You see, these worries are the me of the present — without the graces God can give me in the future — believing I will fail.
Of course the me of the present will fail at the future task. He lacks the strength God provides, only in the moment, to handle whatever happens — which, by the way, will probably be very different than what I expect.
When someone sees you as a god — a woman degrades herself because she sees you as the one who gives her value — the loving response always involves some sort of crucifixion. For the undignified woman, your own desires and any potential response which does not aim to restore her dignity must be killed, no matter how painfully, in such a way that her own dignity can be restored without shame.
The pain Christ feels is not because our sins hurt him. It’s because it hurts to see a beloved one degrade or afflict their self. In the crucifixion, he takes our degradation and affliction upon himself. That is the preferable pain when someone you love is hurting.
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.
How do we die to ourselves without suicide?
We live for another. We give up every part of us that says “I.” We forget ourselves with another who forgets their self. We close the eyes that watch out for the self, and open the eyes that watch out for the other. We do everything for the good of that other, and do nothing for the good of the self except in that it is for the good of the other. In doing this, we strip ourselves of the self God gave us as an act of giving, in love, to God.
“Do you love me? Feed my sheep.”
To die without death is to defeat death, to take away its power.
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?