The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, What are you going through?
― Simone Weil

Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
― Simone Weil

Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.
― Simone Weil

The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that sometimes ships are wrecked by it.
― Simone Weil, Waiting for God

Love of God is pure when joy and suffering inspire an equal degree of gratitude.
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them.
― Simone Weil

Compassion directed toward oneself is true humility.
― Simone Weil

The world is the closed door. It is a barrier. And at the same time it is the way through.

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. … Every separation is a link.
― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

True definition of science: the study of the beauty of the world.
― Simone Weil

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.
― Simone Weil

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
― Simone Weil

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

  ― Simone Weil

 

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
― Simone Weil

 Simone Weil: Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. 

An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer. And you choose that object to concentrate upon which will best focus your consciousness. D.H. Lawrence

Idol Worship

My mother ran to her bed and sobbed the day the light blue Volvo was delivered. She had ordered Navy blue!

She sobbed during late night movies but never when we were beat up by bullies.

Objects, furniture and photographs were more important than her children. 

These were advertising people after all. 

It was all about how it looked and never about reality.

Isn't this what is called idol worship? 

Water loves the horizontal, yearns to shed all but two dimensions.

 Leonard Trawick  

What is most personal is most universal.

 ― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Trees and Leaves

I made a delicious dinner tonight was two small heads of chopped fresh broccoli, 1 bunch of chopped fresh kale, 1 bulb of chopped fresh garlic, all sauteed in olive oil, with splashes of soy sauce and Chianti for sweetness after everything has cooked a bit. 

Covered it and let it steam a bit.

I taste tested it to decide when it was done.

Enjoyed over cooked millet or rice or whatever you have kicking around.

I call it Trees and Leaves. Broccoli trees and kale leaves!

Be Grateful: I saw this red truck and gorgeous logo on my way home from the pool and smiled.

This is a real company. BE GRATEFUL trucking.