My rating:

add to my books

Waiting for God

by Simone Weil

4.11 · rating details · 252 ratings · 36 reviews

Emerging from the thought-provoking discussions and correspondence Simone Weil had with the Reverend Father Perrin, this classic collection of essays contains the renowned philosopher and social activist's most profound meditations on the relationship of human life to the realm of the transcendent. An enduring masterwork and "one of the most neglected resources of ou

...more

Paperback, 151 pages

Published April 7th 2009 by Harper Perennial (first published 1959)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists. Add this book to your favorite list »

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 528)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Feb 01, 2008

Rick Eng rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy

Mysticism as an aspect of religious belief has always fascinated me because it is the purest form of worship or union one has to their maker. There are no intermediaries or dogma to govern behavior or process; the spiritual path is highly personal and individualistic. Simone Weil lived in a time of great upheaval and died as the Second World War was turning. In this book of letters and essays, Weil attempts to articulate her experiences and justifies her beliefs and actions as part of a philo...more

like 1 like

· see review

May 05, 2008

Amy rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Amy by: Jung Society of Washington for a workshop

In places Simone Weil's writings indeed have a wondrous mystical quality; there I found myself captivated in the realm of the deeply spiritual and personal. Her reflections on experiencing God's love through the forsaken, the value of deemphasizing will, and adopting a stance of waiting for God intrigued me. I want to consider these further after having read this book.

At other times, her writings seem shaped by the metric of the logical, mathematical proof - perhaps reflecting how ...more

like 3 likes

· see review

Jan 10, 2011

Aries Poon rated it

· review of another edition

What would draw people toward Jesus?

Simone Weil, a French philosopher who was equal to Simone de Beauviour in intellect but not in fame, said in one of her letters to Father Perrin of a Catholic church back in the 1940s: "For nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon God, than friendship for friends of God."

"All the same I feel that your patience with me can only spring from a supernatural generosity," sh...moreWhat would draw people toward Jesus?

Simone Weil, a French philosopher who was equal to Simone de Beauviour in intellect but not in fame, said in one of her letters to Father Perrin of a Catholic church back in the 1940s: "For nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed ever more intensely upon God, than friendship for friends of God."

"All the same I feel that your patience with me can only spring from a supernatural generosity," she said in the same letter.

Weil was brought up as an agnosticist - who doesn't approve or disapprove of God or any supernatural being. These people live right at the present moment, based on sense experiences which appears are the only realiable modes of knowledge.

In June 1941, Weil was introduced to Father Perrin in Marseilles and later they became close friends. Although Father Perrin couldn't "convert" her into Christianity at the end, but Weil "admired Christian values" and was living by them most of the time. She hated poverty and injustice. She once lived in a village as a farmer, aiming at experiencing their hardship for real, so that she could touch and help the lives of the poor.

"The greatest blessing you have brought me is of another order. In gaining my friendship by your charity (which I have never met anything to equal), you have provided me with a source of the most compelling and pure inspiration that is to be found among human things," Weil wrote.

Some of us like to win people by arguments, some prefer to haunt people with death and hell, while many others are inducing guilt to make people repent. Although Apostle Paul had said, whenever we Christians win a spirit for God, it is a good thing after all, and we don't need to delve into how we do that. While it is true in some cases, the abuse of words, guilt and fear are sometimes way across the line. We may have unconsciously "threatened" nonbelievers instead!

"Charity. To love human beings insofar as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does," she once said.

This was coming from a nonbeliever. What would a Christian think?

Hats off to father Perrin. Very few of us can impress nonbelievers with our love to people like this. Amen.

(less)

· see review

Jan 01, 2008

Ellen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: catholicism, essays

Weil loved the Catholic Church but refused to join it. I thought it was interesting to read about her reasons: "...nothing gives me more pain than the idea of separating myself from the immense and unfortunate multitude of believers." I also found her thoughts on attention and attachment to be quite profoud.

· see review

Jul 07, 2007

Wesley Hill rated it

· review of another edition

The essay on academic studies with a view to loving God argues that when we study, we develop our ability to pay attention, and attention is essential to loving God, since prayer is basically attending to God. Very provocative and challenging, especially as I think about grad school.

· see review

Dec 29, 2009

Charles rated it

· review of another edition

Problematizes the boundaries between who is "christian" and who is not. Also repaints the entire enterprise of spirituality as focus, attention. One of the gems that I found was that Weil discusses the danger of ideas. For example, the church is responsible for unleashing totalitarian power into the world. The church obviously failed at totally governing their body. But the fact that they tried unleashed the concept of totalitarian power. Fast forward some hundred years... and on...more

like 1 like

· see review

Nov 15, 2007

Corbin rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 19, classics, philosophy, religion, essay, consciousness-studies

The story of one young woman who attempted to replace food with Jesus, with predictable results.

like 1 like

· see review

Jan 16, 2011

Longfellow rated it

· review of another edition

**Lengthy review alert**

I don't think I've read anyone before Weil who is equal parts difficult yet beautiful; despite the rigorous mental work required, the effort is well-invested.

Every now and then, Weil writes a sentence which I can comprehend. Comprehension percentage aside, every sentence seems to contain within it a profound weight. Perhaps, with more time given to reflection and contemplation, I would eventually understand such passages as this:

"The pe...more

· see review

Mar 16, 2010

Brad rated it

· review of another edition

Simone Weil is one of the few writers who has expressed the staggering difficulty of faith. For this reason, and others, she is one of my personal heroes. She was a brilliant academic, and yet she lived in the world, suffering alongside others, choosing to share in the labor of the workers. She abhorred every ivory tower, whether academic or religious or political. She rejected every device that excluded her from the common world. Rather than considering the world from the abstracted throne...moreSimone Weil is one of the few writers who has expressed the staggering difficulty of faith. For this reason, and others, she is one of my personal heroes. She was a brilliant academic, and yet she lived in the world, suffering alongside others, choosing to share in the labor of the workers. She abhorred every ivory tower, whether academic or religious or political. She rejected every device that excluded her from the common world. Rather than considering the world from the abstracted throne of reason, she engaged the world from the ground. A Marxist, she fought as a revolutionary in the Spanish civil war. She graduated at the head of her class, but labored along with the farmers and workers.

Weil was a mystic, who never found place in the confines of the church. Her visions convinced her of the relentless need for grace, of the profound reality of God, of the divine sacrifice of Christ, and yet she never took communion. This rejection of the church arose out of her profound integrity. Her struggle with the church lay in two principle objections. The first was her concern for justice. Despite her faith and conviction, the profound violence of the church prevented her from joining in communion. This violence is expressed in several ways, both actual historical violence, and a more abstract intellectual violence. She felt that, on top of the actual violence that the church had propagated throughout history, it also continued a tradition of silencing rational thought, causing intelligent people to stop short of logical conclusions if those conclusions represented a dissent from church doctrine.

Her second objection to the church lies not in a failure of the church, but in what she saw as a failure in herself. She felt unworthy of the communion, inadequate to the great and terrible task of faith. She felt that if grace were indeed to be sufficient, then God would usher her into the communion at a time of his choosing. Further she felt that until he called, she would await God, faithfully but outside communion. She fears the easy path, a path that would lead to false religion. She fears an easy community that would blunt the profound loneliness. It is alone that she can be sure of herself, sure that reason guides her thought. It is alone, outside of the communion that she can be sure that faith is not propped up by her desire for community. In a brilliant line, this French Freedom fighter, who gave her life in resistance against the Nazis, admits that the desire for community is so strong in her that should she stumble upon a group of young Germans, singing patriotic songs, she would feel compelled to join them.

Waiting for God is a collection of letters, written to a Catholic priest. In these letters, she writes of her total and complete inadequacy. It is an immensely honest book, full of struggle and pain, but also of hope and beauty. She strives towards faith, at every moment finding faith to be impossible. The world is clear, but without hope or meaning, save through the impossible faith. She holds out, hoping for faith, praying for grace, without expectation that either will be granted. Who, she asks, am I to be worthy of such things?(less)

like 1 like

· see review

Jul 20, 2009

Lynn rated it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I’d like to share my thoughts about my recent reading of Simone Weil and my visit to St. Paul’s monastery. One of the good things at the monastery was the psalm talking about taking time away for prayer and how that is essential and how it has a lot of power because it forces us to leave everything that we know and that we can control and enter into the Divine Mystery. It takes a big letting go, and it removes us from the worries of the day.

I think this was a good reminder, because ...moreI’d like to share my thoughts about my recent reading of Simone Weil and my visit to St. Paul’s monastery. One of the good things at the monastery was the psalm talking about taking time away for prayer and how that is essential and how it has a lot of power because it forces us to leave everything that we know and that we can control and enter into the Divine Mystery. It takes a big letting go, and it removes us from the worries of the day.

I think this was a good reminder, because that has been one of my prayers is to learn how to not worry, and one of them is to let go by pulling away and diverting my attention from the concerns of everyday life.

And that ties into Simone Weil’s “Waiting for God” letters that were published after she died. She talks about the Divine Mystery—heaven—as being very remote outside of ourselves. "God can never be perfectly present to us here below on account of our flesh. But he can be almost perfectly absent from us in extreme affliction. . . . That is why the Cross is our only hope." I see that at lease in part as an immature view and that there is a lot of gray in God’s presence and that Heaven actually is largely an internal experience—“our Father who art in heaven”—is the God within. So her distance from God in this one writing may in part have been something that the Church thought was true and even Jesus as interpreted seems to have a tendency to deify God in a way that is artificial. So, I saw so much humanity in Simone while not fully agreeing with what she says here.

What I do see in her work is that she does wrestle with her relationship with God and she is so articulate about what she will and will not accept. It seems that the priest she wrote to valued her thoughts because her thinking and writing reflects an awareness of the Journey that the Soul is on. I see that Susan Sontag in February1963 in The New York Review of Books had similar thoughts about Weil and others when she wrote, “We read writers of such scathing originality for their personal authority, for the example of their seriousness, for their manifest willingness to sacrifice themselves for their truths, and—only piecemeal—for their ‘views’ As the corrupt Alcibiades followed Socrates, unable and unwilling to change his own life, but moved, enriched, and full of love; so the sensitive modern reader pays his respect to a level of spiritual reality which is not, could not, be his own.”

Later: On the web site http://www.chosunjournal.com/waiting.htm... in an essay by Edward Kim, I found this quote from “Waiting for God” which shows a different Simone Weil—where God is the inner God, “God alone has this power, the power really to think into being that which does not exist. Only God, present in us, can really think the human quality into the victims of affliction, can really look at them with a look differing from that we give to things, can listen to their voice as we listen to spoken words. Then they become aware that they have a voice, otherwise they would not have occasion to notice it. . . . God is present at the point where the eyes of those who give and those who receive meet." (p.93-4)
So, Simone Weil is a modern saint, who went to extremes and died a martyr. While we would not all want to walk her path, I for one find her work (in translation) amazing and want to read more of her work and about her life.
(less)

· see review

Oct 01, 2010

John rated it

Waiting for God finds Simone Weil commenting on any number of topics--the nature of affliction, her spiritual autobiography, and a lucid commentary on the Our Father.

As is my tendency with Weil, I spend a great deal of my time lost at sea. But every so often, a wave carries me in to shore as she expresses a truth in the pithiest, most precise of ways. It is these moments in Weil's work that I anticipate, and Waiting for God does not disappoint there.

My two favorite pieces in ...more

· see review

Sep 08, 2009

Bpatoosk rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: brilliance

Regardless of your particular Christian denomination/theology - this is a must read. Even if one doesn't agree with the doctrinal details she puts forth - I agreed with who she was and how she thought. It is rare that so logical and thoughtful a scholar grant God mystery. I put her right next to L'Engle and C.S. Lewis on my bookshelf as a brilliant mind who seeks not to define God, but to define how we go about looking for/at Him/Her/It.

· see review

Sep 27, 2010

Teresa rated it

· review of another edition

I found Weil s letters and essays in this collection to be insightful and interesting. I m not entirely in agreement with her in every particular, nor do I entirely understand her thought, but that s not an uncommon situation when I read philosophical writings. There was enough of value here to make it worth my time.[return][return]See my complete review at Shelf Love.

· see review

Oct 07, 2011

Andrew Boyle rated it

Shelves: philosophy, theology

Weil is a challenging writer, whose sincerity demands interaction and contemplation. That said, it is hard to come to terms with everything in the book, which is the point of her style and what she stood for. Profound insights are mixed in with what I find to be questionable ideas. Her honesty is still inspiring.

· see review

Dec 10, 2009

Daniel rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: College level reading

Shelves: non-fiction, philosophy, favorites

I read this book 20 years ago and it has had a profound affect on my life and my understanding of how to be in relation with the divine. Weil says that we must wait upon God's pleasure, that what we are is entirely up to God. She says that it is our attention that is most valuable and that we must give this to God. She says that the quality of our attention makes a big difference, even in our relationships with those around us. So, pay attention, wait and listen for what is coming.

...more

like 1 like

· see review

Jul 29, 2011

Linda Sunderland rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: christian

This is a effort by Weil to understand her own conversion to Christianity. It is a complex philosophical treatise, not a feel good 'journey to find God' book. The book is heady, intense, and intellectually-challenging, but well worth it in the end.

· see review

Feb 06, 2010

Ronald Tardelly,s.x. added it · review of another edition

menunggu itu sebuah pekerjaan indah, apalagi menunggu Tuhan. Ini bukan sebuah penantian pasif dan kosong, tapi penuh dan berdasar pada pengharapan...
simone weil yang suka bahasa yunani ini merumuskannya selalu dengan hypomone...waiting in hope

· see review

Mar 15, 2009

Diane rated it

· review of another edition

This beautiful book offers philosopher Simone Weil's thoughts on the Christian faith. Although Weil never officially joined the Church, she came to a deep faith in Christianity that is wonderfully told in this book. Highly recommended.

· see review

Feb 17, 2011

Leslie rated it

Shelves: for-great-books-class, nonfiction

My students find her illogical and inconsistent, but she seems to me so helplessly honest, and so driven to use her considerable intellect to figure out what the hell God wants her to do about everyone's pain, that I can't help it; I love her.

· see review

Apr 03, 2009

Jessica rated it

· review of another edition

Recommended to Jessica by: john

wanted to wait til i had something to say about this before updating to "read" (this plan has me 9 books behind & is obviously working brilliantly), but for now need to at least say amazing.

· see review

Mar 10, 2009

Judy rated it

· review of another edition

Worth reading, but mostly seems to be opinion and related to cultural beliefs so more interesting than thought provoking.

· see review

Jun 18, 2011

Leslie rated it

· review of another edition

Theological memoir and essays by well known French philosopher (b 1909 - d. 1943)

· see review

Apr 08, 2010

Kay rated it

· review of another edition

Simone Weil was a tortured young woman in many ways but had great spiritual insight.

· see review

Feb 10, 2010

notgettingenough rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: sociology

It's worth four stars just for the title, isn't it?

· see review

Nov 04, 2009

Elizabeth rated it

· review of another edition

Infuriating, disturbing, compelling, moving.

· see review

Mar 12, 2011

Sarah rated it

Shelves: 2011, faith-and-philosophy

Very challenging. I'll probably need to go back and beat my head against this one for another month or so to really solidify my thoughts and feelings toward this short, intense book, but Weil's thought is fascinating and troubling and sometimes beautiful and seems to be well worth the effort.

· see review

Aug 02, 2007

Bekki rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: spiritual atheists (?)

Shelves: ideas

Her writing is not presumptuous - when you are reading, are are immersed in the ideas and flow of a brilliant mind and forget about the fact that you are reading.

Her ideas about how we should live are extreme but full of truth, and her descriptions of concepts she feels passionate about are vivid and moving.

more to come.

· see review

May 31, 2009

Michelle added it · review of another edition

A lot of her talk about affliction is off-putting, as I don't think she understands it. Yeah, Weil forsook her upper-class life to temporarily work menial jobs. So did I, and I hardly think that counts as knowing the "affliction" she claims to understand so deeply.

· see review

Apr 14, 2010

djimiekk rated it

· review of another edition

Ebook versions from archive.org here.

· see review

Mar 07, 2007

Yi-heng added it · review of another edition

Simone Weil is the the ultimate subversive Christian who completely identified herself with the alien and rejected of institutionalized religion. A heroine of the faith whose writing is a clear strong draught of truth.

· see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 17 18 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (3)

Genres

Philosophy

25 users

Religion

16 users

Spirituality

9 users

Non Fiction

8 users

Religion > Theology

7 users

Christian

5 users

Writing > Essays

3 users

Classics

3 users

Religion > Christianity

3 users

Religion > Faith

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers Also Enjoyed

About Simone Weil

Simone Weil was a French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist. Weil was born in Paris to Alsatian agnostic Jewish parents who fled the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. Her brilliance, ascetic lifestyle, introversion, and eccentricity limited her ability to mix with others, but not to teach and participate in political movements of her time. She wrote extensively with both in...more

More about Simone Weil...

Books by Simone Weil

The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Pin It

Trivia About Waiting for God

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Waiting for God

“A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe the image is herself. An ugly woman knows it is not.” — 33 people liked it

“Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.” — 4 people liked it

More quotes…

Groups That Shelved Waiting for God

Anglicans

52 members

last activity Feb 02, 2012 05:50pm

shelf: read

title link	preview: Waiting for God
avg rating	preview: Waiting for God Goodreads rating: 4.11 (252 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6630134-waiting-for-god?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266795458m/6630134.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6630134-waiting-for-god?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Waiting for God by Simone Weil[/url]

Waiting for God

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Readers Also Enjoyed

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website