Waiting for God to Act Brian Zahnd edit

I love this:

/And yet the waiting is essential. For it’s in the waiting that our soul grows quiet and contemplative and cultivates a capacity for awareness by which we can discern what God is doing when he does act., 💜

We have been seduced by an idolatry that deceives us into thinking that God is mostly found in the big and loud, when in fact, God is almost never found in the big and loud.💜



the ways of God are more often found in trickling tears and whispered prayers.💜

we are waiting to become contemplative enough to discern what God is doing. 💜

God is always acting, because God is always loving his creation. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are always inviting us into their house of love. But when we are consumed by anger, harried by anxiety, and driven by impatience, we are blind and deaf to what God is actually doing in the present moment.💜

it was pagan stargazers and peasant shepherds who discerned what God was doing. They were not the experts and they were not the reactionaries at the loud center of religious noise; they were quiet people on the silent edges of contemplative thought.💜

To most people it would appear that the Magi and the shepherds were doing nothing of significance in their long nighttime vigils, but they were the ones who were able to discern what God was doing.💜

 ng birth in an out of the way place.

Waiting for God to act only seems like waiting for God to act. God is always acting because God is always loving the world and always giving birth to something. 💜

Waiting for God to act is actually waiting for your soul to become quiet enough and contemplative enough to discern what God is doing💜

  But if you want to discern the actions of God you must learn to first wait in quiet contemplation. 

Before you can become an activist, you must first become a contemplative; otherwise you’ll just be a re-activist. 💜/

BZ

❤️🎯🌹What We Owe to Others: Simone Weil’s Radical Reminder By Robert Zaretsky Feb. 20, 2018 edit

Seventy-five years ago, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil joined Charles de Gaulle’s Free French movement in London. 

We do not know if the Catholic and conservative general, who never met Weil, knew she had left her post as a professor of philosophy in order to work on assembly lines, left her family to fight alongside anarchists in Spain and left her country to escape the anti-Semitic Vichy regime. 



Weil’s reflections on the nature of obligation offer a bracing dose of sanity in our perplexing and polarizing times. 

During the final months of her life — she died in the summer of 1943 — Weil wrote of several of her most subversive and seminal texts. (That they were essentially position papers for the Free French makes them all the more extraordinary.) This is particularly true for“Human Personality” and “Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations,” both of which are devoted to 

distinctions Weil insists upon personal rights and impersonal duties.

When we talk abt justice today we

 almost always find ourselves talking

 abt rights we believe are entrenched in nature & have been enshrined in our founding documents: language

 that reflects a liberal conception of human  action & interaction, casting us as rational agents who reach agreements with one 

another through calculation/negotiation. 

Charles Taylor has argued 

while each of us “has a

conception of the worth-while good life,” none of us accepts “a socially endorsed conception of the good.”

 In essence, the ideal of right has ceded to the ideal of rights. The

 problem, for Weil, w/ the

 liberal conception of rights — & the laws that codify them is it is rooted 

in the personal, not the impersonal. 

Our society, she insists, is one where personal rights are tied at the hip to private property. 

Edward Andrew suggests  a rights-based society;“is the consensual society. Everything is

 vendible at constitutional conventions or the marketplace.” 

This reveals what Weil, like Thomas Hobbes, believes 

the sole universal truth concerning human affairs: certain groups will always wield greater clout than other groups. 

“Rights talk” deals with the relative

& alienable not w/

the absolute and inalienable. 

For Weil, the old joke about our legal system How much justice can you afford? takes on a tragic immediacy

Moreover, the emphasis on “inalienable human rights”— a phrase, Weil declares, history has shown to be meaningless — 
blinds us to the only true good, one rooted in what Weil calls the “impersonal.” This term paradoxically describes what is most essential to our flesh and blood lives: the

 needs shared by all human beings and the obligations (and not rights) to one another that they entail. These needs, listed in her “Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations,” include: 

• nourishment 
• clothing,
•  medical care  
• housing, as well as 
• protection against violence. (Though opposed to capital punishment, Weil made an exception for rape.)

With a knack for striking 

illustrations Weil confronts us 

w/ the limits of rights claims.

 “If someone tries to browbeat

 a farmer to sell his eggs at a moderate price he can say
 ‘I have the right to keep my eggs
 if I don’t get a good price.’ But if
 a girl is forced into a brothel 
she won't talk abt her rights. 
In this context the word 
is ludicrously inadequate.”

This is why, when we ask why we have less than others we are getting personal but when we ask why we are being hurt, we are getting impersonal. And for Weil the impersonal is good in every sense of the word. In the case of her illustration, 

Weil finds the notion of rights ludicrous b/c the girl is not being cheated 
of a profit. Instead, she is being cheated of her
 very humanity. There isn't true resolve for 

  such acts.    

 And yet, by confusing personal rights w/ impersonal (or universally shared) needs, we burden ourselves w/ language  deflecting us from what's truly at stake. 

 Weil declares: There is something sacred in every human being, but it is not their person. It is THIS human being; no more and no less.

Weil was responding to the crisis of 

Western democracies 

challenged/fascism.

Her essays also help us think abt our own crisis of governance and legitimacy. 

While the first response would ignite Weil's “spirit of contention,” (the law/letter), the
 latter response touches & awakens

 it's source spirit of attention

 attention.” (core/spirit). 

 Such a reply asks us to 

forget abt ourselves and  attend to other's lives. 

Iris Murdoch, one of Weil’s great fans, 

wrote: Moral situations require, 

•  “unsentimental,
  
•  detached, 
• unselfish  
• objective perspective.” 

Such attentiveness 
allows political & 
moral clarity “rights language” can't. 

For Weil, paying attention is the most fundamental of our obligations. It forces 

us to recognize that what she calls “le malheur,”/suffering,

 is in store for all of us. 

“I may lose at any 
moment,” she wrote,

 “through the play 

of circumstances

 I haven't control. 

Anything I possess

including things 

so intimately mine

I consider them

 as myself.” This covers a sense of

my autonomy re-

flected in so banal an act as groceries

buying & in 

much more dramatic acts. 

Philosopher 

Andrea Nye

 suggests that Weil throws a bracing light on the debate over abortion. 

The related notions of

  obligation/attention offer a third way b/t those who

  claim the fetus’s right to life/those who insist upon a woman’s right to choose.

 Rejecting these rights-based claims, 

Nye writes, a “Weilian feminist might listen to the women themselves as they attempt to make sense of their lives in order to come to a binding sense of what must be done to restore social balance

and create a society which obligations 

do not conflict.” 

Such an approach might invite a woman seeking an abortion to fully attend to a 

situation which does not implicate her alone.

France’s on the

 eve of World War II:

 “incredible barrage of 

• lies, of 
• demagogy, of
•  boasting admixed with 
• panic,”

 one of “disarray, 

in sum, a totally 

intolerable atmosphere.” 

 Simone Weil’s insights

might oblige us to consider how politics 

would change if we made room for obligation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/opinion/simone-weil-human-rights-obligations.html

Chapter 6 INTO Action A. A. Edit

Chapter 6

INTO ACTION edit

We have been trying to get a 

new attitude, a new relationship w/ our Creator, & to discover the obstacles in our path. 

you have admitted to God,yourself,to another human 

egoism and fear; 

humility, fearlessness honesty,

You must be entirely honest w/somebody if you expect to live long or happily in this world

Such parts of your story you should tell to someone who will understand, yet be unaffected. 

You can look the world in the eye. You can be alone at perfect peace and ease.

 Your fears will fall from you. 

You will begin to feel the nearness of your Creator. 

You may have had certain

spiritual beliefs, 

now you will begin

to have spiritual

experiences. 

you are building an arch through which you will walk 

a free man at last. 

willingness

willing to let God remove from you all the things which you have admitted are objectionable? 

If you yet cling to something you will not let go, ask God to help you be willing.

My Creator, 

I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you & my fellows.  Grant me strength as
as I go out from here
 & do your bidding. 
Amen.~

At the moment

 you are trying 

to put your own life in order.

Your real purpose is to fit yourself to be of maximum service to God and the people about you.

Remind yourself that you have

 decided to go to any lengths. 

To find as piritual experience ask that you be

 given the strength & direction 

to do the right thing no matter 
what the consequence to you. 

Consulting others involved,  & asking God to guide you, there appears no other just & honorable solution than the most drastic one. You must take 

your medicine. Trust that 

the  outcome will be right.

There is a long period of reconstruction

ahead. You must take 

the lead.

🌱Ask each morning in meditation that your Creator show

the way of patience/ tolerance/kindliness

and love.

The spiritual life is not a theory. You have to live it.

Be humble without being servile or scraping. As one of God's people you are to stand on your feet; don't crawl on your belly before anyone.

Fear of people & of economic insecurity will leave you. 

You will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle you. You will suddenly realize that God is doing for you what you could not do for yourself.

Continue to watch yourself for selfishness/dishonesty/resentment & fear. When these crop up, ask

God at once to remove them.

Discuss them 

w/ someone immediately. 

turn your thoughts 

to someone you can help. Love & tolerance of is your code.

You will react sanely normally. You will find this has happened automatically.

you have begun to

 sense the flow of

His Spirit into you.

 To some extent you have become God-conscious. You have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. 

Were you thinking of what you could do for others, of what you 

could pack into the 

stream of life? 

After you have faced 

yesterday, ask God's forgiveness for any

 wrong. Ask to be shown what to do. 

Thus you keep clean as you live each day.

ask God to guide your thinking. Especially ask that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Then go ahead and use your common sense. There is nothing hard or mysterious about this. God gave you brains to use. Clear your thinking of wrong motives. Your thought life will be placed on a much higher plane.

Ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. Relax and take it easy. Don't struggle. Ask God's help. You 

will be surprised how the right answers come after you have practiced a few days. 

What used to be 

the hunch/occasional

 inspiration became a

working part of mind.

you will find that as time passes your thinking will be 

more & more on the plane of inspiration/guidance. 

You will come to rely upon it. 

As you go through the day, pause when agitated or doubtful. Be still and ask for the right thought or action. It will come. Remind yourself you are no longer running the show. Humbly say to yourself many times each day "Thy will be done." 

Illumine every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once you have taken this step, witholding nothing, you will be delighted. 

You can look the world in the eye. You can be alone at perfect

peace/ease your 

fears will fall 

from you. 

You will begin

feeling nearness

of your Creator. You may have had some spiritual beliefs & now will be having a spiritual experience.

You will know you are on the Broad Highway

walking hand 

in hand w/

the Spirit

 of the 

Universe.

you are building an arch through which you will walk a free man at last. 

Are you now perfectly willing to let God remove from you 

all the things which you have admitted are objectionable?

Can He now take

 them all? If 

you yet cling to something 

you will not let go, 

ask God to help 

you be willing.

When you are ready, say something like this: "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen.~ You have then completed step seven.

    You are to sweep away the debris which has accumulated out of your effort to live on self-will and run the show yourself. If you haven't the will to do this, ask until it comes. 

Remember you agreed at the beginning you would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol.

The question of how to approach the man you have hated will arise. It may be he has

done you more harm than you have done

him & though you may have acquired a 

better attitude toward him, you are still 

not too keen about admitting your faults. 

Nevertheless, with a person

  you dislike we advise you to take the bit in your teeth. He is an ideal subject upon which to practice your new principles. Remember that he, like yourself, is sick spiritually. Go to him in a helpful & forgiving spirit. Be sure to confess your former ill feeling & express regret of it.

Under no condition should you criticize such a person or be drawn into an argument with him. Simply tell him that you realize you will never get over drinking until you have done your utmost to straighten out the past. 

You are there to sweep off your side of the street, realizing that nothing

worth while 

is mastered

until you do so. Don't try to tell him what he

should do or discuss his faults. Stick to your own. If your manner is calm, frank, open, you will be gratified with the results. The

   unexpected

can happen. Sometimes the
man admits his own fault so feuds

of years standing melt away in an

hour. You will make satisfactory

  progress. Former enemies will  praise what you are doing & wish you well. Occasionally, they will

 cancel a debt, or offer help. 

It won't 

matter if

 someone does throw

 you out of his office you did your part/you

gave your testimony it's over. 

Remind yourself that you have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience. Ask that you be given the strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequence to you. 

You may lose your position or reputation, or face jail, but you are willing. You have to be. You must not shrink at anything.

No outsider can appraise such an intimate situation. It may be you will both decide that the way of good sense and loving kindness is to let by-gones be by-gones. 

The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil. We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough. 

He is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined. To his wife, he remarked, "Don't see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain't it grand the wind stopped blowin'?"

You ought to sit down with your family & analyze your past as you now see it. 

Be  careful 

not to criticize

 them. Never 

mind their 

defects. They

 may be glaring. 

Your own 

actions are

somewhat 

 to blame. 

So clean house with the family. asking each morning in meditation that the Creator show you the way

of patience/tolerance kindliness and love.

The spiritual life isn't a theory. You have to live it

Your practice will convince them more than your words. 

Ten or twenty years of drunkenness would make a skeptic out of anyone.

There may be

some wrongs you can't right.

Don't worry about them if you can honestly say to yourself that you would right them if you could.

Some people you can't see . send them an honest letter. There may be a valid reason for postponement in some cases. Don't delay if it can be avoided. Be sensible, tactful, and considerate. Be humble w/out being servile or scraping. As one of God's people you are to stand on your feet; don't crawl on your belly before anyone.

You are going to know a new freedom and happiness. You will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

 You will comprehend the word serenity and know peace. 

you'll see how

your experience

benefits others. That feeling of 

uselessness & self-pity will disappear.

You will lose interest in selfish thing & gain interest in your fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. 

Your whole 

attitude & outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave you. 

You will intuitively

know how to handle 

situations that used

to baffle you. You'll realize God is doing 

 for you what you couldn't do for yourself.

Your next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This won't happen overnight . It'll continue your whole life. 

Continue to watch yourself for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, ask God at once to remove them.

Discuss them with someone immediately. Make amends quickly if you have harmed anyone. 

Turn your thoughts to some-one you can help. Love/tolerance 

of others is your code.

You have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. 

If tempted

 you will recoil from it as you would from a hot flame. 

You will react sanely. You will find this has happened

automatically.

Without any effort or thought  on your part it just comes! 

That's the miracle A. A,  You're not fighting it or avoiding temptation. It's as though you had been placed in a neutrality.

You feel safe and protected.

the problem has been removed. It

does not exist for you.

 You aren't cocky or 

afraid.

 That is our experience.  We react this way so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.

We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve. 

"How can I best serve Thee/Thy will be done."/these are thoughts which must go with you constantly when you carry the vision of God's will every day in all of your activities. This is the proper use of the will.

To some extent you have become God-conscious. You have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. But you must go further & that means more action.

When you wake up tomorrow morning look back over the day before/we're you

  resentful/selfish/

dishonest/afraid/do

you owe apology/have

you kept something 

to yourself which should be

discussed w/someone at once? Were you kind/loving toward all?

 What could you have done 

better/thinking of what you could do for others/of what you could pack into the stream of life?

 After you have faced yesterday

 yesterday ask for God's forgiveness for any wrong/to

be shown what to do

You keep clean as you live each day.

Think about the 24 hrs ahead/consider 

your plans for the day/ask God to guide your thinking/that it be. 

divorced from dishonesty/self-seeking motives/Self-pity. Go ahead & use your common sense. 

Your thought life will be placed on a much higher plane.

Thinking through your day you may face not being able to determine

which course to take. Ask God's help

for a decision/

intuitive thought/

  inspiration. 

Relax. Take it easy. Don't struggle. You will be surprised/ right answers will come w/practice in a few days. 

What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration becomes a working part of your mind. 

As time passesyou will find that your thinking will be more & more on the plane of inspiration & guidance & you will rely on it. 

You might end the period of meditation w/ a prayer that you  all day you see what your next step is to be. Ask Him to give you whatever you need to take care of every situation 

Ask for freedom from self-will. 

As you go through the 

day pause when agitated/doubtful/ be still/ask for a right action/

thought. It will come. Tell yourself you are no longer running the show.  Say to yourself each day "Thy will be done."

You will be in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger,

worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.

 You will become much more able. 

You won't tire  so easily/you won't be burning up energy foolishly as you 

did when trying to arrange life to suit yourself.