While working in the studio the other night, I was listening to a beautiful lecture on Simone Weil when I heard this quote:
“When we hit a nail with a hammer the whole of the shock is received by the large head of the nail as it passes into the point without any of it being lost. If the hammer and the head of the nail were infinitely big it would be the same, the point of the nail would transmit this infinite shock at the point to which it was applied. Extreme affliction, which means physical pain, distress of the soul, and social degradation, all at the same time is a nail whose point is applied at the very center of the soul. He whose soul remains ever turned toward God through the nail, though the nail pierces it, finds himself nailed to the very center of the universe. It is the true center, it’s not the middle, it’s beyond space and time, it is God, in a dimension that does not belong to space, that is not time, that is indeed quite a different dimension, this nail has pierced through cleanly through all creation, through the thickness of the screen separating the soul from God.”
*
*
While listening to the quote during the lecture I got goosebumps. About an hour before I had hung on the wall a painting I made a month ago of a sparrow in flight, with a nail driven in the the canvas, piercing the surface and being driven into the stretcher bars.
*
I thought of the line from Kierkegaard, life can only be understood backwards but must be lived forwards.
When I got home I took my copy of Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace off the shelf and turned to the chapter on Affliction. There’s a paragraph I’ll copy here for the sake of it’s resonance with the previous quote:
“The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The whole being is stricken on the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is no more at least than that o privation. This stage has to be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron is necessary.
At the touch of the iron there must be a feeling of separation from God such as Christ experienced, otherwise it is another God. The martyrs did not feel that they were separated from God, but it was another God and it was perhaps better not to be a martyr. The God from whom the martyrs drew joy in torture or death is akin to the one who was officially adopted by the Empire and afterwards imposed by means of exterminations.”
*
*
theslowangel.com 
Leave a comment