This article appeared in Matters of Faith column of the Cape Cod Times on May 7, 2016
On May 13 of 1373 a woman whom we only know today as Julian
in the town of Norwich, England was deathly ill. A local priest was summoned to administer the
last rites and be with her at her death.
As part of his ministry, he held a cross before her face and told her to
look at and take comfort in it.
According to her writing, as she looked at the cross she was given a
series of sixteen visions (or showings, as she called them) about the nature of
Christ, the nature of humanity and the nature of God.
Julian
recovered from the illness and spent the rest of her life as an anchoress,
living in contemplation in a room attached to The Church of Saint Julian (from
which she probably took her name), meditating on and writing about this series
of visions. Dame Julian is especially
remembered for her summary of God’s promises for the world: “All will be well and all will be well and
every kind of thing will be well.” She
came to understand that the love of God would simply overflow and dilute the
worst that humanity could do. All will
be well in spite of our mistakes, our missteps and our misfortunes, events
beyond our control. Over and over again
in her writings she is comforted by the voice of Christ telling her that, in
the end, “All will be well.”
In
artwork, Julian is often pictured holding a hazelnut. This stems from one of her visions of
God. She looks in her hand and sees
“something small, no bigger than a hazelnut.”
She comes to realize that it represents “everything which is made.” She is amazed that something so small and
fragile can endure but then understands that it exists (and all creation
continues to exist) because God made it, God loves it, and God continues to
preserve it. Again, the overriding sense
of her writing is that it is the love of God which weaves together the fabric
of creation in spite of our efforts to unravel it.
As we
approach Mothers’ Day, I thought it was appropriate to draw attention to
another facet of Julian of Norwich’s
writings, namely, her use of maternal imagery for God. It is not that Julian exchanges paternal
language for maternal language. Rather,
she uses them side by side, expanding the vocabulary of divine
description. “As truly as God is our
Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed that in everything, and
especially in these sweet words where he says:
I am he; that is to say: I am he,
the power and goodness of fatherhood; I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of
motherhood; I am he, the light and the grace which is all blessed love.” (Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter
60) She also frequently refers to Christ
as “Mother Jesus” a reflection not of gender but of role and relationship
saying, “So he [Jesus] wants us to act as a meek child, saying: My kind Mother,
my gracious Mother, my beloved Mother, have mercy on me.” (Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter
61)
Living
in the fourteenth century, Julian would have experienced more rigid definitions
of gender roles in parenting. Mothers
and fathers had specific spheres of influence in the lives of their
children. In the twenty-first century,
we may question the cultural assumptions about family in Julian’s time,
probably giving more value to equality and shared responsibilities in
parenting. Yet we still might see the
important implications of Julian’s language, that defining God by a single
gender or a single role limits our vision of the love of God. As Julian experienced the breadth of God’s
love, she could not help but go beyond the traditional labels of father and descriptions
of a father’s love. She had to include
another image of love and kindness that she had experienced, the love of a
mother.
There
are many images of God that come to us both through scripture and centuries of
faithful people trying to express their relationship with the divine. God is described as a Shepherd, a Rock and a
Shield. God is praised as Charity,
Wisdom, Humility, Patience, Security and Love.
Jesus refers to God as both a Father in heaven and as Abba (the Aramaic
word for Daddy). None of these titles or
descriptions are mutually exclusive.
Instead, they point to aspects of an eternal God who is beyond any
label. Julian referred to God as Mother
not because paternal titles were wrong, but because they were too limiting.
God is
our Shepherd. God is our Rock. God is Love.
God is our Father. God is our
Mother. God is none of these titles
exclusively. God is all of these titles
at once. Most importantly for Julian of
Norwich, God is the one who, in all of these guises, will make all things well.
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