Since reading the Bonhoeffer biography, I've moved on to Simone Weil's Waiting for God. Her prose has a repetitive SVO syntax that feels both domineeringly authoritative and lulling, with a tone reminiscent of Bonhoeffer, Lewis, and Sayers--perhaps all those great 20th-century thinkers.

In any case, I found one of her essays, "School Studies," particularly compelling so far. In graduate school especially I've often struggled with questions of the worth of academic training since I tend to attach far too much importance to studies and then to want to discount them completely because they never satisfy that importance. 

Weil's approach is one I had yet to encounter: that regardless of intrinsic worth, studying is beneficial simply as a discipline that prepares the mind for prayer. Since earlier this year our Bible study group worked through Spencer's Awakening the Quieter Virtues, and since Spencer begins his book with a study of discernment and attentiveness, Weil's emphasis on attention as a prerequisite for prayer and worship seems particularly appropriate. 

Below, a couple of extended quotes from Weil on the connection between paying attention to intellectual study and worship. The first stems from her discussion about how practicing desire for truth--desire for truth in schoolwork--enables the mind to desire the ultimate Truth, Christ Himself. The second stems from her discussion about how recognising faults in intellectual work may actually be more helpful for cultivating humility than recognising sin.

~~

The best support for faith is the guarantee that if we ask our Father for bread, he does not give us a stone. Quite apart from explicit religious belief, every time that a human being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces no visible fruit…. Students must therefore work without any wish to gain good marks, to pass examinations, to win school successes; without any reference to their natural abilities and tastes; applying themselves equally to all their tasks, with the idea that each one will help to form in them the habit of that attention which is the substance of prayer….

The second condition is to take great pains to examine squarely and to contemplate attentively and slowly each school task in which we have failed, seeing how unpleasing and second rate it is, without seeking any excuse or overlooking any mistake or any of our tutor’s corrections, trying to get down to the origin of each fault. There is a great temptation to do the opposite, to give a sideways glance at the corrected exercise if it is bad and to hide it forthwith. Most of us do this nearly always…. Above all it is thus that we can acquire the virtue of humility, and that is a far more precious treasure than all academic progress…. Consciousness of sin gives us the feeling that we are evil, and a kind of pride sometimes finds a place in it. When we force ourselves to fix the gaze… upon a school exercise in which we have failed through sheer stupidity, a sense of our mediocrity is borne in upon us with irresistible evidence. No knowledge is more to be desired. 

– Simone Weil, “School Studies”