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The wife of my God is matter; they wrestle with each other, they laugh and weep, they cry out in the nuptial bed of flesh. They spawn and are dismembered. They fill sea, land, and air with species of plants, animals, men, and spirits. This primordial pair embraces, is dismembered, and multiplies in every living creature. All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living thing. God is imperiled in the sweet ecstasy and bitterness of flesh. But he shakes himself free, he leaps out of brains and loins, then clings to new brains and new loins until the struggle for liberation again breaks out from the beginning.

Nikos Kazantzakis#94

StruggleLifeDivineGodCreationMatter

About this quote

What does it mean?
God and matter are described as wrestling partners whose struggle creates all life.
In plain terms
Life results from a constant struggle between God and matter.
What can you take from it?
Existence is a conflict between the divine and the physical.

Where it applies

  • cosmic reflection
  • theological thought

Putting it to work

  • understanding existence
  • seeing struggle as creative

Questions to consider

  • Is creation a struggle?
  • How does God relate to matter?

Another view

It personifies God and matter as lovers in a way that simplifies theology.

More from Nikos Kazantzakis

  1. Profound and incommensurable is the worth of this flowing world: God clings to it and ascends, God feeds upon it and increases.

    Permalink to quote #93
  2. Joy! Joy! I did not know that all this world is so much part of me, that we are all one army, that windflowers and stars struggle to right and left of me and d…

    Permalink to quote #95
  3. If you are a man of learning, fight in the skull, kill ideas and create new ones. God hides in every idea as in every cell of flesh. Smash the idea, set him fr…

    Permalink to quote #92

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