Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love - Robert Fruehwirth

hi Oh welcome everybody there there's our pager I can't bear stop for the bells ring because it's not that's that's our timer so welcome welcome signals Cathedral thanks so much all for coming in on this lovely autumn day my name is Elizabeth Foy I'm the head of adult learning here and it's my privilege of my joy to put on these events and I have to say obviously all events are equal and I love them equally and nobody has a favorite child but it's actually Israel one of my favorite children because Robert through whose name I always has been but as I'm sorry through with exactly that's not true is has become a friend did a wonderful day for us a couple of years ago some of you might be it might have been here on that day a reflective day about Julian of Norwich it was at the time the priests director at the shrine in Norwich and is now living in North Captain orth Carolina in the States and so very very good to seeing back here but it was a particularly special day to me a deeply important day for me and I did urge him to write it all down as I thought it shouldn't be just contained about 30 or 40 people who were there that day and I'm very very pleased to say he did write it all down and suppor and this very wonderful book is in part it is comes out of his long long meditations and Confirmation with Julie and about Julian over 20 years in the contemplative order of Julian in the States and then as the director preach higher priests director of the shrine in Norwich so a great spiritual connection I think especially with Julian or with Julian's extraordinary project so I'm particularly pleased that he's here today particularly pleased that he's come back to us at the at the other end of this mammoth journey of writing this book and I'm going to hand over to him well thank you Elizabeth I really do want to thank Elizabeth for inviting me to be here here in London as a citizen of a mirror former colony it is overwhelming to be here at st. Paul's Cathedral as we say in the States it's awesome it's incredible to be here but Elizabeth has done much more as she hinted then just invite me to speak here this morning in 2014 she wrote me a letter and invited me to speak and to offer a day of reflection for the adult forum on Julian of Norwich and on Julian's most famous saying which is all shall be well and so I agreed to do that and went off to the beautiful royal foundation of st. Catherine's and you have things like royal foundations here wonderful and we had this day on all shall be well and what happened on that day was so amazing for me personally and for the people on the day that it kind of grew into this book with Elizabeth's help so now we have this book and the day and now she invited me here so she really is the guiding spirit the guardian angel of that book and I'm really grateful and that she prompted me to do that so what I'd like to do today is to share what happened on that quiet day if you were there we'll go through it again and and then tell you what I came to from writing this book on Julian and some new insight into compassion I believe the whole of Julian spirituality the whole of her theology the whole of her experience of God is fundamentally about compassion and that a Julian spirituality is an actualization of the Christian faith that happens when we are compassionate ok so it's all about compassion but before I do that and talk about the day I should introduce Julian herself and say a little bit about how I got to know her back in the States when you're going to be ordained to the priesthood you have to undergo the general ordination exams which are five awful days of exams one of my days was explained the history and theology and practice of the episcopate from Saint Paul to the present day in had eight hours was 5000 words go well at the end of this week they have something called coffee our questions which are about 60 questions to answer in two hours that you should be able to rattle off answers to at any coffee hour and one of them was who was Julian of Norwich and what did he do so first of all Julian was a she that's important and Julian was a 14th century mystic theologian and spiritual writer by mystic I mean that she had direct experience of God by theologian I meant that she reflected upon this and integrated this into a systematic theology in relationship to the faith of the church and by spiritual writer I mean that the whole reason why Julian was writing was to help us in our lives of prayer to help us live close to God that's why she wrote she's been called the quintessence of Anglican spirituality Thomas Merton the great 20th century monk loved her Rowan Williams likes her he loves her and Desmond Tutu has followed Julian for years decades in his own journey in South Africa so she's a really significant woman she is considered one of the foremost Mystics in any religion and certainly one of the most creative theologians in the English tradition so Julian living in the 14th century how does she come to be a mystic theologian and spiritual writer she when she was 30 years old she had a near-death experience so she was oscillating between life and death on the edge of death and in that experience she had a series of sixteen mystical revelations what she called showings which fundamentally did two things they opened her heart to the uncondition ality of God's love the uncondition ality of God's rejoicing in us and saying yes to us unconditional yes to us and to creation and they opened Julian as well to the that the essence of her soul was of loving yes to God and that that loving of God as the essence of who she is could never be broken so she discovered in God this unconditional love which is always rejoicing in us yes to us and in herself a depth of union with God that can never be broken and a union that we all already have so I'd like to just read a bit what are these mystical showings what do I mean by this like to read from the very first showing which really contains all the showings in itself so she's on her deathbed she is pretty sure at this point that she's not going to die but accurate pulls before her a crucifix and asked her to gaze upon the crucifix to comfort herself in his time of trial and she says in this showing suddenly I saw the red blood trickling down from under the garland the crown of thorns hot and freshly and most plenteous Li hopped and freshly and most plenteous Li just as it was at the time of his passion when the garland of thorns was pressed on to his blessed head so Julian sees the crucifix come alive this is a vision of the suffering humanity of Jesus which if you think about it is a vision is a perception of our suffering humanity it's Jesus suffering with us our humanity and Julian makes that clear later but her journey into the suffering humanity of Jesus which was a common devotional thing in the 14th century was really a journey into a perception of a facing into the suffering of her humanity our humanity Jesus's wounds are our wounds but it goes on she says just so I conceive truly and powerfully that it was he himself both God and man the same who suffered for thus for me who showed it to me without any go-between that sounds sort of well Julian saying to Jesus himself showing this to her but this is really significant because Julian the feeling of this vision for Julian is a feeling of immense intimacy that Jesus himself is choosing to show her what it was like to be him so it's an intimate encounter and as part of Julian's whole spirituality it's about intimacy and presence and then she goes on and in the same showing suddenly the Trinity almost filled my heart with joy and I understood it shall be like that in heaven without end for all who shall come there so she seasoned to our suffering humanity which Jesus has opened himself to endure with us she sees that it as Jesus himself who is sharing himself with her it's a personal homely she says intimate interchange and with that she sees the uncreated bliss of the Godhead as she'll say later the eternal joy of God so it's not just about the suffering our suffering humanity it's also about this joy of the Godhead the eternal joy of God and if you take these to the suffering humanity of Jesus which is kind of us and you lay over it or surround it with this eternal yes and joy of God that's the heart of Julian's entire spiritual vision so she had sixteen showings that went on and elaborated this that went further into the Passion of Jesus that went further into the the sense of God as bliss into herself as well and when they were over after a few days shortly thereafter and she wrote what's called the short text she wrote down an autobiographical account of the revelations of divine love and that's the first-person autobiographical account of a mystical experience of God after that at some point she became an anchorite at st. julian's church in norwich taking the name of the church as her own so she she gave up her birth name which is why she remains mostly anonymous and took the name of the church as her own and after 15 to 20 years of reflection Julianne wrote the long text subsequence of divine love is an amazing document because it shows the experience of God of a 14th century woman yes but it also combines with that six times as much materials in the long text it combines with that short text 20 years of theological reflection and pastoral council about how to live our lives of Prayer and that's one reason why I think the revelations is really unique it has autobiographical account and it has an implicit systematic coherent theology she's not just a sweet spiritual writer she is one of the most creative theologians in the history of the church she lived as an anchorite for the rest of her life and died around 1416 1420 now I myself I was a 20 year old 19 year old philosophy student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison which I'm sure you've never heard of but it was a state big state university and I was a recent convert to Christianity felt that I needed to give my life to Jesus in some total way some complete way and I began sort of banging around looking at monasteries much to my mother's dismay and I happened upon the order of Julian of Norwich which is an Episcopal religious order of monks and nuns I'm in in the United States and the charism of this order this aim is to go in and retrieve the most venerable practices of Christian spirituality template of spirituality mystical spirituality to go in and reclaim these retrieve them live them within a monastic context and discipline and then share them with the church so as Lizbeth was saying I was a monk for about 20 years which is still kind of shocking to say I drop it off at cocktail parties you know well I was a monk and the conversation just kind of stops and thought lurches onwards but that's important because my reading of Julian was not about how does she compared to Brigitta of Sweden or Catherine of Siena or can I take her Christology and compare it to say Carl Bart or Karl Rahner or somebody my reading of Julian was a monk's reading which is I need to grow in love I need to grow in humility I want to live close to God and I don't help my experience as a monk was to give my entire life to be close to God and it didn't work which is the universal experience and then there's just a need for help to grow in authentic love authentic humility authentic openness to God so that's why I read Julian and that's why she became to me a companion and a sister and a mother but why should you care too much one of my friends who's more of a businessman said well you know Julian of Norwich is like a sub-niche of a sudden ISIL a sudden age you know what's what's what's the appeal and I think the thing is this if you want to grow in love and a capacity for love a capacity for honesty as well so I think honesty truthfulness and love have to go together if you want to grow in humility if you have a sense of wanting to grow in closeness to God then Julian is your woman and the reason why is she not only communicates to us the truth of a garden of ourselves without living close to God as possible so she talks about God and ourselves in a way that makes that possible but she also shares with us her struggle and growing into that herself because there is that autobiographical component and there is a 20 year lag between a short text and the long text you see see but you can see in Julian her own process her own struggle and growing into this God of love and that's why she's a companion to me I mean how much better is it to to walk with somebody sharing their own difficulty and coming to terms with God then just to hear that God is love one more time right so just she's a fantastically intimate friend in that way so what happened on that quiet day well as Elizabeth said speak on all shall be well and I said oh in my heart that didn't come across in the email I don't think because I've heard all shall be well for decades as a monk in the order of Julian of Norwich Oh I've left the order I'm no longer a monk but so on and I've heard so many sermons in which a preacher would just event about the horrors of the world and how bad things are and then say but as Julian said all shall be well well thanks for that father as it goes and in my own life I am aware that those four words all shall be well have been quasi sacramental for people I know one woman had the Julian shrine who told me that she was she thought on her deathbed full of anxiety anguish and a friend bought all shall be well to her and it allowed her to kind of just to open up into that wellness of whatever happens so the words are powerful for people all shall be well because they elicit invite a relaxation a trust a surrender in that everything is in the process of well making even this even me even you in us that we're in this process of all being made well and for some people it's like it's sacramental it just does that it elicits a trust but I also knew how challenging this is because I'd live with this for 20 years in the monastery and the challenge of it is that it invites us indeed to be open to all things not some things but all things as in the process of God's universal well making so normally we're open to this much of life this is really good this part of life is good and we kind of feel good we can push the rest aside but Julian God comes to Julian saying it all shall be well yes Julian in spite of sin in spite of suffering in spite of the horrors that we find in this world I am actually taking all of this I'm embracing all of this in a process that is going to make it all well so if you want to live with God what that means is that you we need to become open to all things as in the process of God's well making now don't don't pull the red herring at this point and say what about what about what about Syria what about refugees what about all that stuff people you jump to those intellectual questions as a way to kind of stop this and it's true those are huge questions but just start with the unwellness you find in your own life don't worry about Syria from now with this just your own life our own lives what in our lives cannot be part of God's well making and so Julian becomes a kind of a therapist kind of a pastor asking us to encounter all those things that we demand cannot be part gods well making now on this quiet day I was kind of rolling this out of it and I was also reaching for something very personal to me which was I at that point in my life I was feeling a need where I felt that indeed God's love needed to and could speak to more of my own suffering my own grief and so I needed to really hold on to all shall be well and to the love that implies right so I was reaching for that with the retreats with the challenge all shall be well conveys and right in the middle of this quiet day on a quiet day you're not supposed to talk on a quiet day you're not supposed to interrupt the speaker of all things and your English you don't interrupt speakers someone just spoke up and said no we can't do that there's this person said there is stuff in my life that is just not it's not good to bring that out it's not good to invite that as part of God's work it is just past it is done it is as it were in the basement of my soul and so we engaged in a dialogue on this quiet day and which as an American I will call vigorous fellowship and it wasn't a debate in terms of I was going to approve this man that he was wrong we were reaching for something together we were reaching for something that would allow us to say yes this is the truth of my life and I'm not going to let that be two-faced by easy religious slogans about God's love or whatever I'm going to hold on to the truth of my life which seems in some way to defy a God of love but I'm not going to let go of this promise of all being made well either that God is ultimately loved so how do we do this how do we hold on to the truth of our lives and hold on to a God of love who promises is promising to make all things well and what we came to was kind of a metaphor from my counseling days which was maybe we could think of our souls like counseling rooms empty rooms and there's two chairs and in one chair our lives can sit with all their pain and we don't have to prove how all that pain is taken up by God we just let that sit there and the other chair God sits with the revelation of God is love and God his joy and God with that promise of all being made well and the question was can you do that can you do just that can you allow for yourself to be fully in your soul all of you to be there and to allow God and that promise of love to be there just to be there at the same time to be in the room together and the idea was that maybe our life had begin to interrogate God a bit and say but how can you be loved how can you be loved that's what Julian did for nearly 13 chapters after God told her all shall be well how can that be so so that the revelation of God's love begins to draw out of our lives those places that aren't well that don't feel loved that must begin to speak to love and the other hand God's love can interrogate our lives why is there all this wrathful nough sinew God says to Julian Jesus says to Julian aren't you satisfied that ever I suffered for thee so coming out of that dad begin to think well this is something I like this that maybe Christian faith is not just believing things or having a sense of trust that kind of comes and goes but maybe Christian faith increase our faith how's that for divine synchronicity maybe Christian faith is about yes allowing the truth of myself and my world into my awareness into my soul to be there and the truth of God in Jesus as self-sacrificial vulnerable love making all things well and to allow the world in self world and God and giving them space in myself to have a conversation a counseling our well that's what I attempted to kind of struggle out with the book and after the book was done I sat back in my chair put my feet up on the desk knowing I was going to come and do a book tour and I asked myself what did I learn what did I really learn and struggling this out and the first thing that I saw in the process of writing the book was indeed that Julian spirituality is fundamentally about compassion and this notion of faith I have developed and shared is fundamentally the action of compassion of allowing myself and God and the world to be within me to be resonant with my self my world and my god that's empathy when I act on that that's compassion I thought huh so the publishers are going to call this growing in faith as you lean of Norwich it could have been growing in compassion compassion the actualization of Christian faith the Dalai Lama said years ago that his religion is kindness and I'd like to say that my religion is compassion and I don't mean that in just saying being nice to people forcing myself to be nicer than I want to be alright that's not my religion my religion is receiving the Word of God about love that Jesus is into myself and receiving myself into myself and receiving you into myself and in the feeling conversation that happens to act that I think is the fruit of Julian's mystical experience of God that is what Christian faith looks like to me it's simply compassion it's theology it's mystical experience as pastoral work it's all of it and that simple opening of self to world self and God and the neat thing is for me I noticed in Julian you know where she starts and her compassion is not with compassion to others me being compassionate to you it's not being compassionate to herself as you would want to be in the counseling room to be open to yourself her compassion starts with compassion for God and isn't that lovely Julian understands that the be a spiritual person is to feel into the reality of God have a feeling for how God is how God experiences how God feels if we can say that and to know that not only in her head but in her body and the reason she can do this is her belief in Jesus as God as human so that experiencing something of Jesus's humanity letting that impact her affect her give her knowledge of Jesus's humanity is giving her knowledge of God so for Julian that the journey of compassion begins oddly with his compassionate opening of herself to the person of Jesus saying I want to share fully in your crucifixion in your experience I want to know what it was like to be you because that's what it meant to be a lover of God a friend of God I just wonder about that for us today religion spirituality contemplative prayer meditation Lexi Oh Davina social action about being open to the humanity of Jesus and those wounds and feeling that first and that led Julianne on a journey to become more compassionate with herself and to be more compassionate and acceptant of the world as a whole a lifelong journey and the close if we think about God as Julianne presented God with this promise that all shall be well I am loved I am rejoicing in you I even like you I want you always to be open to me I am making all things in your life well in this world well and then we think about our experience like this when these two begin to interrogate each other what happens but the figure of Jesus Christ on the cross appears in the in the middle it's Jesus the love of God suffering this world who holds together the reality of our human lives and the reality of God's redemptive loving and working and you know it's actually kind of simple how we enter into this it's not fireworks or rocket science as they say it's making time in our lives to welcome ourselves to welcome a word of love and to see what they do to each other and to listen to other people to welcome other people in how does that how does God's love speak to the Hari Krishna who drove me to the airport on Wednesday by by listening to him how does God's love speak to me in the Sturgeon areas of suffering in my life how does God prompt me to act in the racial divisions in my native North Carolina I think it's all in the end just about this compassion increased in faith and my journey in faith it's about compassion is being able to be open to feel the reality of another in myself as myself and not as myself and that's God that's you and that's me thank and I really want to say it's a joy to be able to offer this stuff after writing the book and realizing it was kind of about compassionate about faith and now in this book to her get to say it to people it's fantastic but it comes across a little bit in the book right gentleman at the back sure so the question is Julian believed in Hell which was received on this this TV program she didn't believe in Hell I don't think that's actually accurate Julian was a medieval Christian okay and she's in that worldview entirely the one place where there's a couple places where Hell comes up in the book and Julian asks God to see how and God says no that won't be helpful to you so he'll doesn't appear at all in the book Julian can't understand how all shall be well if some preachers shall be damned and she asked God about that and God's answer is trust me okay so there's this kind of an unknowing in Julian about the final answer to things she never knew she doesn't need to postulate Hell at all to make this process of her spiritual life and her theology coherent I would say that but I think that for her she remained within the ambit of church teaching about the possibility of Hell which I want to remind everybody in the strictest tradition is not that anybody necessarily is there even in the Catholic tradition Karl Rahner was great on this twentieth century that there may be a hell but we know it's not an item of belief that anybody is in there and that's that's Catholic hardcore Vatican to stuff Karl Rahner so I think Julian may may have been in that kind of position so can this give us some insight into the book of Job is the question is so I'm guessing you're asking something about the mystery of suffering in the context of Julian or of joy Joe so God's testing Joe with various so that's the question do we are you asking do we imagine a God who tests us with suffering to test our faithfulness so so I think I'll try I'll try to lay out some thoughts and you'll see tell me if that's adequate or not I in the book of Job God is allowing Satan to afflict Joe with various kinds of suffering to prove his faithfulness to God will he curse God in the end and he barely stays get barely gets through it and God rewards him with all kinds of wonderful things lots of camels I remember right so it's kind of a bad it's a struggle with the reality of keeping faith in the mystery of our suffering something like that and part of Julian's question is indeed why have you allowed all this suffering because she is she perceived suffering as coming out of sin why did you allow this Oh God of love and that's where God says to her all shall be well and that kicks off the dialogue between Julian about how can this be well and God says trust me how can it be well trust me how can it be well trust me but I think Pastor Lee I think that those times of suffering which kind of unearth our resentment to God in our wrath against God those are pastoral incredibly significant potentially transformative experiences because if we can retain that wrath that we might have for God because of the way things are we curse God and still say stay kind of in the ambit of God and be in this conversation between well God does say love and I can't accept that I think healing transformation can happen I think if that's a deeper faith can emerge beyond that in the back of Julian of Norwich I love that question and we have we have some time so stop me if I go too long too long on about monastic life so I said the charism of the order is to go in and retrieve this contemplative mystical stuff in the tradition retrieve it live it and share it with the church the order of Julian did that within a monastic life that was primitive in the sense of we did all our own work when I joined we were as a community poor we could afford health care in the United States couldn't afford car insurance I had a car so it was a primitive monastic community we did all our own work we didn't have much money and we lived a life of a Benedictine kind of life of Prayer we weren't Benedictine strictly but it was daily offices with work periods the bell rings back to church have a meal take a rest back to work bell rings back to church every day that kind of thing where it was different from a lot of communities was with this emphasis on really living the contemplative life so we didn't take on a lot of works outside the community we were mostly cloistered which some communities here in England are as well and this emphasis on interior conversion which and an inner prayer and contemplative prayer so we had it was kind of like a Benedictine kana like fusion that makes sense that means anything with this emphasis on the inner life and the journey in prayer with it within a stable Benedictine daily structure I loved it because I got to go work in the garden I was a groundskeeper for 10 years so my mornings were like you know 4 hours of prayer which is kind of cool lots of Lexi o Davina and reflection and meditation and then out into the garden for three hours in beautiful Wisconsin and then noonday prayer and then afternoon was theology and writing letters that mean that's just so sweet but within that is a kind of a formation about becoming a person who might live close to God and I used to say that the best thing about monastic life is there's nothing to write home about des literally people say if so how's it been great I clean toilets yesterday and I tilled the garden today and we prayed a lot it was just kind of a kind of an open life it just kind of that did I think hell that held us made us vulnerable to God in the words of Rowan Williams so can one practice unconditional love without first experiencing conditional love well I don't think any of us is has a capacity for unconditional love like truly there's always even if we think we're loving we're just not aware of that point where we're going to become unloving okay so we can we can we only only God can love unconditionally and I believe that our capacity to love and to grow in love is contingent on receiving love from others so receiving conditional love from parents teachers peers to whatever degree that I have received that love I'm actually capable of being loving to others now that that conditions how much we can love right it definitely makes a finite and part of Julian's experience was to have that divine intervention which was the overwhelming experience of infinite love which is then seen as a challenge to those boundaries of our love almost a threat to those boundaries and the process is then to kind of grow out in more love so in kind of a Hollywood way and you have the image of the guy who's not very loving these 47 years old I am and mostly bald and going along with life and he's curmudgeonly and stuff and then someone loves him in as Hollywood has it transforms him into a loving person but somehow I think there's something in that in that in that the only way we actually grow in love is through intervention of love from the outside and Christianity is intervention of love in our lives when God says Jesus this is me that's God saying I am loved I am here in this way so gosh on the left disk yes she is the presiding the former Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Catherine gephart shouri on her inaugural address quoted Julian of Norwich and said in called Jesus our mother was Julian does the next day she was called a heretic in the press and she was simply referring to this long tradition of Jesus as mother which Julian really develops the idea that Julian Julian says that there is no wrath in God because God is this unconditional love that supports us in our being and so God is never frustrated with us like I am with my kids like IRA because if God was like that with us we would just simply cease to exist so some people find that challenging to interpret with Old Testament theology about the wrath of God and so on it can be done but people still find that kind of very challenging but the feminist angle and Julian is huge and her use of body emotion sensation intuition imagination as means of being with God that's pretty countercultural we often want to chat about reason about social polity or something so she still has people who push against her and in her own time we honestly don't know I mean her manuscript was it was written down likely by a scribe and was circulated I'm probably among groups of people who were devoutly into the contemplative and spiritual and mystical life so it never got huge distribution and it was probably passed hand to hand and there is awareness in the text from Julian and in the scribal caliphs on that yes taken out of context some of what Julian rice would be considered heretical taken out of context there and then and then next yes why did I leave it as in that's really great question and it's kind of like asking somebody why did you get divorced in a way it's a really complicated thing that's taken me some years I left six years ago and every year I understand it a little bit better come to more terms with it so I went in when I was 20 and I was superior of the community when I was 33 and by the time I was 38 I felt that my whole life had narrowed down into this spiritual role I had made for myself superior of this community 24/7 a spiritual teacher and I was only this monk personality that I made for myself and it was incredibly narrow and narrowing and I went deep in that narrowness but it began to feel deadly and I begin to feel that I needed to kind of broaden out and to be more broadly a human being and to be more broadly with my brothers and sisters I remember sitting in the what the departures lounge at O'Hare International Airport and unlike Wisconsin you had all kinds of people in there from all over the world I was like that's my family that's my family that's I need to be with them so it's not a any kind of condemnation about monastic life it's about what I did with it which is to get this very narrow kind of self as spiritual teacher which just got deadly I needed to kind of break out in that to be more broad you the war in heaven the devil coming down to earth and yes so it's not our fault it's what you're saying so why did you do this to me sure since here and so I what I see you reaching for and there's a lot of what you said but I see you reaching for is some kind of comprehension you want an explanation for the suffering that we experience on earth that's what what kind of is the center desire is that right and what you're saying and there's a number of things I'd love to like just chime off that one thing at the end of the showings chapter 86 85 86 Julian says that when we go to heaven and get to heaven all will be revealed to us and we won't say to God well if it had been the sin so it would have been well if this hadn't happened it would have been well if that innit but we shall say in one voice because it is as it is it is well so that sense of unconditional yes becomes ours in heaven with some insight into the reason for suffering your question your desire for understanding is exactly Julian's question so what happens is Julian by the end of Revelation 12 she's blissing out in God God is just glory God is bliss and she kind of loses herself in the divine presence and then she kind of in the next start of next join she comes back to herself in the start of Revelation 13 and says what about what about sin and with sin she means suffering as well it's all contained in that she says but you know God you could have preventive you loved us like this you could have prevented all this by not allowing sin and suffering in the first place and that's where God says to her all shall be well now what happens at that point is Julian begins to interrogate God for several chapters she argues against God that can't possibly be the case because of the suffering here the sin that's here the blindness held various things and God responds not by giving her intellectual clarity about the reason for suffering but by inviting her to trust in spite of the suffering so passed orally I think the thing is to see that it is an invitation into unknowing like we won't have that clear comprehension maybe until heaven and it may not even be helpful for us to have that God says to Julian I'm not even going to show you why it is and the more you worry about it you says the worse off you'll be but the thing is to instead of having that comprehension to live in well to attempt to grow and trust in God in response to the suffering of life and I think that's kind of what I've been talking about as compassion or faith because part of the fruit of suffering in my life and in others I know has been my wounding opens me up to the wound of the world that's a tricky thing to navigate because your wound your wounding is still your wounding but it does kind of open up that possibility for compassion for in touch miss and Julian says that it allows for a greater knowledge of ourselves and a greater knowledge of love in the end so it she does kind of have the sense that and we would not be as loving or as capable of truth if we didn't suffer something like that and the purpose of life Julian says it's to grow in truth and love to become more honest and more capable of being compassionate a lot of hints ah gentleman here and then we'll come back to others I'll let you call this okay so please jump from here in the black jacket yes so the question is is Julien not Zoroastrian I and I it's about the question of God's place in evil in Julian and perhaps a more positive appreciation for God's process with evil that's really hard I think passionately really careful for people who are experiencing evil it's really hard to bring that forward and they can be very incredibly sensitive but one thing Julian does say she doesn't have this like good evil dichotomy she's not Hollywood in that sense right she has a sense that one of the showing showing six five or six she talks about God allows the devil so evil personified to be at work but God also limits that so that the devil can do things do evil as it were but God limits that and that end devil is always frustrated not being able to do more and I think but I think the kicker is that what happens is that there is that evil and the body of God wraps around that and dies from it and I think that is the point at which in the great mystery of Easter that mystery of that love that wraps around the suffering and dies from it and then is reborn is a new revelation of God's love and God's power and God's joy but I don't think it's sort of like God deploying evil cleverly to make things work I think it's a little bit too sinister to me a little bit too Machiavellian but it's it's it's that wrapping of the body of Jesus out of love for us around that the nothingness of evil and suffering that but I think is the key no we can't do that can we risk not being polite with God swear I was being funny as an American trying to be funny that didn't work but absolutely and I know that like in my in my journals my writing God can go into the third person you know shift into the second person and then I'm writing to God directly and if you think about the monastic practice of sacred reading Lexi Oh Davina it begins with some kind of sort of thinking and ruminating about God out there and then it slips into a rat Co prayer which is second person Oh God you me so I think there is I think there is a need to begin to just imagine God and speak as it as a vow to God absolutely so Julian in her lifetime was known as an anchor Asst who could offer profound counsel in Norwich so she was known among people as someone to go to to receive as it were spiritual counseling as far as the writing of the book we don't have an early track on what happened with the manuscript and we have we have translations now or not translations but manuscripts from 200 years later basically Julian was her text was circulated privately she probably was known as a lover of God one of these mystic types in the very close circle a very tight circle of people in eastern England Reformation comes along she's regarded as a heretic as ridiculous gossip according to one Bishop called her ridiculous gossip her text is taken off to France in some ways and there's a BBC show on this talk about the whole manuscript tradition and it's a wonderful story I won't go into that the big thing about she was she was published a couple times 18th century 19th century nothing really caught on grace Warwick's translation of her in 1901 put her on the map and then you had people like TS Eliot picking her up Evelyn Underhill recognizing it she is one of the greatest mystics of our entire tradition Iris Murdoch drawing on Julian so it really happened in 20th century and it really kicked off in 1975-76 that's good thank you angela has arrived for the pile of these books this fantastic book which I'm going to say to have a fantastic discount which I initiated on a shop so do come in the mall or go to sloth which was truly awesome really vicious circles come on anything it can get really

Channel: St Paul's Cathedral

Views: 37,332

Rating: 4.8486996 out of 5

Keywords: Julian of Norwich, Robert Fruehwirth, St Paul's Cathedral, Adult Learning, Christianity, Bible Studies, London, Spirituality, Jesus Christ

Id: 3uykbymSbBo

Length: 60min 43sec (3643 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 06 2016