Julian of Norwich is author of this often quoted saying:
All shall be well and all shall be well
and all manner of things
shall be well."
--
She was born in England in about 1342.
Almost
nothing is known of her early life; we don’t even know if she was from
Norwich or chose to move there. She was a recluse under the direction
of Benedictine monks in Norwich, England.
A mystic, visionary, and writer, she was illiterate and dictated to a scribe. Her book, Revelations of Divine Love, which contains sixteen revelations she received while in an ecstatic trance, is still in print.
Source Leo Reynolds
from statue of Julian at
Norwich Cathedral UK
Juliana meditated, spoke, and wrote on the power of love, of evil, Christ’s Passion, and the nature of the Trinity. In her early 60s she shut herself in complete seclusion (albeit with a cat), as an anchoress in a small room attached to the church of St Julian in Norwich and never left until her death in about 1423.
She
belongs to a great flowering of medieval English mysticism but unlike
the Rhineland mystics, Julian and the other English mystics did not live
in a religious community, and she lived a hermit's life.
Julian's theology was particular optimistic, especially considering the times in which she lived.
Famine and cattle disease contributed to the forces that caused the Peasants' Revolt, and John Wycliff and his followers, the Lollards, were declared heretics. Some were burned and buried near Julian's church cell.
She wrote the following on prayer:-
"Pray
inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it. It does good, though you feel
nothing. Yes, even though you think you are doing nothing.
Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness. This is our Lord's will, ... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large. For if we do not trust as much as we pray, we fail in full worship to our Lord in our prayer; and also we hinder and hurt ourselves.
The reason is that we do not know truly that our Lord is the ground from which our prayer springeth; nor do we know that it is given us by his grace and his love.
Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. It is laying hold of His willingness. This is our Lord's will, ... that our prayer and our trust be, alike, large. For if we do not trust as much as we pray, we fail in full worship to our Lord in our prayer; and also we hinder and hurt ourselves.
The reason is that we do not know truly that our Lord is the ground from which our prayer springeth; nor do we know that it is given us by his grace and his love.
If
we knew this, it would make us trust to have of our Lord's gifts all
that we desire. For I am sure that no man asketh mercy and grace with
sincerity, without mercy and grace being given to him first".
Julian is quoted by T.S. Eliot in the Four Quartets:
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching
True Worship
Julian of Norwich
Be a gardener.
Dig a ditch,
toil and sweat,
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labour
and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits
to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God
as your true worship.
Dig a ditch,
toil and sweat,
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labour
and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits
to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God
as your true worship.
Some Quotes From Julian's Revelations here
Source of prayer above : Earth Prayers From Around the World
This brief video gives some insight into the life of an anchoress in the UK in medieval times.
Richard Rohr on Julian of Norwich
“Julian of Norwich said… ‘First there is the fall, and then there is the recovery from the fall. But both are the mercy of God.’ Maybe you can’t believe that until the second half of life.
“How did we ever lose that kind
of wisdom? Especially when it is almost everybody’s experience?…Jesus
reminded Julian that his crucifixion was the worst thing that happened in human
history and God made the best out of it to take away all of our excuses.
As they were for Jesus, ‘our wounds become honors.’ The great and
merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it
wrong! [See end of Mark 2]
“On a very practical level, the
problem is that contemporary Westerners have a very fragile sense of their
identity, much less an identity that can rest in union and relationship with
God.
Objectively, of course, we are already in union with God, but it is very hard for people to believe and experience this when they have no strong sense of identity, no boundaries, and no authentic religious experience.
Objectively, of course, we are already in union with God, but it is very hard for people to believe and experience this when they have no strong sense of identity, no boundaries, and no authentic religious experience.
People who have no experienced core are trying to create identities and let go
of boundaries. For them, it might be helpful to explain that prayer in
the early stages is quite simply a profound experience of that core: of
who we are, as Paul says, ‘hidden with Christ in God.’ (Col. 3:3)
“Those who rush to artificially
manufacture their own identity often end up with hardened and overly defended
edges. They are easily offended and are always ready to create a new
identity when the current one lets them down. They might become racists
or control freaks, people who are always afraid of the ‘other.’ Often
they become codependent or counterdependent, in either case living only in
reaction to someone or something else.
To them, negative identity is created quickly and feels sort of like life. Thus many people, even [especially] religious folks, settle for lives of ‘holier than thou’ or lives consumed by hatred of their enemies. Being over and against is a lot easier than being in love.
“Many others give up their
boundaries before they have them, always seeking their identity in another
group, experience, possession, or person. Beliefs like, ‘She will make me
happy,’ or ‘He will take away my loneliness,’ or ‘This group will make me feel
like I belong’ become a substitute for doing the hard work of growing up.
It is much easier to belong to a group than it is to know that you belong to
God. Those who firm up their own edges and identity too quickly without
finding their center in God and in themselves will normally be the enemies of
ecumenism, forgiveness, vulnerability, and basic human dialogue. Their
identity is too insecure to allow any movement in or out and their ‘Christ’
tends to be very small, tribal, and ‘just like them.’
If your prayer is
not enticing you outside your comfort zones, if your Christ is not an
occasional ‘threat,’ you probably need to do some growing up and learning to
love. You have to develop an ego before you can let go of it. Maybe
that is why Jesus just lived thirty years before he started
talking.
Too often, young adults full of Yeats’s ‘passionate intensity’ about doctrine and dogma and which group is going to heaven use God to shore up their non-selves.
Such traditionalism is actually avoiding the tradition of transformation through death and rebirth.
Too often, young adults full of Yeats’s ‘passionate intensity’ about doctrine and dogma and which group is going to heaven use God to shore up their non-selves.
Such traditionalism is actually avoiding the tradition of transformation through death and rebirth.
“Others let go of their edges too
easily in the name of being tolerant and open-minded, but even here
‘discernment of spirits’ is necessary. There is a tolerance in true
contemplatives because they have experienced the One Absolute, their own finite
minds, and the passing character of all things.
This is the virtue of humility or maybe even patience. But there is another tolerance today which is simply a refusal to stand up for anything.
To this kind of tolerant person, there are no boundaries worth protecting.
The tolerance of the skeptic is largely meaningless, creates little that lasts, and is unfortunately characteristic of much progressive and humanistic thought today.
This is the virtue of humility or maybe even patience. But there is another tolerance today which is simply a refusal to stand up for anything.
To this kind of tolerant person, there are no boundaries worth protecting.
The tolerance of the skeptic is largely meaningless, creates little that lasts, and is unfortunately characteristic of much progressive and humanistic thought today.
“Traveling the road of healthy
religion and true contemplation will lead to calmly held boundaries, which need
neither to be defended constantly nor abdicated in the name of
‘friendship.’
This road is a ‘narrow road that few travel upon’ these days (Matt. 7:14) It is what many of us like to call the ‘the Third Way’: the tertium quid that emerges only when you hold the tension of opposites.
This road is a ‘narrow road that few travel upon’ these days (Matt. 7:14) It is what many of us like to call the ‘the Third Way’: the tertium quid that emerges only when you hold the tension of opposites.
“The gift that the true contemplatives offer to themselves and society is that they know themselves as a part of a much larger Story, a much larger Self. In that sense, centered people are profoundly conservative, knowing that they stand on the shoulders of their ancestors and the Perennial Tradition.
Yet true contemplatives are paradoxically risk- takers and reformists, precisely because they have no private agendas, jobs, or securities to maintain.
Their
security and identity are founded in God, not in being right, being paid by a
church, or looking for promotion in people’s eyes.
These people alone can move beyond self-interest and fear to do God’s necessary work. Look at how many saints, theologians, and especially woman foundresses of religious orders were corrected, threatened and even persecuted by the church during their lifetimes.
God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.
These people alone can move beyond self-interest and fear to do God’s necessary work. Look at how many saints, theologians, and especially woman foundresses of religious orders were corrected, threatened and even persecuted by the church during their lifetimes.
God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.
“People who have learned to live
from their center in God know which boundaries are worth maintaining and which
can be surrendered, although it is this very struggle that often constitutes
their deepest ‘dark nights.’
Both maintaining and surrendering boundaries ironically require an ‘obedience,’ because they require listening to a Voice beyond their own.
If you want a litmus test for people who are living out of one’s True Self, that might be it: they are always free to obey, but they might also disobey the expectations of church and state to obey who-they-are-in-God. Think of St. Paul, Thomas a Becket, Joan of Arc, Thomas Merton, or Dorothy Day. Scary stuff, this contemplation.
Both maintaining and surrendering boundaries ironically require an ‘obedience,’ because they require listening to a Voice beyond their own.
If you want a litmus test for people who are living out of one’s True Self, that might be it: they are always free to obey, but they might also disobey the expectations of church and state to obey who-they-are-in-God. Think of St. Paul, Thomas a Becket, Joan of Arc, Thomas Merton, or Dorothy Day. Scary stuff, this contemplation.
“By contrast, probably the most
obvious indication of non-centered (‘ec-centric’) people is that they are,
frankly, very difficult to live with. Every one of their ego-boundaries
must be defended, negotiated, or worshipped: their reputation, their needs,
their nation, their security, their religion, even their ball team.
They convince
themselves that these boundaries are all they have to worry about because they
are the sum-total of their identity. You can tell if you have placed a
lot of your eggs in these flimsy baskets if you are hurt or offended a
lot.
You can hardly hurt saints because they are living at the center and do not need to protect the circumference of feelings and needs.
You can hardly hurt saints because they are living at the center and do not need to protect the circumference of feelings and needs.
Ec-centric persons though, are a hurt waiting to happen. In fact, they
will create tragedies to make themselves feel alive. I am told that
personnel work now represents 80 percent of the time and energy that American
companies have to expend. You might even say that a certain degree of
contemplative seeing is actually necessary for the effective life of an
institution or a community.
“Toward the end of his life,
[psychologist] Carl Jung said that he was not aware of a single one of his
patients in the second half of life whose problems could not have been solved
by contact with what he called ‘the Numinous’ and we would call God (Letters,
1973, 1:377).
An extraordinary statement from a man who had no great love
for institutional religion.
I believe that we have no real access to who we really are except in God.
Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are.
Only when we live and see through God can ‘everything belong.’
I believe that we have no real access to who we really are except in God.
Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are.
Only when we live and see through God can ‘everything belong.’
All other systems exclude, expel, punish and protect to find identity for their members in ideological perfection or some kind of ‘purity.’ The contaminating element always has to be searched out and scolded.
Apart from taking up so much useless time and energy, this effort keeps us from the one and only task of love and union.
As the Hasidic masters taught their students,
‘Rake the muck this way. Rake the muck that way. It will still be
muck.
In the time you are brooding, you could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven."
In the time you are brooding, you could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven."
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