Simone Weil

She had a lot of really good things to write about and it was hard to just pick a few, but I think I narrowed it down.
"In what concerns divine things, belief is not appropriate. Only certainty will do. Anything less than certainty us unworthy of God." I thought that was very insightful, yet very hard to dd. I think when I was a kid, I accepted everything as true in Sunday school, yet as I've gotten older I've found that it's healthy to question little things about our faith. It helps us better understand where we come from, and we have more certainty in it as soon as we find the answer.
"God continually showers the fullness of his grace on every being in the universe, but we consent to receive it to a greater or lesser extent. In purely spiritual matters, God grants all desires. Those who have less have asked for less." I totally believe that God's grace is out there for the taking from anyone who is lucky enough to find it. Yet, her second part of this thought contradicted what Isaac said. She is saying that you will only get what you ask for. If you ask for more, you get more, if you expect less then you get less. Isaac claims that we shouldn't think of ourselves at all, just believe and trust in God, and he will provide more than we ever could have imagined asking. I liked this view better because all it asks of you is to trust that God will provid on his promises. Simone is wanting us to write out our wish list and go to God like he is Santa Clause. The more you ask for the more you get!

Isaac of Ninevah

It's interesting that Isaac is from Ninevah, the same place where Jonah was supposed to go. Anyways, moving on... He has some interesting points that I had a hard time putting into action.
For example, he compares love to a stream that dries up with no rain, and a mighty spring that gushes out of the earth and flows forever. I thought that the stream can be compared to the conditional love we have for one another on earth. A girlfriend's love for a boyfriend, a husband's love for his wife, a friend's love for another friend. Although our love may seem unconditional, yet when you really look at it, we're very selfish and most of us love that person conditionally. We love them because they make us happy, they make us laugh, we like to do the same things together, because they love us. But if that person suddenly changed one day, and they were rude, unenjoyable to be around, unsupportive, depressed, or even claimed that they didn't love you, would you still love them? I don't know, it just dawned on me, I think that that would be difficult if someone told me that, and would probably would stop loving them. Just as the rain stops and its river dries up, when the love diminishes the love is gone. Some of us would probably try for some time to keep loving that person in hopes that they will love us again one day, but how long can that go on? Okay, depressing enough for one day, lets move on to something a bit more exciting.
I thought it was interesting that he said "When we trust God with our whole heart, we don't fill our prayers with 'Give me this' or 'Take this from me.' We don't even think of ourselves when we pray." I've always learned "Ask and you shall receive.", so I do pray for others, yet I also include myself in there as well, because it says that when I ask, and trust God to do it, it should happen. But to not think of ourselves at all when we pray is a new one for me. "At every moment we trust our Father in heaven, whose love infinitely surpasses the love of all earthly fathers and who gives us more than we ourselves could ask for or even imagine." So we don't think of ourselves , and trust only in God, he will provide for us more than we can imagine. That's really cool! I never even thought of that before.

Symeon the New Theologian

Symeon's first passage was similar to Al-Muhasibi in that he's talking about plunging into God's vision. Most of these writers talk about focusing all your attention on God, getting God's vision, forgetting about the world, yet of all these, I loved how Symeon phrased it. "When a man walks into the sea up to his knees or waist, he can see the water all around him. But when he dives into the water, he can no longer see anything outside, and he knows only that his whole body is in the water." Once you get God's vision, all you can see is that vision, and the whole world isn't even a thought or even in your line of vision.
Another theme in these writings is that God is all-knowing, we can't even comprehend what he knows or even who he is... and we never will. He says it very clearly here, "The more a man enters the light of understanding, the more aware he is of his own ignorance." It's so funny, because when you first look at this sentence it appears that it is contradicting itself. If you are entering into the light of understanding, and going deeper and deeper into understanding, aren't you understanding more? Yet the more you learn, the more ignorant you realize you are.

Abu Abdallah Al-Harith Al-Muhasibi

Gosh, these guys have such long names. I really liked this passage. Instead of reading over it once and deciding if I liked it, I kept reading each sentence over and over to help myself better understand what he was writing. He was very insightful, and I enjoyed this reading.
One of the phrases that I kept going over was "when solitude is combined with secret intercourse with the Beloved, the joy of that intercourse overwhelms the mind, so that it is no longer concerned with this world and what is in it." Intercourse means intimacy with God. He is saying that if we have this "secret" intimacy (it's only secret because in this instance you are in solitude) with Him, then it overwhelms us and we are so consumed by it that we forget about the world: possessions, school, work, problems, etc. Isn't that awesome? I don't know, something about that sounds so cool. This sounds like it could be so refreshing to your soul, to forget about everything around you to focus on that one important thing in your life. This makes me think about an experience I had each year I went on a missions trip to Mexicali. We were not allowed to bring any electronics, we slept on a cot/ cushion all week in a tent, we only got 1-2 showers the entire week (2 was if you were lucky, and believe me walking around in the dusty dirt all day and running around in the hot hot sun and sweating like mad, you wanted 2 so bad), and we took the week off of both school and work, yet the entire week we had wonderful chapels, quiet time with God, and working with others who encouraged you to go after God that week was awesome. It was the best week ever! There's so much to complain about yet at the end of each day I was more joyful than I had been in a long time. I forgot all about school, my favorite t.v. shows, work, my ipod, and I didn't care, that was the cool part.