Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair

by Christian Wiman

According to Simone Weil, it is the self that separates us from God, and which we therefore must try to annihilate. We possess nothing in the world—a mere chance can strip us of everything—except the power to say “I.” That is what we have to give to God—in other words, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act which it is given us to accomplish—only the destruction of the “I.” Gravity and Grace There is a real truth here, but it is in a strange way distorted by the very clarity and austerity with which it is presented. Christianity teaches that we are to put others first, are to efface ourselves and our own needs. But to efface is not to erase, not completely; complete kenosis is possible only for God. In the end it’s never quite clear to me what Weil means by the “self” unless it’s simply every single thing that makes us human—or perhaps more accurately, every single thing that makes us individually human.