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).
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