Simone Weil discussion

Introduce yourself and tell us about your interest in Simone Weil.

I was introduced to Simone Weil through the movie An Encounter with Simone Weil and am very excited to read her work. I'm just not sure where to start but I've ordered Waiting for God, The Need for Roots, and Gravity and Grace. I can't believe that I've not come across her work until now.

My name is Kate. It seems this group is no longer active, but I will add this anyway. I am interested in Simone Weil as a contemporary Christian mystic and like many others was first introduced to her work through the stunning Gravity and Grace. Her biography and thought is deeply moving. I am particularly draw to her writings on self-giving; of love as a kind of kenotic act. I am glad her work is becoming more popular though it depresses me that she is described constantly as an anorexic and implied to be vaguely confused or even crazy.

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.