Tag: negative theology

Simone Weil from Gravity and Grace

I can easily imagine that [God] loves that perspective of creation that
can only be seen from the point where I am. But I act as a screen.

I must withdraw so that he might see it.

I must withdraw so that God might enter into contact with the
beings whom chance places in my path and so that he might love me.
My presence is indiscreet, as though I found myself between two lov-
ers or two friends. I am not the maiden who awaits her betrothed but
the unwelcome third who is with the two lovers and who ought to go
away so that they can really be together.

If I only knew how to disappear, there would be a perfect union of
love between God and the earth I tread, the sea I hear …

That I might disappear so that those things that I see may become
perfectly beautiful from the fact that they are no longer things that I
see.

I do not in the least wish that this created world should no longer
be perceptible, but that it should no longer be me to whom it is per-
ceptible. To me it cannot tell its secret which is too high. That I might
leave, then the creator and the creature will exchange their secrets.

To see a landscape as it is when I am not there …

If my eyes are blindfolded and if my hands are chained to a stick, this stick separates me from things but I can explore them by means of it. It is only the stick which I feel, it is only the wall which I perceive. It is the same with creatures and the faculty of love. Supernatural love touches only creatures and goes only to God. It is only creatures which it loves (what else have we to love?), but it loves them as intermediaries.

Simone Weil