the Christian God before moving on. However, Weil is eminently quotable and I often found myself drifting through a paragraph before stopping abruptly over a beautiful sentence to go back and reread it again and again.
Her "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God" (a very surprising position from a politically-leftist philosopher) and her "Forms of the Implicit Love of God" give much food for thought in contemplating the relationship between man and Creator. The final chapter, "Concerning the Our Father," breaks down each line of the Lord's prayer with a mature insight that dissects and reassembles it into a cohesive spiritual whole.
The most brilliant section of the book though is a 20 page essay tucked right in the middle, "The Love of God and Affliction." It is a profound attempt at explaining the plight of so many people that lived through horrific and inhuman wars of the early 20th century. She herself practiced such extreme forms of self-denial in sympathy for their suffering that she greatly damaged her own health so much (both physical and mental) that she died at only 34 years of age. But her thrust was that this "affliction" was the most powerful force in the universe to experiencing the love of God if understood in the proper way:
"Affliction is a marvel of divine technique. It is a simple and ingenious device which introduces into the soul of a finite creature the immensity of force, blind, brutal, and cold. The infinite distance separating God from the creature is entirely concentrated into one point to pierce the soul in its center.
The man to whom such a thing happens has no part in the operation. He struggles like a butterfly pinned alive into an album. But through all the horror he can continue to want to love. There is nothing impossible in that, no obstacle, one might almost say no difficulty. For the greatest suffering, so long as it does not cause the soul to faint, does not touch the acquiescent part of the soul, consenting to a right direction."
And it is through understanding this that man, through his gaze, can cross time and space and meet his Creator. This is a chapter I will be going back to over and over again and I have no doubt I'll gain new insight with each reading.
"Waiting for God" is mystical and frustrating. I want more. It deserves to be reintroduced to a spiritually-starved world.
Edited to add, after several re-readings:
The short chapter on "The Love of God and Affliction" is still the most profound piece ever written on suffering and affliction. Also, upon the reread, I found the Introduction by Leslie Fiedler much more insightful and well written than during my first read. Though Weil in later life retained socialist sympathies and toyed with naive political theories unrelated to her spiritual and moral explorations, it came as a surprise to me that Fiedler, a vocal Marxist, could capture her thought so well.
February 21, 2021
All laud we would render: O help us to see
‘Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.
Walter Chalmers Smith.
J’ai reçu ce livre comme cadeau de Noël, et pendant un moment j’ai confondu Simone Weil avec Simone Veil, celle-ci née juive, survivante d’Auschwitz, plus tard devenue magistrate et femme d’Etat. Je m’intéressais à Veil après l’avoir entendu une fois parler de la clémence. Weil, par contre, est chrétienne et philosophe ; heureusement l’idée d’une harmonie entre ces deux systèmes m’ont également éprise!
Pourtant il m’a fallu faire travailler péniblement le cerveau sur tout ce qu’a écrit Simone Weil sur la foi et sur l’humanité. En lisant cet œuvre habile, et à travers beaucoup qui est profond, mystique, ou simplement orthodoxe, j’ai bien vu que le nœud de sa pensée, et de sa croyance, est que ces deux éléments suivants, la compassion pour « le prochain » et la beauté du monde, s’unissent dans la même unité, qui est Dieu. Et pour démontrer ceci elle se sert d’une parabole simple, et partout connue: celui du Bon Samaritain.
Théodule-Augustin Ribot
« Il est vrai qu’il faut aimer le prochain, mais, dans l’exemple que donne le Christ comme illustration de ce commandement, le prochain est un être nu et sanglant, évanoui sur la route, et dont on ne sait rien. Il s’agit d’un amour tout à fait anonyme, et par la même tout à fait universel.»
La première partie de ce texte, lettres écrites au Père Joseph-Marie Perrin, nous assure d’une foi véritable de la part de Simone Weil, une foi qu’elle refuse absolument de confier aux dogmes religieux de l’Eglise. Tout en l’applaudissant sur cela, je m’intéressais moins à ces lettres qu’aux textes suivants, qui élargissent sa thèse.
Le premier de ceux-ci s’intitule Réflexions sur le bon usage des études scolaires en vue de l’Amour de Dieu. Pour Weil, l’attention faite aux études, en particulier là où l’on a échoué, développe la faculté de concentrer sur, d’abord, la prière, et, comme but ou résultat, sur la pratique de la compassion envers le prochain. Car il paraît que cette attention, c’est la chose la plus importante pour un être qui a subi le malheur. Weil fait souvent allusion à saint François d’Assise, pour illustrer cette attention spirituelle, ce qui m’a rappelé ce poème, de Norman McCaig.
Assissi
The dwarf with his hands on backwards
sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
on tiny twisted legs from which
sawdust might run,
outside the three tiers of churches built
in honour of St Francis, brother
of the poor, talker with birds, over whom
he had the advantage
of not being dead yet.
A priest explained
how clever it was of Giotto
to make his frescoes tell stories
that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness
of God and the suffering
of His Son. I understood
the explanation and
the cleverness.
A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,
fluttered after him as he scattered
the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed
the ruined temple outside, whose eyes
wept pus, whose back was higher
than his head, whose lopsided mouth
said Grazie in a voice as sweet
as a child’s when she speaks to her mother
or a bird’s when it spoke
to St Francis.
Illustration de Weil :
« Dans la première légende du Graal, il est dit que le Graal, pierre miraculeuse qui par la vertu de l’hostie consacrée rassasie toute faim, appartient à quiconque dira le premier au gardien de la pierre, roi aux trois quarts paralysé par la plus douloureuse blessure :
‘Quel est ton tourment ?’ »
J’ai aimé ceci. Mais je dois avouer (vue l’énorme intelligence de ce philosophe et sa connaissance détaillée des religions de l’antiquité, de sa littérature et son histoire) que j’ai été un peu déçue, même étonnée, par le fonds orthodoxe de sa pensée. Pourtant il est là dans le titre de ce texte, Attente de Dieu. Elle ne s’agonise point sur le fait de l’existence de Dieu; elle s’intéresse plutôt à la question de son « absence apparente et sa présence secrète ». Une grande partie de ce livre m’a mise dans l’état où j’ai vu un rapport entre Weil et le personnage « Madame Mystique « dans le jeu Cluedo ! Je m’impatiente avec le mysticisme ; ici, semble-t-il, c’est un outil dont elle se sent presqu’obligée à s’en servir pour justifier, même camoufler, des pratiques religieuses qui, à mon avis, a supprimé et contrôlé pendant des siècles un tas de peuples moins capables d’elle de s’en libérer. Mais là je me rappelle qu’elle est allée s’engager en Espagne contre le franquisme, et après, rejoindre la France Libre à Londres, et je me rends compte que je devrais plutôt m’humilier devant elle. Il n’y pas que la religion à opprîmer les gens.
Et alors, la liberté des peuples? Egalité, fraternité, ici sont bien inclues. La liberté se traduit en « volonté libre » comme on s’y attendrait. Contrairement, elle insiste sur ceci : plus on cherche, moins on trouve. Le principal, c’est attendre, que Dieu descende vers soi. Se diminuer, c’est s’ouvrir à lui.
La deuxième branche de son raisonnement, la beauté du monde, est rendue ainsi :
« Le désir aimé dans un être humain d’aimer la beauté du monde est essentiellement le désir de l’Incarnation. C’est par erreur qu’il croit être autre chose. L’Incarnation seule peut le satisfaire. »
Elle met des chapitres à expliquer cette contradiction apparente, et beaucoup plus. Si vous êtes croyant, ce livre vous plaira ; si non, vous choisirez, comme moi je l’ai fait, ce qui vous intéresse, comme Les trois fils de Noë et l’histoire de la civilisation méditerranéenne -
« Puisse l’esprit de Cham fleurir bientôt de nouveau au bord de ces vagues » . . .
Le dernier mot appartient à l’auteur, surtout après ce pauvre sommaire qui ne lui rend pas du tout justice. La voici qui écrit encore une fois au père Perrin :
« Je crois qu’il faut toujours soutenir ce qu’on pense, même si on soutient ainsi une erreur contre une vérité ; mais en même temps il faut prier perpétuellement pour obtenir plus de vérité, et être continuellement prêt à abandonner n’importe quelle de ses opinions dès l’instant où l’intelligence recevra davantage de lumière. Mais non pas auparavant. »
Au lecteur de décider ce qui est construit psychologique et ce qui est vérité ! Et si l’on fasse bien attention aux études récentes sur la psychologie, on n’y arrivera pas trop facilement . . ..
‘Tis only the splendour of light hideth Thee.
Walter Chalmers Smith.
J’ai reçu ce livre comme cadeau de Noël, et pendant un moment j’ai confondu Simone Weil avec Simone Veil, celle-ci née juive, survivante d’Auschwitz, plus tard devenue magistrate et femme d’Etat. Je m’intéressais à Veil après l’avoir entendu une fois parler de la clémence. Weil, par contre, est chrétienne et philosophe ; heureusement l’idée d’une harmonie entre ces deux systèmes m’ont également éprise!
Pourtant il m’a fallu faire travailler péniblement le cerveau sur tout ce qu’a écrit Simone Weil sur la foi et sur l’humanité. En lisant cet œuvre habile, et à travers beaucoup qui est profond, mystique, ou simplement orthodoxe, j’ai bien vu que le nœud de sa pensée, et de sa croyance, est que ces deux éléments suivants, la compassion pour « le prochain » et la beauté du monde, s’unissent dans la même unité, qui est Dieu. Et pour démontrer ceci elle se sert d’une parabole simple, et partout connue: celui du Bon Samaritain.
Théodule-Augustin Ribot
« Il est vrai qu’il faut aimer le prochain, mais, dans l’exemple que donne le Christ comme illustration de ce commandement, le prochain est un être nu et sanglant, évanoui sur la route, et dont on ne sait rien. Il s’agit d’un amour tout à fait anonyme, et par la même tout à fait universel.»
La première partie de ce texte, lettres écrites au Père Joseph-Marie Perrin, nous assure d’une foi véritable de la part de Simone Weil, une foi qu’elle refuse absolument de confier aux dogmes religieux de l’Eglise. Tout en l’applaudissant sur cela, je m’intéressais moins à ces lettres qu’aux textes suivants, qui élargissent sa thèse.
Le premier de ceux-ci s’intitule Réflexions sur le bon usage des études scolaires en vue de l’Amour de Dieu. Pour Weil, l’attention faite aux études, en particulier là où l’on a échoué, développe la faculté de concentrer sur, d’abord, la prière, et, comme but ou résultat, sur la pratique de la compassion envers le prochain. Car il paraît que cette attention, c’est la chose la plus importante pour un être qui a subi le malheur. Weil fait souvent allusion à saint François d’Assise, pour illustrer cette attention spirituelle, ce qui m’a rappelé ce poème, de Norman McCaig.
Assissi
The dwarf with his hands on backwards
sat, slumped like a half-filled sack
on tiny twisted legs from which
sawdust might run,
outside the three tiers of churches built
in honour of St Francis, brother
of the poor, talker with birds, over whom
he had the advantage
of not being dead yet.
A priest explained
how clever it was of Giotto
to make his frescoes tell stories
that would reveal to the illiterate the goodness
of God and the suffering
of His Son. I understood
the explanation and
the cleverness.
A rush of tourists, clucking contentedly,
fluttered after him as he scattered
the grain of the Word. It was they who had passed
the ruined temple outside, whose eyes
wept pus, whose back was higher
than his head, whose lopsided mouth
said Grazie in a voice as sweet
as a child’s when she speaks to her mother
or a bird’s when it spoke
to St Francis.
Illustration de Weil :
« Dans la première légende du Graal, il est dit que le Graal, pierre miraculeuse qui par la vertu de l’hostie consacrée rassasie toute faim, appartient à quiconque dira le premier au gardien de la pierre, roi aux trois quarts paralysé par la plus douloureuse blessure :
‘Quel est ton tourment ?’ »
J’ai aimé ceci. Mais je dois avouer (vue l’énorme intelligence de ce philosophe et sa connaissance détaillée des religions de l’antiquité, de sa littérature et son histoire) que j’ai été un peu déçue, même étonnée, par le fonds orthodoxe de sa pensée. Pourtant il est là dans le titre de ce texte, Attente de Dieu. Elle ne s’agonise point sur le fait de l’existence de Dieu; elle s’intéresse plutôt à la question de son « absence apparente et sa présence secrète ». Une grande partie de ce livre m’a mise dans l’état où j’ai vu un rapport entre Weil et le personnage « Madame Mystique « dans le jeu Cluedo ! Je m’impatiente avec le mysticisme ; ici, semble-t-il, c’est un outil dont elle se sent presqu’obligée à s’en servir pour justifier, même camoufler, des pratiques religieuses qui, à mon avis, a supprimé et contrôlé pendant des siècles un tas de peuples moins capables d’elle de s’en libérer. Mais là je me rappelle qu’elle est allée s’engager en Espagne contre le franquisme, et après, rejoindre la France Libre à Londres, et je me rends compte que je devrais plutôt m’humilier devant elle. Il n’y pas que la religion à opprîmer les gens.
Et alors, la liberté des peuples? Egalité, fraternité, ici sont bien inclues. La liberté se traduit en « volonté libre » comme on s’y attendrait. Contrairement, elle insiste sur ceci : plus on cherche, moins on trouve. Le principal, c’est attendre, que Dieu descende vers soi. Se diminuer, c’est s’ouvrir à lui.
La deuxième branche de son raisonnement, la beauté du monde, est rendue ainsi :
« Le désir aimé dans un être humain d’aimer la beauté du monde est essentiellement le désir de l’Incarnation. C’est par erreur qu’il croit être autre chose. L’Incarnation seule peut le satisfaire. »
Elle met des chapitres à expliquer cette contradiction apparente, et beaucoup plus. Si vous êtes croyant, ce livre vous plaira ; si non, vous choisirez, comme moi je l’ai fait, ce qui vous intéresse, comme Les trois fils de Noë et l’histoire de la civilisation méditerranéenne -
« Puisse l’esprit de Cham fleurir bientôt de nouveau au bord de ces vagues » . . .
Le dernier mot appartient à l’auteur, surtout après ce pauvre sommaire qui ne lui rend pas du tout justice. La voici qui écrit encore une fois au père Perrin :
« Je crois qu’il faut toujours soutenir ce qu’on pense, même si on soutient ainsi une erreur contre une vérité ; mais en même temps il faut prier perpétuellement pour obtenir plus de vérité, et être continuellement prêt à abandonner n’importe quelle de ses opinions dès l’instant où l’intelligence recevra davantage de lumière. Mais non pas auparavant. »
Au lecteur de décider ce qui est construit psychologique et ce qui est vérité ! Et si l’on fasse bien attention aux études récentes sur la psychologie, on n’y arrivera pas trop facilement . . ..
October 3, 2023
Great Book! Perhaps the gentlest introduction to Christianity also connected with leftism.
Great Introduction preceding the book. It was more fun to read than the actual main texts (the book is a collection of letters and essays)
Look the woman up, she is incredible.
Great Introduction preceding the book. It was more fun to read than the actual main texts (the book is a collection of letters and essays)
Look the woman up, she is incredible.
March 12, 2021
This was my first direct encounter with Weil's writing after hearing about her for years. I was struck by her intellectual commitment, her brilliance, and her kookiness. But there's a lot of great stuff here. The essay on school studies and attention is the best of the lot.
"The love of our neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: 'What are you going through?' It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from a social category labelled 'unfortunate,' but as a man, exactly like we are, who was one day stamped with a special mark by afflication. For this reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way.
This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.
Only he who is capable of attention can do this.
So it comes about that, paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need."
The stressed out, struggling, and striving students in higher ed today would benefit from this. Who will tell them?
"The love of our neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: 'What are you going through?' It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from a social category labelled 'unfortunate,' but as a man, exactly like we are, who was one day stamped with a special mark by afflication. For this reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to look at him in a certain way.
This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul empties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.
Only he who is capable of attention can do this.
So it comes about that, paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done wrong, may be of great service one day, provided we devote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the supreme moment of his need."
The stressed out, struggling, and striving students in higher ed today would benefit from this. Who will tell them?
November 15, 2013
I was not the right reader for this book. Friends had recommended Weil knowing that I'm interested in theology even though I'm a non-theist. It's true I was impressed with Weil's intelligence and strong sense of what is right for her (like her explanation for why she doesn't get baptized), also her honesty about injustices committed through the church (if the Catholic church ever wants to be relevant, she suggests, it will have to say they've changed since the Inquisition). But this is coupled with . . . well, what comes across as some severe psychoses. Maybe 'scrupulosity' is the technical term.
For instance: Her rabid desire to uncompromisingly obey a master. This isn't just a willingness to obey when commanded. That would be suspicious enough in itself, but this is worse. Weil has a positive desire to be commanded to do painful and unpleasant things. "Every time I think of the crucifixion of Christ," she confesses, "I commit the sin of envy."
Nobody said you had to be psychologically healthy to write a book. But knowing the damage that the martyrdom drive within religion has done to people -- particularly women -- well, I stopped being much interested in Weil's explanation of the world.
For instance: Her rabid desire to uncompromisingly obey a master. This isn't just a willingness to obey when commanded. That would be suspicious enough in itself, but this is worse. Weil has a positive desire to be commanded to do painful and unpleasant things. "Every time I think of the crucifixion of Christ," she confesses, "I commit the sin of envy."
Nobody said you had to be psychologically healthy to write a book. But knowing the damage that the martyrdom drive within religion has done to people -- particularly women -- well, I stopped being much interested in Weil's explanation of the world.
December 1, 2021
Deeply frustrating !
She's so individualistic, weirdly anti semetic (she's of Jewish heritage!), Moral, unbending.
And yet ! Simone, Simone, I knew you saw God and he ate you up - I kind of want that too. Some amazing passages on attention and on friendship. A visionary book but I wasn't convinced entirely, even as whole pages are copied into my diary.
She's so individualistic, weirdly anti semetic (she's of Jewish heritage!), Moral, unbending.
And yet ! Simone, Simone, I knew you saw God and he ate you up - I kind of want that too. Some amazing passages on attention and on friendship. A visionary book but I wasn't convinced entirely, even as whole pages are copied into my diary.
May 14, 2022
I've been putting off finishing this for some time. One reason for that is the very justifiable one of relocating, something I am still in the midst of with my kitchen and my Internet set up while my clothes and my books are very much otherwise. The other is what I honestly expected to be confronted with as soon as I made up my mind to acquire a copy of this: the deep and long enduring incompatibility between me and Christianity, Catholicism in particular. Now, if there's something I've learned upon entering into my fourth decade, any facet of personality is worth probing to see whether the trait is something well earned or whether it could use some complication through the introduction of well crafted material. So, when it came to this particular subject, I looked at my far from straightforward, yet extremely fruitful relationship with Simone Weil, observed how frequently this particular piece of hers showed up in comparison to her far more unorthodox writings, and thought, if I was going to test my limits, I might as well test it with her. Now that I have, I see that, while she certainly says things that go along with my most fervent beliefs, mine come from a grounding in human biology, sociopolitical history, and modern day movements focused on generating equity and mutual aid, while hers are...well. Let's just say I have a better understanding of where Foucault was coming from and what is currently looking to set the rights of people with uteruses in my country back half a century. There's some bits and bobs that are worth taking into consideration in the long run, but for the most part, I just don't jive with a text that starts off with a critique of totalitarianism and then turns around to say oh but this one is different, and I never will.
Reading is inherently an experience of the crossroads, but the intersection of the words of the author and the intent of the publisher is still noticeably laughably peculiar in the case of this piece. The biographical note makes do with what it can, but the introduction is so bogged down with its selling point that it goes as far as to call Weil a martyr, and having gone so far as to take a university course on the hagiographies of female saints, my taken aback scrutiny is grounded in more than my personal biases on the matter. I had hopes when Weil's own words finally came in on scene in the form of letters that she wrote to a sympathetic priest, and the measured critiques and fervent compassion that I've come to expect from her made such positive assumptions seem justified. However, certain, dare I say it, bourgeoisie tendencies coupled to the more proselytizing/thoughtcrime aspects of Catholicism started creeping in as soon as the writing switched from letters to essays, and it became increasingly hard to care when everything was yoked to a One True Message and Weil proclaimed that the solution to habitus wasn't equitability, but to make everything Christocentric, as if there wasn't enough rabid evangelism poisoning social systems the world over these days. It's a strange thing, for while Weil's actions correspond a great deal with my own initiatives, she requires reality to be filtered through a specific lens that everything and everyone must conform to for the sake of a better humanity, while I view multiplicity as an inevitability of the world till now and don't throw up my hands simply because we're all going to die one of these days. A good lesson in cause and effect when it comes to motivation and action of those I may sympathize with but who in turn would, due to their world-grounding ideologies, would gladly see me dead, but nothing in the way of a conversion.
For all that above, I'm still very interested in reading more of Weil. It's a matter of acknowledging complexities while delving into the facets more relevant to my interests, and while I have rather tempered expectations of Weil's writings on colonialism after having read this, I still feel that such a perspective is extremely valuable, if not necessary, to my own intellectual pursuits. Of course, good luck finding a copy that is priced similar to that of her Christianity adjoined writings, but with the upheaval of my life starting to settle down, I can start having thoughts on what the far more stable financial situation, which remains barely believable even while having qualified me for the apartment I now compose this piece within, will mean for my book acquiring habits. All that will likely not come into solid play for the next six months, at least, but finally getting this review over with was one more step in my personal reconfiguring process, so my personal rating doesn't matter as much in the long run. In any case, if this collection does folks some good, great. I personally can't give the voices in my head any more weight than I already do, and I'm not about to slap the label 'God' on it and hope that that solves the problem without any critical input on my end.
Reading is inherently an experience of the crossroads, but the intersection of the words of the author and the intent of the publisher is still noticeably laughably peculiar in the case of this piece. The biographical note makes do with what it can, but the introduction is so bogged down with its selling point that it goes as far as to call Weil a martyr, and having gone so far as to take a university course on the hagiographies of female saints, my taken aback scrutiny is grounded in more than my personal biases on the matter. I had hopes when Weil's own words finally came in on scene in the form of letters that she wrote to a sympathetic priest, and the measured critiques and fervent compassion that I've come to expect from her made such positive assumptions seem justified. However, certain, dare I say it, bourgeoisie tendencies coupled to the more proselytizing/thoughtcrime aspects of Catholicism started creeping in as soon as the writing switched from letters to essays, and it became increasingly hard to care when everything was yoked to a One True Message and Weil proclaimed that the solution to habitus wasn't equitability, but to make everything Christocentric, as if there wasn't enough rabid evangelism poisoning social systems the world over these days. It's a strange thing, for while Weil's actions correspond a great deal with my own initiatives, she requires reality to be filtered through a specific lens that everything and everyone must conform to for the sake of a better humanity, while I view multiplicity as an inevitability of the world till now and don't throw up my hands simply because we're all going to die one of these days. A good lesson in cause and effect when it comes to motivation and action of those I may sympathize with but who in turn would, due to their world-grounding ideologies, would gladly see me dead, but nothing in the way of a conversion.
For all that above, I'm still very interested in reading more of Weil. It's a matter of acknowledging complexities while delving into the facets more relevant to my interests, and while I have rather tempered expectations of Weil's writings on colonialism after having read this, I still feel that such a perspective is extremely valuable, if not necessary, to my own intellectual pursuits. Of course, good luck finding a copy that is priced similar to that of her Christianity adjoined writings, but with the upheaval of my life starting to settle down, I can start having thoughts on what the far more stable financial situation, which remains barely believable even while having qualified me for the apartment I now compose this piece within, will mean for my book acquiring habits. All that will likely not come into solid play for the next six months, at least, but finally getting this review over with was one more step in my personal reconfiguring process, so my personal rating doesn't matter as much in the long run. In any case, if this collection does folks some good, great. I personally can't give the voices in my head any more weight than I already do, and I'm not about to slap the label 'God' on it and hope that that solves the problem without any critical input on my end.
My excuse is that by writing this I have reached a conclusion, for the time being at any rate.Same here, Simone. Forever and ever, the same, and that's really what counts, no?
February 28, 2023
Simone Weil's writings will probably never cease to amaze me. Although they are not really aimed toward anybody (it was not intended by Weil that the letters and the essays she wrote would be published), they found me at the right time in my life.
Weil writes: "An Atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God." This is the position I find myself in right now, and this is why I quite like the term coined by other theologians, 'Christian Atheism'.
Weil is not one to exclude such people as me from faith, actually she is not one to exclude anyone at all. I remain fascinated by her decision not to be baptized, which was at least partially motivated by her commitment to those outside the church: "... nothing gives me more pain than the idea of separating myself from the immense and unfortunate multitude of unbelievers...I do not think that in any case I should ever enter a religious order, because that would separate me from ordinary people by a habit."
She locates herself "on the threshold of the Church" and "at the intersection of Christianity and everything that is not Christian."
She certainly is a mystic, and the writings of mystics are not everyone's cup of tea. I wondered whether I could appreciate her ideas, seeing that they all seems to have their source in mystical encounters, the supernaturality of which I doubt. The thing is that she is not only a mystic but also a genius in a certain sense. The result of this amalgam are paradoxes and other affirmations that are sometimes absurd to the point of folly, but often, and not in spite but because of this, incredibly powerful and deeply moving.
It is almost unimaginable that someone would agree with everything Weil has written in these letters and essays. On the other hand I am convinced that everyone reading them with an open mind will find at least a gem or two, something to ponder about and to be moved by.
Her writing on attention is superb and the way she combines it with the love of neighbor is genius: "... the love of our neighbor ... is made of [attention]. Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle ... The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: 'What are you going through?' It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled 'unfortunate', but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction."
For someone being so convinced of the supernatural source of her revelations, Weil is surprisingly honest about the absence of God in the world. In Gravity and Grace (which I read a few years ago and would like to re-read now) she writes that "God can only be present in creation under the form of absence" and that "he who has not God within himself cannot feel his absence."
Contrary to the idea that the experience of the absence of God is something reserved for unbelievers, it can actually be experienced only by a believer. It is similar to the experience of someone waiting for his beloved in a restaurant: although the beloved is absent to all the other people there too, her absence is felt only by the one waiting for her.
And in a way waiting for God is all we can do: "We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them" and "it does not rest with the soul to believe in the reality of God if God does not reveal this reality."
In another place she rightly notices that "we cannot take a step toward the heavens." Whether the following phrase, "God crosses the universe and comes to us", is true, remains to be decided according to the experience of each one of us in particular. I, for now, remain sceptic ... and waiting.
And still, in my waiting, Weil's writing challenges me. It challenges me to question what I set my attention on and to question the way I love the people around me (do I love impartially, anonymously and universally)? And because she manages to do this, while also using delightfully creative metaphors, I find Weil's writing so powerful.
Weil writes: "An Atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God." This is the position I find myself in right now, and this is why I quite like the term coined by other theologians, 'Christian Atheism'.
Weil is not one to exclude such people as me from faith, actually she is not one to exclude anyone at all. I remain fascinated by her decision not to be baptized, which was at least partially motivated by her commitment to those outside the church: "... nothing gives me more pain than the idea of separating myself from the immense and unfortunate multitude of unbelievers...I do not think that in any case I should ever enter a religious order, because that would separate me from ordinary people by a habit."
She locates herself "on the threshold of the Church" and "at the intersection of Christianity and everything that is not Christian."
She certainly is a mystic, and the writings of mystics are not everyone's cup of tea. I wondered whether I could appreciate her ideas, seeing that they all seems to have their source in mystical encounters, the supernaturality of which I doubt. The thing is that she is not only a mystic but also a genius in a certain sense. The result of this amalgam are paradoxes and other affirmations that are sometimes absurd to the point of folly, but often, and not in spite but because of this, incredibly powerful and deeply moving.
It is almost unimaginable that someone would agree with everything Weil has written in these letters and essays. On the other hand I am convinced that everyone reading them with an open mind will find at least a gem or two, something to ponder about and to be moved by.
Her writing on attention is superb and the way she combines it with the love of neighbor is genius: "... the love of our neighbor ... is made of [attention]. Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle ... The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: 'What are you going through?' It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled 'unfortunate', but as a man, exactly like us, who was one day stamped with a special mark by affliction."
For someone being so convinced of the supernatural source of her revelations, Weil is surprisingly honest about the absence of God in the world. In Gravity and Grace (which I read a few years ago and would like to re-read now) she writes that "God can only be present in creation under the form of absence" and that "he who has not God within himself cannot feel his absence."
Contrary to the idea that the experience of the absence of God is something reserved for unbelievers, it can actually be experienced only by a believer. It is similar to the experience of someone waiting for his beloved in a restaurant: although the beloved is absent to all the other people there too, her absence is felt only by the one waiting for her.
And in a way waiting for God is all we can do: "We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them" and "it does not rest with the soul to believe in the reality of God if God does not reveal this reality."
In another place she rightly notices that "we cannot take a step toward the heavens." Whether the following phrase, "God crosses the universe and comes to us", is true, remains to be decided according to the experience of each one of us in particular. I, for now, remain sceptic ... and waiting.
And still, in my waiting, Weil's writing challenges me. It challenges me to question what I set my attention on and to question the way I love the people around me (do I love impartially, anonymously and universally)? And because she manages to do this, while also using delightfully creative metaphors, I find Weil's writing so powerful.
May 5, 2008
In places Simone Weil's writings indeed have a wondrous mystical quality; there I found myself captivated in the realm of the deeply spiritual and personal. Her reflections on experiencing God's love through the forsaken, the value of deemphasizing will, and adopting a stance of waiting for God intrigued me. I want to consider these further after having read this book.
At other times, her writings seem shaped by the metric of the logical, mathematical proof - perhaps reflecting how she idealized her older brother, who was a brilliant mathematician. My (many, many) personal hangups with mathematical proofs aside, there were numerous places where I found myself lost in excessively dense abstraction that created distance when I was seeking immediacy. Not fully grasping the meaning of those parts, I slogged through anyway. And before long I discovered yet another gem.
Given the philosophical nature of this book, I want to reread it to glean the mystical elements more fully.
At other times, her writings seem shaped by the metric of the logical, mathematical proof - perhaps reflecting how she idealized her older brother, who was a brilliant mathematician. My (many, many) personal hangups with mathematical proofs aside, there were numerous places where I found myself lost in excessively dense abstraction that created distance when I was seeking immediacy. Not fully grasping the meaning of those parts, I slogged through anyway. And before long I discovered yet another gem.
Given the philosophical nature of this book, I want to reread it to glean the mystical elements more fully.
July 9, 2017
Reread in 2014 (2016, 2107).
Original review HERE
The short chapter on "The Love of God and Affliction" is still the most profound piece ever written on suffering and affliction. Also, upon the reread, I found the Introduction by Leslie Fiedler much more insightful and well written than during my first read. Though Weil in later life retained socialist sympathies and toyed with naive political theories unrelated to her spiritual and moral explorations, it came as a surprise to me that Fiedler, a vocal Marxist, could capture her thought so well.
Original review HERE
The short chapter on "The Love of God and Affliction" is still the most profound piece ever written on suffering and affliction. Also, upon the reread, I found the Introduction by Leslie Fiedler much more insightful and well written than during my first read. Though Weil in later life retained socialist sympathies and toyed with naive political theories unrelated to her spiritual and moral explorations, it came as a surprise to me that Fiedler, a vocal Marxist, could capture her thought so well.
November 19, 2017
La verità come emozione a sé. Si può piangere di verità.
September 15, 2019
I had read about Simone Weil and how she was considered this great mystic in the Catholic church.
I'm not much into mysticism, but I read some of her writings and was intrigued.
Although she grew up in a household of agnostic Jews, she had a heart for the disadvantaged and the oppressed, giving up her upper middle class privilege and working with laborers. Working under the same conditions as them she developed tuberculosis. She refused treatment which led to her early demise.
She had some sort of metaphysical experience where she encountered Christ, or believed to have done so. She left her Marxist organizations and became a kind of Church of One.
In her letters she explains to the priest why she will not join the Catholic church. She says that the church was too exclusive and while others were excluded from the church she must remain on the outside as well. She did not believe that God's presence was in large numbers only small ones.
After reading her essays I arrive at the conclusion that she felt her relationship with God was intensely personal and there was simply no room for anyone else.
I also arrive at the conclusion that she did not believe that God reveals himself solely inside the Christian church but in all other religions, which would make her a Universalist.
On page 182 she says:
"The whole virtue of religious practices can be conceived of from the Buddhist tradition concerning the recitation of the name of the Lord...
...Religion is nothing else but this promise of God. Every religious practice, every rite, all liturgy is a form of the recitation of the name of the Lord and in principle should have a real virtue, the virtue of saving whoever devotes himself to performing it with desire."
She believes the Eucharist accomplishes this task as well as the Greek myths. She sees Christ in everything that is Beautiful. One would have to wonder at her definition of beauty considering how much rape and murder transpires in Greek Myth.
This is just the same old, "if you really believe in something, if you're really, really sincere, then it's true and will bring you close to God." Hogwash.
Weil mistakenly believed that her intense devotion and meditation would bring her to Christ but there is an element she ignores: her own sinful nature. On the one hand she goes on forever about her humility and unworthiness and yet definitely believes fervently that she has an ultra close connection to God.
She failed to understand that fallen man is separated from God by his sin that is only erased by the work of Jesus Christ by His dying on the cross and rising again three days later.
And if she had the intimate relationship with God she claimed, she would know that.
I'm not much into mysticism, but I read some of her writings and was intrigued.
Although she grew up in a household of agnostic Jews, she had a heart for the disadvantaged and the oppressed, giving up her upper middle class privilege and working with laborers. Working under the same conditions as them she developed tuberculosis. She refused treatment which led to her early demise.
She had some sort of metaphysical experience where she encountered Christ, or believed to have done so. She left her Marxist organizations and became a kind of Church of One.
In her letters she explains to the priest why she will not join the Catholic church. She says that the church was too exclusive and while others were excluded from the church she must remain on the outside as well. She did not believe that God's presence was in large numbers only small ones.
After reading her essays I arrive at the conclusion that she felt her relationship with God was intensely personal and there was simply no room for anyone else.
I also arrive at the conclusion that she did not believe that God reveals himself solely inside the Christian church but in all other religions, which would make her a Universalist.
On page 182 she says:
"The whole virtue of religious practices can be conceived of from the Buddhist tradition concerning the recitation of the name of the Lord...
...Religion is nothing else but this promise of God. Every religious practice, every rite, all liturgy is a form of the recitation of the name of the Lord and in principle should have a real virtue, the virtue of saving whoever devotes himself to performing it with desire."
She believes the Eucharist accomplishes this task as well as the Greek myths. She sees Christ in everything that is Beautiful. One would have to wonder at her definition of beauty considering how much rape and murder transpires in Greek Myth.
This is just the same old, "if you really believe in something, if you're really, really sincere, then it's true and will bring you close to God." Hogwash.
Weil mistakenly believed that her intense devotion and meditation would bring her to Christ but there is an element she ignores: her own sinful nature. On the one hand she goes on forever about her humility and unworthiness and yet definitely believes fervently that she has an ultra close connection to God.
She failed to understand that fallen man is separated from God by his sin that is only erased by the work of Jesus Christ by His dying on the cross and rising again three days later.
And if she had the intimate relationship with God she claimed, she would know that.
Read
August 10, 2022Deeply affecting. Simone writes in pure fact, language for a materialist, but with the substance of mystery. She’s seen the light surely. What hit me most in this is subjectively tied to my strict catholic upbringing. God is a battle I’ve fought for a long time. Weil’s strength, her discipline, sitting next to a puddle. It’s allowing me to love god again in my own way, however foul it is at the moment. The text is flawed, as is the Bible, but the glimmers of light here shine so bright I can’t look away
August 3, 2015
Oh, Simone! You are so brilliantly spot-on about some things, but other things … I’m just not so sure. This was precisely why we read this for class. My instructor wanted us to approach this text without taking either of two reductionist positions toward Weil: (a) she’s the “saint of our times,” as the introduction daringly asserts, (b) she’s a flat-out heretic. Weil obviously had a brilliant mind, and when she excels she does it brilliantly. Her bluntly passionate style was particularly antithetical to the mid-twentieth century ennui. However, she also portrays many of the negative attitudes of this era. She takes what she likes from the Church and leaves what she cannot figure out. Despite an understanding and love of Catholicism deeper than that of many Catholics, she is left attracted but repelled, unconvinced that she should embrace the totality of belief. Crippled by the materialistic assertion that one must completely understand everything before consenting, she is neither inside nor outside--but both. She calls this “intellectual honesty,” a categorical imperative that overlooks the role of faith as a divinely imparted virtue. Despite these caveats, Weil has a remarkable love for her neighbor and a strong sense of justice. She has a perceptive sensitivity and empathy that allows her to embrace these qualities as antidotes to self-absorption. In summary, there is much to love about Weil … and much to be frustrated about, too! Through these correspondences with her priest mentor, she reveals herself to be a sensitive, beautiful, stubborn soul just on the brink of taking the jump and swimming the Tiber.
February 19, 2016
After a post on Brain Pickings, I added this to my to-read list. However, I don't think I'll be reading other works of Simone Weil anytime soon.
In this collection - half letters, half essays - there are moments of remarkable insight:
"When a human being is in any degree necessary to us, we cannot desire his good unless we cease to desire our own."
Unfortunately these moments are eclipsed by pages and pages of obscurity. Perhaps it's simply a sign I haven't stretched my mind lately (true) or read much philosophy (true), but I found Weil's writing at times incredibly hard to follow and unclear. It could also be the element of translation, but in multiple passages I found her meaning so vague as to possibly mean two opposite things.
As a (non-mystic) Christian, I strongly disagreed with some of her theological conclusions. Her perspective was unique to me, and I appreciated the letters more than the essays for the look into a point of view so new. It strikes me as always worthwhile to understand the views of those who see the world differently than you.
However, ultimately, I fail to see why Weil is so influential given the fact that reading her essays feels like trudging through a swamp and trying to find the markers for the path, but they're at the bottom of the sludge.
2 stars feels harsh, but I promptly listed my copy on half.com after finishing it.
In this collection - half letters, half essays - there are moments of remarkable insight:
"When a human being is in any degree necessary to us, we cannot desire his good unless we cease to desire our own."
Unfortunately these moments are eclipsed by pages and pages of obscurity. Perhaps it's simply a sign I haven't stretched my mind lately (true) or read much philosophy (true), but I found Weil's writing at times incredibly hard to follow and unclear. It could also be the element of translation, but in multiple passages I found her meaning so vague as to possibly mean two opposite things.
As a (non-mystic) Christian, I strongly disagreed with some of her theological conclusions. Her perspective was unique to me, and I appreciated the letters more than the essays for the look into a point of view so new. It strikes me as always worthwhile to understand the views of those who see the world differently than you.
However, ultimately, I fail to see why Weil is so influential given the fact that reading her essays feels like trudging through a swamp and trying to find the markers for the path, but they're at the bottom of the sludge.
2 stars feels harsh, but I promptly listed my copy on half.com after finishing it.
February 1, 2008
Mysticism as an aspect of religious belief has always fascinated me because it is the purest form of worship or union one has to their maker. There are no intermediaries or dogma to govern behavior or process; the spiritual path is highly personal and individualistic. Simone Weil lived in a time of great upheaval and died as the Second World War was turning. In this book of letters and essays, Weil attempts to articulate her experiences and justifies her beliefs and actions as part of a philosophical journey in understanding existence amidst suffering.
November 28, 2013
In all honesty, I couldn't finish this book, so the rating is certainly incomplete. I found the half that I read so unbearable that I couldn't go on. The author is at best delusional and at worst a liar in regards to her faith. I had hoped for an honest, straightforward and enlightening look at faith and god but instead got the ravings of a zealot.
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