our apprenticeship

"When we hold a newspaper upside down, we see the strange forms of the printed characters. When we turn it upright again, we do not see the characters. We see the words. A passenger in a boat seized by the tempest only knows the complex combination of wind, current, and swell with the position of the boat, its form, its sails, and its rudder.

In the same way that we learn to read or learn a trade, we must learn to sense in everything, above all and almost only, the obedience of the universe to God. This is truly an apprenticeship. Like an apprenticeship, it demands time and effort. For those who have completed their term, there is no more difference between things, between events, than the difference felt by someone who knows how to read the same phrases reproduced several times, written in red ink, in blue ink. or printed with this, that or other characters. Those who don't know how to read only see the differences. For those who know how to read, it is all equivalent since the phrase is the same. For the one who achieves apprenticeship, things and events, everywhere and always, are the vibrations of the same, infinitely fresh (sweet) divine word."

                                                            -  Simone Weil,  from Magnificat, July 2018