Paying attention:
Malone, Nancy M
PAYING ATTENTION SIMONE WEIL ON EDUCATION DEBATES ABOUT the 'what" of education very quickly pose questions about the "why" of education. Yet educators, even Catholic educators, often appear to be...
...Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it...
...Nor is it important to have a natural taste or aptitude for what is being studied...
...The essay is called "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God...
...One might expect some interesting views from such a woman...
...She was a mystic, a philosopher, a writer and teacher, a Jew by birth and a Roman Catholic by conviction, but one who refused on principle to be baptized...
...nancy m. malone (Sister Nancy M. Malone, O.S.U., writes in the areas of theology, spirituality, campus ministry, and higher education...
...They would do well, I believe, to look at an essay included in Simone Weil's autobiographical Waiting for Gad (Harper Colophon Book, $4.95...
...What strange and provocative words for us to read in a piece about education...
...It requires the "negative effort" of leaving the mind empty and ready to be penetrated by the object...
...To grasp how and why Weil relates attention to prayer, everything depends on understanding what she means by attention...
...And this attitude is to be cultivated not only when engaging in philosophic speculation, but in doing a geometry problem (her favorite example), or translating a Latin text...
...Her vocation to solidarity with the suffering and the alienated led her to believe that she should remain an "outsider" rather than "enter" the church...
...It becomes clear at this point - and she says a good bit more - that all of the expressions used above fit the classical descriptions of the attitude of spirit required for contemplation...
...Following this same vocation, she became both a field and factory worker in France, and experienced the utter calamity of war in a few brief weeks in 1936 on the front with the Republican army in Spain...
...So that, no matter what the "resulf" of study, in the normal use of that word, whether a solution to a problem is found or not, no effort at attention is ever wasted because "the result will one day be discovered in prayer...
...in fact it is an advantage not to...
...The reason that she gives for her position is intriguing...
...It is that prayer consists of attention...
...The attention she is describing consists of waiting, watching, of suspending thought...
...The quality of attention counts for much in the quality of prayer...
...Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance...
...It is not only that Weil deals in extreme statement or paradox - which she surely does - but her short essay is simply too packed, the ideas too intricately related, and the concepts too rich to be summarized or paraphrased, at least in the space available here...
...But that is not all...
...Even the interest intrinsic to the subject being studied is secondary to developing the faculty of attention...
...To give this kind of attention means being able to say to our neighbor: "What are you going through...
...Although she suffered all of her life from ill health, especially violent migraine headaches, she died at the age of thirty-four of what may be called voluntary starvation...
...If school studies are being pursued with "a view to the love of God," (and mat notion is itself not common), the sole interest and real object of them is to develop the faculty of attention...
...it is its substance...
...And it is enough but indispensable to know how to look at a person in a certain way: with attention, empty of oneself, ready to receive the one being looked at, just as he or she is, in all individual, particular truth, and not "as a unit in a collection, or as a specimen from a social category labeled 'unfortunate.' " Weil's essay, brief as it is, says a lot about humility, desire, joy, evil in the soul, light, truth-Truth, love of God and neighbor, compassion...
...The power of attention developed in studies will be available at the time of prayer...
...She does not mean contracting your muscles, holding your breath, and knitting your brow...
...Why then, is this faculty stressed so insistently and without qualification by Weil as the value of studying...
...The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult tiling...
...The title itself is arresting, as are the facts in the life of this unusual woman...
...If one pursues them with this intention - and with humility...
...I call it to your "attention...
...In other words, school studies with a view to the love of God are a preparation for the gift of prayer...
...it is almost a miracle, it is a miracle...
...Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention...
...The student is not to set out on a search, but to be ready to receive naked truth...
...Weil dismisses, one after another, all of the usual motives, and incentives for studying: to pass examinations, win honors, get good grades, etc...
...It doesn't occur to her to mention getting a job...
...the love of our neighbor, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance...
...Nor does she mean the exercise of sheer will power...
...Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough...
...Some hints, however, may be tantalizing enough to entice others to ponder the essay for themselves...
...Yet educators, even Catholic educators, often appear to be at a loss when faced with inquiries into the basic purposes of the enterprise in which they are engaged...
...After repeated attempts, I have given up hope of capturing all the leading ideas of what is, after all, only an eleven-page essay on studies...
...This kind of attention is difficult and even more repugnant to"something in the soul" than fatigue is to the body...
Vol. 110 • April 1983 • No. 7
