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Julian of Norwich
(1342 - 1417) U.K.

Julian of Norwich

Saint, mystic - Feast day May 8th

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Very few details are known about the life of Julian of Norwich. She was an anchoress who lived in a special cell attached to the parish church of St. Julian, which may account for her name. She was the first woman to write a book in English. Some feel that she originally belonged to a community of Benedictine nuns because she had more formal learning than most women of her day. Others feel that because her writings show such a deep understanding of what it means to be a mother, she was a laywoman who may have lost her husband and children when the plague swept through Norwich in 1361.

When she was 30 years old, she was intensely sick and came close to death. At that time she had a number of visions of Christ on the cross. She recovered and lived many more years, writing down what she had seen and learned from her visions.Julian of Norwich The themes which run most strongly through her writings are the motherhood of God and God's mercy towards weak humankind. "So Jesus is our true Mother in nature by our first creation, and He is our true Mother in grace by His taking our created nature".

Her hermit's cell was a simple structure with a window that opened onto the interior of the church and its altar, and another that opened for those who came to her from the street, seeking counsel or merely a listening ear. In this icon she is shown at the latter window with her cat, listening to those who come to her with their problems, fears and woes.

The Anglican Church keeps her feast on May 8.

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Mother Julian qualifies as transgendered for her name, if nothing else. But that is not her main interest for lesbian and gay people. Mother Julian was one of the foremost English mystics of the middle ages. As a young women she had series of intense visions, or "showings" as she said, of Jesus. She then lived as an anchoress, a sort of local hermit, for the rest of her life meditating and writing down he meditations on these visions.

There is a pretty poor modern English version put out by Penguin, but the edition in the Classics of Western Spirituality Series is well worth the extra cost. Julian, although no feminist, experienced God directly as "our mother", and experienced God as pure love. She also saw Jesus as a loving mother, full of warm and care for her children.

Julian's immensely attractive spirituality emphasize that God love's human beings, and that in the end "all will be well, and all shall be well, and all will be well". In her awareness of the motherhood of God, in her emphasis on God's love and manifest intention that "every kind of thing will be well", Julian's spirituality has the called many who have encountered it back to a joyful Faith. And a Faith that is not joyful hardly seems worth the effort.

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Chapter 11
(from Short text of Showings)

"Thus I chose Jesus for my heaven, whom I saw only in pain at that time. No other heaven was pleasing to me than Jesus, who will be my bliss when I am there; and this has always been a comfort to me, that I chose Jesus as my heaven in all times of suffering and of sorrow."
Chapter 31
(from Long Text of Showings), a passage Julian referred back to repeatedly,
"And so our good Lord answered to all questions and doubts which I could raise, saying most comfortably: I may make all things well, and I can make all things well, and I shall make all things well, and I will make all things well, and you will see yourself that every kind of thing will be well"
Chapter 60
(from Long Text of Showings)
"The Mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead and of the joys of heaven with inner certainty of endless bliss. And that he revealed in the 10th revelation, giving us the same understanding in these sweet words which he says: See how I love you, looking into his blessed side, rejoicing"

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