The Soul Cries Out
May. 1st, 2007 05:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosWhile I have continued to enjoy David James Duncan's God Laughs and Plays, and find his writing style delightful, my favorite passage from the book was not written by him. It's a quotation from Simone Weil, and it pretty much sums up the essence of my spiritual history.
In the period of preparation for loving God, the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know if anything real answers its love. It may believe that it knows, but to believe is not to know. Such a belief does not help. The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no such thing as bread. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt there is bread, but, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of its hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty.
I have been blessed with experiences of intimacy with the Divine, with times of rich faith and sure belief. But there have also been many empty, painful years when my only "spiritual life" was the crying of my soul for God, fearful that I was crying in vain but unable to lie to myself that I was not hungry. And I consider those times of darkness and emptiness as important and devout as the times of sure faith.
The driest times in my life are not my times of wrestling with doubts and fears but when I do lie to myself about my soul hunger, when I pretend it does not exist or that it can be assuaged by anything less than God.
In the period of preparation for loving God, the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know if anything real answers its love. It may believe that it knows, but to believe is not to know. Such a belief does not help. The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no such thing as bread. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt there is bread, but, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of its hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty.
I have been blessed with experiences of intimacy with the Divine, with times of rich faith and sure belief. But there have also been many empty, painful years when my only "spiritual life" was the crying of my soul for God, fearful that I was crying in vain but unable to lie to myself that I was not hungry. And I consider those times of darkness and emptiness as important and devout as the times of sure faith.
The driest times in my life are not my times of wrestling with doubts and fears but when I do lie to myself about my soul hunger, when I pretend it does not exist or that it can be assuaged by anything less than God.
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Date: 2007-05-01 07:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-02 03:11 am (UTC)