Slightly edited from an email to my friend Ken today:

“I’m glad you liked [my writings].

You know, I used to talk to one of the priests at [a church in Lower Manhattan] for a while, right after I entered the Church and I was going to daily Mass there all the time. He was a guy with some philosophy background. I sent him some of those writings, because he was interested in my conversion. I sent him That which is impossible…, What happened, and Transparent.

I was so surprised by his reaction to them. He found them to be so full of pain and suffering, and he didn’t really see what relevance they had to my eventually entering the Church. For me, when I re-read that stuff, it seems totally infused with joy. It’s odd, thinking about what different people see in writings like that… I know my own reaction to writings on this topic has changed a lot with experience.

Maybe this also has something to do with why I feel such a kinship with Simone Weil. I think there are many paths, many doors to understanding. One of them is through suffering. This is, of course, the one that Christ illuminates so well. It’s the path Simone took (and why she was so attracted to Christianity, I’m sure). It’s the path I took . . . but it’s not the one everyone takes. There are many people, even people with considerable spiritual insight, who don’t see beauty in suffering at all.”

Meanwhile, Mitsu quotes Simone on evil, in relation to the current situation in Iran; a Flannery O’Connor fan-blog quotes Flannery on Simone; my friend Suzanne from Corpus Christi finds a plaque on the front of her apartment building in Morningside Heights saying that Simone lived there in 1942; and Bill keeps reminding me that to draw attention to one’s own suffering is a form of vanity.

And then there is Faulkner:

“I know the answer to that and I know that I can’t change that answer and I don’t think I can change me because the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I never had actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the value of love is the sum of what you have to pay for it and anytime you get it cheap you have cheated yourself.” — The Wild Palms

Mitsu and I were discussing my previous post:

Mitsu: [Drummond] seems to think (and perhaps this is a Christian tendency in general, also observable in that passage [from 1 Corinthians]) that love is more than the sum of its parts, i.e., that it is its parts, plus. But, I don’t think it’s a sum of parts, even with more added, i.e., love isn’t kindness + … + (something).

Me: I know what you mean. It’s not addition; it’s subtraction. I wrote about that a while ago.

Mitsu: Yes, love is less than the sum of its parts, yet that’s what makes it greater.

Me: Right. I’ll post that.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophesy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind;
Love envieth not;
Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly,
Seeketh not her own,
Is not easily provoked,
Thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity,
But rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things,
Hopeth all things,
Endureth all things.

Love never faileth; but whether there be prophesies, they shall fail; whether there are tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three: but the greatest of these is Love.”

– I. Cor. xiii

“Why is love greater than faith, because the end is greater than the means. What is the use of having faith? It is to connect the soul with God. And what is the object of connecting Man with God? That he may become like God. But God is Love. Hence faith, the means, is in order to Love, the end. Love, therefore, obviously is greater than faith. It is greater than charity, again, because the whole is greater than a part. Charity is only a little bit of Love, one of the innumerable avenues of Love, and there may even be, and there is, a great deal of charity without Love. It is a very easy thing to toss a copper to a beggar on the street; it is generally an easier thing than not to do it. Yet Love is just as often in the withholding. We purchase relief from the sympathetic feelings roused by the spectacle of misery, at the copper’s cost. It is too cheap — too cheap for us, and often too dear for the beggar. If we really loved him we would do more for him, or less (18-19).”

“Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day (25-26).”

“It is not hard to give up our rights. They are often external. The difficult thing is not to seek things for ourselves at all. After we have sought them, bought them, won them, deserved them, we have taken the cream off them for ourselves already. Little cross then is to give them up. But not to seek them, to look every man not at his own things, but on the things of others — id opus est. ‘Seekest thou great things for thyself?’ said the prophet; ‘seek them not.’ Why? Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish love. Even self-denial in itself is nothing, is almost a mistake . . . The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving (32-33).”

“[It] is perfectly certain — and you will not misunderstand me — that to enter Heaven a man must take it with him (38).”

“Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of . . . the Christlike nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this great character are only to be built up by ceaseless practice (44).”

“Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither for agony nor prayer. That is your practice . . . Do not grudge the hand that is molding the still too shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful though you see it not, and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men, and among things, and among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. You remember Geothe’s words: Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Doch ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt. ‘Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life.’ (45-46)”

“To make it easier, I have named some of the elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined. Light is something more than the sum of its ingredients — a glowing, dazzling, tremendous ether. And love is something more than all its elements — a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living, thing. By synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love (46-47).”

– Henry Drummond, The Greatest Thing in the World