“Nothing concentrates the mind so much as –”
our demise: the only inevitability we’ll never experience as an actuality;
but to hold one’s mortality in one’s hands, Continue reading
Spirit
To Eat, To Dispose
Psychosoma hypostatic monism
(the pendulum swings, but its axis is one)
the mind is a body, the body: digestive tract
with a support cast of organs (like thumbs
and brains); “Let us read, mark, and inwardly di-gest”;
Update
I have greatly expanded and updated the excerpt post from Simone Weil.
The Decline of Religious Institutions, The Ascent of Spiritual Marketplace Goods
There was an article published in 2012 on the religiously unaffiliated, and, at the time, on another now-dead blog, I pulled an excerpt, with a brief comment. It is more deserving of your attention than this post. I offer it here as something of an afterthought to an earlier post on R. Hütter on the loss of the Church as a distinct public, and even a Thanksgiving-Day conversation that I had with one of my cousins, which was about the media of perpetuating cultural distinctives and anchors and what things we hold up as valuable mirrors for self-understanding, whether individually and communally. Continue reading
Excerpt #16 — Simone Weil on What is Sacred in Each Person
“The good is the only source of the sacred.
There is nothing sacred except the good
and what is relative to the good.”
Simone Weil (pronounced “Vey”, because of her roots in France, despite what I understand to be the German origin of her family name) was one of the most brilliant, fascinating, and edifying figures of the 20th century. Every time I return to her I cannot escape the conviction that she is, in so many ways, like the North Star. I do not mean to suggest that she has no flaws, but it is not without reason that Albert Camus said that she was “the only great spirit of our times”, and I’m told that he visited Weil’s mother and meditated in Simone’s room on his way to receive his Nobel Prize. Her fame does not stop there. Even presidents cite her. At least one prominent student of Wittgenstein’s wrestled with her. Naturally, she has her own society.
The way I learned about Weil was through two books, Gravity and Grace as well as Waiting on God, both of which I’d read for several classes during my first two graduate degrees. (The essayist-activist Susan Sontag, mentioned below, once judged that Waiting on God is the best introduction to Weil.) They are intense, extremely beautiful, but in the way that they showcase a love that follows through on principle to the point of sacrificing itself for others in solidarity, rather than culminating in grand thoughts or flowery language or merely in learned tomes. I could say something about the political and mystical elements in Weil here, but I won’t. This post is already somewhat long. A decent encyclopedia introduction to her can be found on Britannica. Continue reading
Into the Clarities 