James’s Comments (group member since May 16, 2016)

James’s comments from the Simone Weil group.

This article in the Los Angeles Review of Books connects Weil to Albert Camus and both of them to the idea that to fight injustice, you have to not dehumanize the oppressor (the oppressor and you are part of a "natural community"). I recently finished reading The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., in which King expressed a similar idea, which he put into practice in his part of the civil rights movement.

I've tried prayer that might be closer to what Weil called "attention" -- not too often, maybe over short phases of a few weeks. During one phase, I think it contributed to moving my own life story forward, like an entry of "move the plot ahead" power, but not anything I prayed for directly, since I didn't pray for anything.

I do think attention on people could function as non-verbal petition. Seeing people a certain way reveals your deepest tastes and preferences. If you saw them similarly to how God sees them, then it might encourage him to act, either because he knows you're watching and will come to trust him more through it, or to incentivize people to see other people as he does, or because he feels kinship with you over that person and that encourages him.

That's my opinion. I don't remember Weil enough to figure out how she might have responded to that. I would assume that somewhere she may have responded to Jesus' teachings about petitionary prayer which do seem to validate it.

I've been interested in Weil for a few years and was just reading a chapter from Gravity and Grace the other night. I was introduced to her through a book by Charles Cummings on desert spirituality, a brief mention alongside Raissa Maritain, who is also interesting to read about. I first read about Weil years before that but was a bit put off by her claim to refuse baptism unless God moved her to do it specifically. But now I think I understand that myself.

Her idea of decreation and her biography are a bit of a challenge to the culture we have now which values health so highly, which I like (although that's a double-edged sword, as her early death attests). I like Weil's values of courage and truth, which are related.