[Daycare Nation]

I'm reading an essay by Simone Weil called "The Love of God and Affliction."

The word "affliction" here is the French "mahleur," for which we don't have a proper translation--the word carries with it a sense of inevitability and doom.

It's really interesting--she talks about how criminals feel none of the repercussions of their crimes. Those who feel it are the innocent--the affliction is greater the more innocent the victim.

Affliction is brought on by physical pain but is not the same as pain...It drains the soul and takes away its will. The duty of the afflicted is to persevere in love, in spite of the fact that the blind, brute mechanism of nature has oppressed and mutilated him with random indifference.

"Men have the same carnal nature as animals. If a hen is hurt, the others rush upon it, attacking it with their beaks. This phenomenon is as automatic as gravitation. Our senses attach all the scorn, all the revulsion, all the hatred that our reason attaches to crime, to affliction. Except for those whose soul is inhabited by Christ, everybody despises the afflicted to some extent, although practically no one is conscious of it."

[Gookid]

Very interesting, I'll have to look for this. The one idea that bothers me is "The duty of the afflicted is to persevere in love..."
Blind perserverance? How does one then deal with the anger, bitterness, etc.?
The attacking of the afflicted reminds me of the soap party scene in Full Metal Jacket. Or young lions attacking old lions.
Interesting.

[Daycare Nation]

Originally Posted by Gookid

Very interesting, I'll have to look for this. The one idea that bothers me is "The duty of the afflicted is to persevere in love..."
Blind perserverance? How does one then deal with the anger, bitterness, etc.?
Interesting.

She talks about the "infinite distance between God and God." What she calls gravity and necessity are the obedience of matter to God's will--the brute mechanism of the world, which although it can be cruel is also beautiful. She believed that in the world of created things we yearn for God but can never have him fully, because we are in the distance between God and God. The only thing that we can experience fully here is affliction--the Cross.

When Christ thought that God the Father had forsaken him, he cried out in his ultimate affliction, when his soul became completely accursed (but he did not cease to love). At the same time, beyond this ultimate affliction, was the perfect Unity of God...Ultimate union and ultimate separation, ringing out like two notes melting into one--both representing the same perfect love.