Book Review: Waiting for God

 
Looking for a book that's beautiful yet challenging? What if it's by one of the most highly respected thinkers of the 20th century who also happens to be a fascinating woman? Then Waiting for God, a collection of spiritual letters and essays by Simone Weil, may give you some food for thought. As she herself wrote, "In reading as in other things I have always striven to practice obedience . . . . for as far as possible I only read what I am hungry for at the moment . . . , and then I do not read, I eat" (p 69).

From a Christian perspective it may be impossible to appreciate Simone's thought, which was often unorthodox, without having a grasp of the time and place in which she lived, as well as of her genius and zeal. The biographical information in Waiting for God is helpful, but I recommend reading Stephen Plant's "Simone Weil" in the Great Christian Thinkers series (Triumph 1997) which I utilized for this essay.

Simone was born in France in 1909 to agnostic parents. At the age of six she could quote classic poetry, and despite interruptions in her education (and the onset of migraines), she received her baccalaureate at the age of 15. Simone had a deep desire to know "truth," so went to graduate school and became a teacher of philosophy.

Do not think that she lived comfortably from the "ivory tower." As early as age five she refused to eat sugar because the soldiers could not have it, and she maintained this practice of food-denial all of her life. She chose not to turn the heat on in her rented rooms since the unemployed could not afford it themselves, and gave much of her salary to the poor and to workers' causes. She was very politically active, striving to secure better conditions for factory workers, and was involved with the defense of her country during World War II.

Simone seemed to apply her whole self towards realizing her convictions. Even though frail, she was always working, thinking, writing--incessantly doing. She even went so far as to travel to war-torn Spain, in 1936, to fight against the Fascists. She was a pacifist but felt so strongly about the cause that she volunteered for the most dangerous assignments. Because of a bad cooking-related accident, however, Simone did not stay there for very long. Her witness to an execution of a 15-year-old boy by the people she supported, among other things, caused her to not return.

Perhaps the personal experience of war caused a crack in Simone's idealism that was an entryway for God. In 1937, while at Assisi, "something stronger than I was compelled me for the first time in my life to go down on my knees (pp 67-68). Then in 1938, while having severe migraines during Holy Week services, Simone had the experience of separating herself from the pain to enjoy the beauty of the service and to receive the understanding of the passion of Christ. That same year, while reciting a Christian poem about accepting Christ--which she claims she hadn't understood as such--Christ indeed "came down and took possession of me" (p 69).

Though she accepted Christ, Simone's writings are controversial. Some do not believe Simone was really a Christian, assumably due to her consideration and respect for other religions, and some of her unorthodox theological views. But being a Christian for a relatively short period before she died, at the age of 34, one can easily argue that Simone's views were immature. She mulled over her newfound faith with what she knew: philosophy, history, and the life of war and suffering that she saw.

She writes about wrestling with God over truth, and that is what she so often does in her "religious" writings (most of the essays she published were not spiritual, however). She may write that there are spiritual truths contained in other religions or even myths (CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien held similar views), but in the final analysis, only Christ is truth: "Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms (p 69).

Her friends in faith were Catholic, but she refused to enter the church because of its history and its exclusionary practices. Despite being an "outside Christian," she wrote conventional ideas like: "It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me" (pp 50-51), and " . . . I think that God himself has taken it [her soul] in hand from the start and still looks after it" (p 73). Going deeper into her thought we find: "Only obedience is invulnerable for all time" (p 63), and " . . . I always believed that the instant of death is the center and object of life" (p 63). Significantly, in 1943 (a few months before she died), she told a friend: "I believe in God, in the Trinity, in the Incarnation, in the Redemption, in the teachings of the Gospel) (Plant, p 33).