Metaxu

Mystic and philosopher, Simone Weil, spoke of the world as a "metaxu", comparing it to a wall which divides two prisoners (the soul and God), yet, which they may make use of in order to communicate with each other, albeit in a relatively primitive way, by a series of signals, or taps, as it were, upon the wall.

I'd like to borrow this great word, if I may, to suggest a slightly different image, of the crust temporarily overlaying a pond in wintertime. As the world is in a ferment between order and chaos, so, the ice is frozen and rigid, while undergoing the dynamic chemical reactions of melting. With the coming of spring, like a grace, this conflict intensifies, or "heats up", as the rays of God's love and wisdom enter the ice, and cause it to split into water, on the one hand, and steam, on the other; the water molecules dropping, like bodies, back into the ubiquitous pond, while the molecules of steam ascend, like liberated spirits, up into the sky.

Understood in this way, the metaxu, and the world, is not clearly distinct from the life and soul of man, nor is it something which divides man from God. Instead, the soul exists bound, as the freedom of water molecules is bound, within the icy corporeality of the world, in the body of a man. And by the light, heat, and grace of God, we are freed to ascend in a more airy and ethereal form, out of the prison of the metaxu.

Did I say prison? But the metaxu is also that ultimate ground of being out of which man is taken; man being the self-evident jewel and fruit of the world; just as man's soul is the luster and sweetness in the heart of man. The marriage between God and the soul takes place in the light of time; which is also the light of wisdom; or truth, as it is capable of being perceived by man. This consecration is the accomplishment and fruition of the nature of metaxu, as well as its own negation, and the sacrificial dissolving of its own substance into something distinct and, yet, akin to itself.

Ultimately, for souls trapped in the world and clouded by sin, there is no clear boundary between what we are, what the world is, and what God is, -- but we may approach an intuitive understanding of these truths by the convenience of analogy.