Sunday
Julian’s interpretation of her God-experience is unlike the religious views common for much of history up to her time. It’s not based in sin, shame, guilt, or fear of God or hell. Instead, it’s full of delight, freedom, intimacy, and cosmic hope.
—Richard Rohr
Monday
The concept and human experience of mother is so primal, so big, deep, universal, and wide that to apply it only to our own mothers is far too small a container. It can only be applied to God.
—Richard Rohr
Tuesday
God did not say: You will not be assailed, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted, but he said: You will not be overcome. God loves us and delights in us, and so he wishes us to love him and delight in him and trust greatly in him, and all will be well.
—Julian of Norwich
Wednesday
None of us will be moved in any way to say, Lord, if only things had been different, all would have been well. Instead, we shall all proclaim in one voice, Beloved One, may you be blessed, because it is so: all is well.
—Julian of Norwich
Thursday
Radical union is the recurring experience of the saints and mystics of all traditions. We don’t have to discover or prove it; we only have to retrieve what has been rediscovered—and enjoyed again and again—by those who desire and seek God and love.
—Richard Rohr
Friday
Oneness is all pervasively the reality of all that is. There is nothing but the oneness. Original sin or brokenness is falling out of, or being exiled from, the infinite oneness that alone is real. Oneing, Julian was saying, is turning back around to the oneness that’s always there.
—James Finley
Week Thirty-Three Practice
Expanding Our Images of God
Author Shannon K. Evans finds in Julian of Norwich a model for how to expand our images of God:
To Julian of Norwich, feminine depictions of God were not radical, subversive, or rebellious. They were obvious, inevitable, and clear. She didn’t feel the need to defend her words, she simply wrote what was revealed to her in the visions: God has masculine qualities and God has feminine qualities. Both are important. Voilà!
Unfortunately, it’s not so easy for most of us. We are constantly filtering our theology through what we consider to be permissible. Unlike Dame Julian, we tend to defer to precedent rather than follow the nudgings of our own souls. We trust those in authority more than we trust ourselves.
But the witness of Julian of Norwich asks us to be brave; to dig deep within and experience God in our guts, not just in our churches; to engage our spiritual imaginations in the pursuit of a salvation that sets us free today—not just after death….
Engaging with the feminine face of God does not mean obliterating the masculine one. Not only is there room for both in our spiritual imaginations but Julian of Norwich would argue that there’s room for both at the same time. Dame Julian approached gender binaries playfully, with a refreshing absence of precision. She repeatedly wrote things like “Jesus births,” “he mothers,” and “Jesus as both Son and Mother,” knowing in full confidence that the One who whispered the world into existence does not conform to gender binaries established by human society….
In the midst of our own discomfort and hesitancies, Julian of Norwich offers an ease, a gentle reassurance, that God is much larger than our finite brains can comprehend. This God we know and love—this God we have experienced—is big enough to hold it all. The question is, can we put aside our fears and prejudices and get on board with that?
Reference:
Excerpted from Shannon K. Evans, The Mystics Would like a Word (New York: Convergent, 2024). Copyright © 2024 by Shannon K. Evans. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, The Showings, translation by Mirabai Starr (detail), 2022, photo, Albuquerque. Original translation by Mirabai Starr. Cover art by Erin Currier. Click here to enlarge image. Julian of Norwich gazes at us with calm in the midst of her blazing visions.
