Simone Weil

Interesting how we come to know great thinkers and writers. Several years ago, I was having lunch with Gary O'Malley at the Brookwood Grill when he told me about a (then) new book by Os Guinness entitled The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. In only three brief sentences in chapter 2, "Seekers Sought," he introduces Simone Weil, "the Jewish philosoper and follower of Christ" (p. 10).

Why had I never heard of her before?

A trip to a local bookstore and a helpful clerk at the information desk yielded two titles: Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage by Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Coles, M.D., and Waiting for God by Simone Weil.

Coles calls her "an exceptionally brilliant scholar," who had "a thorough, assured knowledge of mathematics, physics, biology - the full range of natural science," and who "had a unique capacity to keep thinking politically, historically, and economically, at the same time embracing theology and religious philosophy. Most importantly she was "a solitary seeker of God's company."

Simone Weil (1909 - 1943). A brief life of 34 years. Died of tuberculosis in a sanitarium outside of London during WWII. Here is one sample of her thought:

"The infinity of space and time separates us from God. How are we to seek for him? How are we to go toward him? Even if we were to walk for hundreds of years, we should do no more than go round and round the world. Even in an airplane we could not do anything else. We are incapable of progressing vertically. We cannot take a step toward the heavens. God crosses the universe and comes to us."

- Simone Weil, Waiting for God

The Meissen Apostles

The twelve antique statues of the Twelve Apostles that are pictured are replicas of the colossal marble statues in the Archbasilica of the Lateran in Rome. In 1775, sculptor Johann Joachim Kandler produced these copies in exquisite porcelain at the world-famous procelain factory in Meissen, Germany.

The Meissen Apostles may be seen to the right of the mantle in the Music Room at the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina. The pieces are from several different sets made for the Empresses Amalia and Maria Theresa of the Austrian Hapsburgs.

Top row from left to right: Bartholomew, James the brother of John, Matthew, John, James the son of Alphaeus, and Peter.

Bottom row from left to right: Thomas, Simon the Cananaean, Paul, Andrew, Thaddeus, and Philip.

The title Classic Discipleship refers to a leadership course on mentoring that I teach. For more information, you may contact me at:

The Jackson Institute
Tel: 770-518-7994
jmusselman@mindspring.com

Note: The picture (above) was designed by Mark Misenheimer of Misenheimer Creative, http://www.misenheimer.com

Dickens' Description of Fagin in "Oliver Twist"

“As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal."

Our 8-member literary group read Oliver Twist during the month of April and discussed it on Friday night, April 22, 2005.

...one more memorable quote:

“But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble’s soul; his heart was waterproof."

"For An Autograph" by James Russell Lowell

Though old the thought and oft exprest,
Tis his at last who says it best, -
I'll try my fortune with the rest.

Life is a leaf of paper white
Whereon each one of us may write
His word or two, and then comes night.

"Lo, time and space enough," we cry,
"To write an epic!" so we try
Our nibs upon the edge, and die.

Muse not which way the pen to hold,
Luck hates the slow and loves the bold,
Soon come the darkness and the cold.

Greatly begin! though hou have time
But for a line, be that sublime, -
Not failure, but low aim, is crime.

Ah, with what lofty hope we came!
But we forget it, dream of fame,
And scrawl, as I do here, a name.

"Fox Hunt" by Ryan Musselman

My son Ryan's painting of an early morning fox hunt.

"We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it. The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way."

- C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

Jesus

"Jesus is smart. If he is divine, would he be dumb?"

- Dr. Dallas Willard, professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California

In Praise of a Good Wife

"He thought his wife a wonderful woman; he knew that without her he would hardly be more than a clerk in some other man's hotel."

- Willa Cather, My Antonia

Description of a Sunset

This is the best description of a sunset I have ever read:

"There I would often lie, as the sun went down, and watch the silent growth of another sea, which the stormy ocean of the wind could not disturb - the sea of the darkness. First it would begin to gather in the bottom of hollow places. Deep valleys, and all little pits on the hillsides, were wellsprings where it gathered, and whence it seemed to overflow, till it had buried the earth beneath its mass, and, rising high into the heavens, swept over the faces of the stars, washed the blinding day from them, and let them shine, down through the waters of the dark, to the eyes of men below."

- George MacDonald, The Portent

The Da Vinci Code

I was in the Louvre in Paris on March 14, and momentarily thought about Dan Brown's best-selling book, The Da Vinci Code. Directed by Ron Howard, the movie is coming in 2006. Will it shake the very foundations of Christianity? Was Jesus really married to Mary Magdalene? Did she bear his daughter? Christians have nothing to fear. To date, the greatest historians (even those who may want to believe the story) admit that there is no historical proof for any of these speculations. The book is fiction. I enjoyed the book, but there is no Priory of Sion and the Catholic Church is not covering up the truth about a blood-line that can be traced back to Jesus.

The Weight of Glory

My favorite essay. The Weight of Glory is the title of C.S. Lewis' famous sermon that he preached in the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, on June 8, 1941. Walter Hooper has it right: it is "an incomparable explication of virtue, goodness, desire, and glory." Lewis maintained that though Christianity is sometimes difficult to understand, it is worth fighting for and, in the second quote, argues for the supremacy of God's thoughts.

If our religion (Christianity) is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellent; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellent which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know.

I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed, how we think of Him is of no importance except insofar as it is related to how He thinks of us.

C.S. Lewis

Walker Percy

"The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life."

- The Moviegoer

My Reminder to Give Thanks

The remains of the car in which I was riding after our head-on collision with another car on April 3, 1970. Two people died. Main lessons: the brevity of life; divine sovereignty; new resolve to live for God; boldness; the love of family and friends.

Worth Thinking About

"How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals."

- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees, no. 36

I have benefited greatly from the brilliance of Pascal over the years. Reading his Pensees (Thoughts) has helped shape my worldview and driven me to Christ. Perhaps Dr. Peter Kreeft, associate professor of philosophy at Boston College, has said it best: "Every pensees, every word in every pensees, is a cobblestone in the road leading to the same Christ, a sign pointing to the same home."