ABSTRACT
In Waiting for God, Simone Weil argues that the ‘attitude that brings about salvation is not like any form of activity’. Weil’s phenomenology of waiting is based upon a qualitative divide between what she calls morality, which ‘only depends on the will in what is, so to speak, its most muscular aspect’, and, religion, whose foundation is ‘attention animated by desire’, a ‘desire that saves’. Prayer is a privileged window into the temporal complexities of faith, as it incorporates efficacy and deferral. Prayer points and moods visibly changed, transitioning from hopeful pleas toward a dark and militaristic ambiance filled with authoritative attacks on the devil. The anthropologist was visibly tired, if not bored, in his lack of resources to wait for God. The believers looked surprisingly re-energized, despite their impressive display of religious athleticism. The mimetic relay of past miracles through testimonies about Atwea is coeval to the mimetic relay of desire for God and for his blessings.
