Monday, January 17, 2022

Mary & Simone: inimitable women

Reading is perhaps my greatest pleasure. Walking is a close second. Third, well, use your imagination...

While I read a lot, I suppose, I don't read nearly as much as I think I should or as much as I want to. Above all, I love being an undisciplined reader. As I grow older, I realize there is a warp and a woof, a trajectory, a natural coherence to what I read, when I read it, and the sequencing of what I read. I have never liked to read anything assigned to me. Given that, it's amazing I earned a doctorate. Trust me, while I am somewhat proud of my achievement, I don't put too much stock in the title "doctor." For those who poo-poo holding a Doctor of Ministry, I would bring my painfully researched 220-page dissertation to their attention. Yes, I am threatening t have you read it!

18th Century Russian Icon of Saint Mary of Egypt


As an example of "natural coherence," last night I finished Robert Zaretsky's excellent The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas On the heels of that, this morning I started Amy Frykolm's book on Saint Mary of Egypt- Wild Woman: A Footnote, the Desert, and My Quest for an Elusive Saint. The coherence between these books, between these two truly wild women- though I suspect Weil would take great umbrage at being called "wild"- is that both lived lives that really can't be replicated and certainly not lives you would recommend to anyone. Considering this, perhaps rather than "wild," their lives should be called extraordinary, or, better, yet: inimitable. I think Weil would be at least alright with the latter adjective.

In the Preface of Wild Woman, Frykolm cites literary critic David Jasper, who wrote this about Mary of Egypt:
Mary of Egypt's silent life... teaches little or nothing, but in the act of reading it provokes puzzlement and a demand to be taken seriously. It has a harshness which claims no validity by any external standard and no possibility of reenactment- hers is not a life actually to be lived- but it makes its excessive demands in ways that are socially disruptive and destabilizing pgs 11-12)
I like very much that Frykolm includes what is for many an uncomfortable fact that Sophronius' text includes: Mary is said to have liked sex, really liked sex.

Leaving home and going to the city of Alexandria, Mary engaged in prostitution. While there were quite probably other factors in play, the story, as it is handed on, seems intent on telling us that it was was not only out of necessity. "She liked sex so much," Frykolm writes, "that she didn't even [always?] charge money for it... even though she could have used the money" (pg 6).

There are several explanations as to why Sophronius' text deal with sex the way it does- one way is to denigrate it, but Frykolm, without dismissing other possible reasons, settles on desire, Mary's insatiable desire, which is what led her to the Holy Land where she had her encounter at the church and with icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the church's courtyard. This strikes me as a good explanation.

Simone Weil


Both women had what might be, albeit somewhat pathetically, described as "Christian conversion" experiences. Mary's experience occurred on the Feast of the Holy Cross at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Weil had three profound experiences: one in Portugal, one in Assisi (not at Saint Francis's Basilica, but in a church), and the third at the Benedictine monastery of Solesmes when she was experiencing one of her crushing migraines. Would that more Christian conversions were socially disruptive and destabilizing, like Jesus's own ministry, about which I am currently reading via The Gospel According to Saint Luke.

While Weil's non-silent rather vocal and literary life was far from silent- though writings could've easily never come to light (what a shame that would be)- her life, too, makes "excessive demands in ways that are socially disruptive and [potentially[ de-stabilizing." Zaretsky begins his comments on Weil's inimitability, by quoting her friend, Simone Pétrement, who asked: "Who would not be ashamed of oneself in Simone's presence, seeing the life she led?" He follows this by admitting "This has often been my experience with Weil." Reading Weil, he continues, "is always a revelation and a reproach." Elaborating, Zaretsky admits
I have never met, and will never meet, the expectations she had of herself and others. But, to be honest, I have also felt at times the irritation and impatience that many who met her also felt, exasperated by her extreme character, confused not just by some of her philosophical ideals, but also by her insistence upon enacting them in our lives. "What I cannot stand," she told her students, "is compromise" (pg 158)
But compromise we (I) do and often.

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