Joseph Kreydt

Tag: handwriting

  • What Simone Weil Means by “Renunciation of God”

    A beloved being who disappoints me. I wrote to him. It is impossible that he should not reply by saying what I have said to myself in his name.

    Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.

    To accept the fact that they are other than the creatures of our imagination is to imitate the renunciation of God.

    I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

    Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

    On page 79 (later on in Gravity and Grace, by Simone Weil), she explains the “renunciation of God.” She doesn’t mean a person renouncing God.

    She means this. God creates us so that he is not everything. He renounces being everything.

    So, to accept that someone is more than what we imagine them to be, to accept that they are subject, not object, is to renounce being everything — I am not the center of the universe.

  • Crowding Out Thorny Worries

    A close-up of handwritten notes in a notebook, reflecting on personal growth and introspection, with phrases about nurturing and managing inner thoughts.
    Inside of me,
    A place where wild things roam,
    A flock I must shepherd,
    A garden I must tend

    Through storms and attacks,
    Famine, entropy, growth...growth
    — Is it not all growth?

    Growth to be hedged and pruned,
    Encouraged here, enticed there,
    To be nurtured into something beautiful.

    And what of these thorny worries?
    I've let them grow, expecting fruit,
    But they've only become a mess.

    I try pruning,
    But they only grow back stronger.
    Instead, I'll try to crowd them out.

    I'll scatter, all among them,
    Little seeds of prayer, and of faith
    That I'll receive the grace
    To handle whatever comes, when it comes.

  • Matter is a Phase of Consciousness

    A handwritten note discussing philosophical ideas about consciousness and existence, featuring a metaphor of everything created as a flowing river.

    Since the moment it entered my mind, perhaps a year ago now, I’ve been unable or unwilling to let go of the notion that “matter is a phase of consciousness.”

    I imagine it like this. Everything created is a flowing river. Sometimes, something uncreated splashes into the river and creates ripples. Those ripples are our material lives. They are us from dust. And when they even back out, we are still there in the flowing river.

    Is this notion only delightful? Or is it true?