IN NORWICH!  I am finally here.  I arrived late last night because the cab driver had difficulty finding Julian's Way, the actual street where the Julian Center resides.  Still, I was greeted at the door of All Hallows Inn by Sister Pamela and her rollicking dog, Mattie (short for Matthew).

In the morning, I saw a beautiful view of St. Julian's church out my window.  (Upper left photograph.) The original building was bombed in World War II, and the current structure was rebuilt on the original site.  Julian's anchorhold (her cell) is believed to be attached to the church.  A crucifix marks the spot inside the little stone room.  Benches for sitting and stools for meditating are placed around the walls for visitors. 

Also from the window of my room decorated in pink, I see the garden outside.  It is early spring and I find primroses, daffodils and grape hyacinths blooming in the back and along the walkways to The Julian Center. 

By mid-morning I had already been to Dame Julian's cell, and I sat in the quiet and watched the candles lit by earlier visitors.   I waited for Julian herself to show up, but it didn't happen. It really is time to see her again, after 600 years, perhaps tomorrow she will take pity. We can only hope! Aside from missing my friend Julia, so far, this has been a great day (after sleeping 12 hours last night).

A kind person at the Julian Center named Shawn Tomlinson who is studying to be an Eiscopal Priest and who is also an Infant Aquatic tutor, showed me old Norwich where Dame Julian may have walked, She led me to the the great cathedral and pointed out many of its 35 medieval churches (yes, that was 35!) and bought us a lunch of salad and quiche. We looked at Julian's stained glass windows and found evidence of Julian's influence in every cranny.

Tomorrow is the day!  I leave for Norwich at 5:35.  That's Norwich, above.  I am excited to finally walk the streets of Norwich and envision our Julian from her cell, in her heavy nun's garb, at her window, dispensing support, encouragement, and insight.  I'll be staying in the Julian Centre, run by nuns, specifically Sr. Pamela who has graciously consented to let me stay an extra day before I go to Florence, even though the center will be closed.  I hear it will be cold this time of year, so I was encouraged to bring Long Johns.  Don't have any, so flannel will have to do.

In Florence, I'll stay in the English Cemetery in the library on a lovely little cot that unfolds during the day.  Reminds me of my travels when I was in graduate school, at least when I was years younger.  The cemetery is managed by Julia Bolton Hollway, a scholar of magnificent portions who knows at least nine languages and has published books and articles that mark her as an international scholar.  I will take baby steps around her.  For all her renown, she is gentle and kind, a lovely individual.  More later.

Above is an image I found for Margery Kemp.  This could be her portrait, and we aren't definitively sure if it is or not.   Still,  it does show what I believe is a mystic Christian woman, dressed in white, as Margery was, being pursued by demons.  I do imagine that our Margery looked something like this.

I am struggling to find instances where people have actually interacted with Julian.  Her lovely texts are available, of course, and I have read though them finding evidence of how she might address people, e.g.  her favorite form of address was "Dearworthy," which exhibits, an enduring attitude of "thouness" if I can refer to Martin Buber's explanation of the "thou," or seeing the God inside of someone else, "the very one that we are."  She also calls others of every religious stripe, Catholics, Lollards, and others "even Christians," which testifies that to her all are worthy.  So, Julian's text provides some evidence about how she would have treated others.

Still,  I am searching for other sources that might describe interpersonal interactions with Julian, if they exist.  One does, and perhaps only one.  This shot below is from the actual first page of Margery Kemp's autobiography.

So I am printing below some of the information about Julian we have from Margery Kemp's autobiography, taken from chapter 18 (Kemp, p. 77-78).

And then she was commanded by our Lord to go to an anchoress in the same city who was called Dame Julian.  And so she did, and told her about the grace that God had put into her soul, of compunction, contrition, sweetness and devotion, compassion with holy meditation and high contemplation, and very many holy speeches and converse that our Lord spoke to her soul, and also many wonderful revelations, which she described to the anchoress to find out if there were any deception in them, for the anchoress was an expert in such things and could give good advice.

The anchoress, hearing the marvelous goodness of our Lord, highly thanked God with all her heart for his visitation, advising this creature to be obedient to the will of our Lord and fulfill with all her might whatever he put into her soul,  if it were not against the worship of God and the profit of her fellow Christians.  For if it were, then it were not the influence of a good spirit, but rather of an evil spirit.  'The Holy Ghost never urges a thing against charity, and if he did, he would be contrary to his own self, for he is all charity.  Also he moves a soul to all chasteness, for chaste lives are called the temple of the Holy Ghost,  and the Holy Ghost makes a soul stable and steadfast in the right faith and the right belief.

'And a double man in soul is always unstable and unsteadfast in all his ways.  He that is forever doubting is like the wave of the sea which is not moved and borne about with the wind, and the man is not likely to receive the gifts of God.'

The text continues a bit and ends with this:

Great was the holy conversation that the anchoress and this creature  had through talking of the love of our Lord Jesus Christ for the many days they were together.

Reading through this text, and there is more besides (have only printed a portion here), I can begin to see what the interaction would have been like.  Julian would have greeted Margery warmly, asked questions about her spiritual journey, listened intently,  perhaps revealed a bit of her own journey, and above all, the evidence here suggests that she enthusiastically supported Margery's quest to find God, and provided affirmations of her project and her gifts she had received from God, all perfect communicative actions we associate with positive communication.

Kemp. M. (2004) The Book of Margery Kemp. (B.A. Windeatt, Trans). London, England:  Penguin Classics. (Original work circa 1450).

The Book of Margery Kemp

  

As I move closer and closer to the date when I leave for Norwich, March 12, I get more and more excited.  I find myself finding scraps of information about Norwich, about Julian and the 14^th century.  As I mentioned in the last post, Sheila Upjohn’s book describes her search for the real Julian of Norwich.  In that investigation Upjohn describes Margery Kemp. 

Margery is unique in this history, as someone who wrote the first surviving autobiography in English.  Margery herself could not read or write so she dictated her story to her scribe, her amanuensis, who dutifully wrote down events of Margery’s controversial life.

Like so many medieval texts, this one was lost for centuries.  Modern translations are based on a manuscript that was found in a home in Lancashire in 1934.  Margery dictates the tale in third person and refers to herself as “the creature.”

The tale reveals Margery as a young wife and mother, a pilgrim, a businessperson and a mystic who had supernatural visions and who continuously searched for a connection to God.  She unabashedly describes details of her personal life—the debate with her husband about whether or not to maintain chastity; she describes the depression she felt after giving birth to the first of her 14 children; she recounts her constant and excessive weeping when she contemplates the passion of Christ--which she is told is a sign of God’s favor.  Her travels take her all across England, to the church of St. Briget and to the Apostles’ Church in Rome and the Holy Land, to her pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.  She is tried for being a faithless heretic in York, and in Leicester the Steward asks after her arrest, “You shall tell me whether you get this talk from God or from the devil. . .”  Still Margery persisted with her journey to find God.

Margery must have been quite a sight,  a weeping “creature” sobbing whenever she considered the passion of Christ, shedding voluminous tears, dressed in all in white as she maintained the lord required of her.   She was outspoken on her journey and--attracted much attention both positive and negative.  Still Margery remains a strong, admirable character imbued with the courage of her convictions.

The exciting thing for me was that she is someone who can verify the existence of Julian as a mystic and holy woman.  In her text she says that she “was commanded by our Lord to go to an anchoress in the same city who was called Dame Julian.  And so she did, and told her about the grace, that God had put into her soul, of compunction, contrition, sweetness and devotion, compassion with holy meditation and high contemplation, and very many holy speeches and converse that our Lord spoke to her soul, and also many wonderful revelations. . .”  Further Margery indicates that Julian told her that “The Holy Ghost never urges a thing against charity, and if he did, it would be contrary to his whole will, for he is all charity.”  She says also that “Great was the holy conversation that the anchoress said and this creature had through the love of our Lord Jesus Christ on the many days that they were together” (Kemp, p. 79.

I have heard of Margery Kemp before.  A novel called A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley set in 14^th century England has a main character called Margaret who dictates her autobiography to Brother Gregory.  Like our Margery she has visions, in this book they are called “visions of light.”  The fictionalized story seems very close to the story of Margery Kemp.

So we’re almost in March!  Time to go soon!  While I am excited I wonder what I will find and if I am up to the task of finding Julian, at least in spiritual and creating a conversation with me about those ideas she shared so beautifully in her text.

In In Search of Julian of Norwich Sheila Upjohn treats the story of our lady, Dame Julian, as a detective investigation.  She asks the intriguing question that centers on why someone as enlightened as Julian of Norwich should be virtually hidden and unknown for 6 centuries.  Sheila determines to trace the route from Julian's life, and the visions described in one of the first books written in English, Showing of Love,  through the harrowing journey following her texts from relative obscurity to some prominence in the 21st century.

Upjohn begins the journey to find Julian of Norwich by alluding to "The Case of the Missing Manuscripts" where we learn that after Julian's visions in 1373 she wrote two books, The Short Text and The Long Text.  These books went undercover during the reign of King Henry the VIII when he dissolved the structure of the Catholic church in England.  Monasteries were closed, looted and their buildings appropriated for the King's new church, The Church of England.  Around this time some of Julian's manuscripts were spirited across the English channel to places such as the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris.  Other copies were found about 200 years later in the Sloane collection and the books were printed and found in a few other places.  Although readership of these early copies was low, we find the legendary Florence Nightingale studying it as she cared for the sick and wounded during fighting in the Crimea.

I love that Upjohn describes "The Scene of the Crime" for us.  Here she invites us to 14th century England in Norwich, to the monasteries and churches, to the life of recluses and the rules that governed their lives.  As an Anchoress Julian would have been subject to these many rules that governed her dress and her activities.  She was asked to dress "plainly," and that her clothes be "thick and warm."  From one of her windows that looked out onto the street she met with people who stopped by for counseling and insight into their spiritual lives.

Norwich at the time was the 2nd largest city in England and hummed with trade and activity.  A seaport town, woolens and other types of cloth as well as other imported goods were unloaded in the bustling ports of Norwich.  Norwich was a walled city and within about a square mile could be found at least 6,000 people along with dogs, cats, pigs, goats and other animals.  It was teeming with life.

In "Evidence of an Eyewitness" we learn about Margery Kemp, who wrote the first autobiography in English.  Margery visited Julian on her travels searching for her own spiritual truth and wrote of the visit in The Book of Margery Kemp.  Margery traveled to other parts of England, including York, (where she was tried as a witch in some places--but succeeded in convincing her accusers that she was a true Christian), made pilgrimages to Rome, the Holy land and even found herself following the pilgrimage trail in Santiago de Compostela where she sought greater spiritual understanding.

This text recounts some of the key points in Julian's book such as when God showed her "a hazelnut lying in the palm of [her] hand."  That hazelnut contained "all that is made."  Julian did not see God as wrathful, but always loving, both a father and a mother to us all.  T.S. Eliot, the English poet, included Julian's words in a poem called Little Gidding.

      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. . .

If anyone wishes to start his or her own journey to find the loving spirituality described by Julian of Norwich, Sheila Upjohn's book is a wonderful place to start, to get your feet wet inside the 14th century seemingly so far away, yet when we begin to read, it seems so familiar.

Much of this description of this text was paraphrased from:

Upjohn, S. (2007). In Search of Julian of Norwich. Morehouse Publishing.  Harrisburg, PA.

I thought I'd give you a bit more information about my co-author, Julia Bolton Holloway.  Here she is with a few of her books and other research projects.  She lives in Florence, Italy, is a Catholic nun, a hermit who manages the famed English cemetery where Elizabeth Barrett Browning  and Robert Browning are buried along with other notables, Quakers, and abolitionists.

To read more about Julia, follow this link to her CV:

http://www.florin.ms/vita.html

 

I have discovered that all research begins with curiosity, insatiable curiosity. When I first discovered Julian I was intrigued. She was a rhetorical outlier on the list Michael and I had prepared for our Scholar's class, and while I knew about her for many years, I found that the more I knew the more I wanted to know. After reading her tender and loving book, Showing of Love, the first written in English by a woman, I began thinking about Julian's spirituality and her positive outlook that superseded everything negative, including plague, war, rebellion, famine. Julian could look at the world and say, "All shall be well." I knew I couldn't do that so I wanted to know more.

As I said above, research begins with curiosity. Who, what, where, when, how? Each flash of insight leads to another; each snip of information compels further investigation. And then, we discover we are immersed in it. In this case, I am immersed in Julian, her works, things written about her, scholarship about her, places where she lived, her anchorhold, her church, her city, and how, just how does all of this affect us today in the twenty-first century.

This immersion led me to seek out Julian scholars. Luckily, Michael knew one such an internationally known scholar, Julia Bolton Holloway.

While Julia has contributed an excellent translation of Julian's book, keeping the strength of its Anglo Saxon origin, by using words such as "Showings" instead of "Revelations," and "oneing," instead of "uniting," she has also researched the history of the book and brought together enormous scholarly sources in her new book, Julian Among the Books.  From this new book I discovered other directions for research including The Cloud of Unknowing, and the work of St. Brigitta of Sweden, and The Book of Margery Kemp.  I will have to read all of these so that Julian's world seeps into my psyche!

As we continue, I will review some of these as well.