Relentless necessity, wretchedness, distress, the crushing burdens of poverty and of labour which wears us out, cruelty, torture, violent death, constraint, disease -- all these constitute divine love. It is God who in love withdraws from us so that we can love him. But if we were exposed to the direct radiance of his love, without the protection of space, of time and of matter, we should be evaporated like water in the sun; there would not be enough "I" in us to make it possible to surrender the "I" for love's sake. Necessity is the screen set between God and us so that we can be. It is for us to pierce through the screen so that we cease to be.
--Simone Weil
Gravity and Grace
and in the margin of weil's text, the woman i love has written:
there would be no delay,
no existence
