#Susan anima Taubes

[loneberry]

"He who, seeking God, does not find him in the world, he who suffers the utter silence and nothingness of God, still lives in a religious universe: a universe whose essential meaning is God, though that meaning be torn in contradiction and the most agonizing paradoxes. He lives in a universe that is absurd, but whose absurdity is significant, and its significance is God."

"God can be present to us only in the form of his absence."

"Simone Weil's mysticism of atheistic purification bears some resemblance to the 'dark night of the soul' of St. John of the Cross, to whom she frequently refers in her notes. But while the Spanish mystic is describing an ecstatic experience of the soul's death prior to its re-birth in God, for Simone Weil the dark night of God's absence is itself the soul's contact with God. When she speaks of an 'ineffable consolation' that fills the soul after it has renounced everything, renounced even the desire for grace, she does not mean that supernatural love is something distinct from the acceptance of the void. To endure the void, to suffer evil, is our contact with God."

--Susan Taubes, "The Absent God"

#the void of divine absence #susan taubes #Susan anima Taubes #Simone Weil #theology #negative theology #apophatic theology #silence #mysticism #affliction #pain #suffering #masochism #christian mysticism