All Will Be Well, All Manner of Things Will be Well...


"All will be well...." Julian of Norwich
 Friday was the celebration of the life of Julian of Norwich, always one of my favorite mystics. Hers is the story of faithful devotion in the face of illness and near death; hers is the story of ego-loss and reception of true self. Hers is the revelation of the sustaining power of Love in everything!
Today I am reflecting on her particular situation which may have become the situation in which many of us live. She was an anchorite. She lived in an anchor-hold of a church. She lived in one room with a window into the sanctuary so she could worship and a window onto the street so visitors might be blessed by her wisdom.
It makes me think of quarantine. It makes me think that so many of us are moving within a confined space from a window input to a window output, many of these computer windows or other technological portals. However, instead of being inspired by this space we rage against it. It feels more like a prison cell than a monastic one.
We feel limited and restricted instead of liberated. 
There are many lessons which we might learn from Julian but to learn them often takes descending from the physical to the spiritual, from the head to the heart. To learn them requires us to recognize as Julian did that the entire reason for the world is LOVE. 
Her story is often represented in the image of a hazelnut or something that size sitting in her hand. In contemplation she remarked: “in this he showed a little thing...I looked thereon with the eye of my understanding and thought ‘What might this be?’ And it was answered generally thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ ...’It lasts and ever shall because God loves it. And so all things exist and are sustained in their existence because of the love of God.’” 
In this amazing, difficult and wonder-filled time Love is flowing in and through our anchor-holds and our selves, in and out of windows, in and out of portals. May it rest and be revealed in something the size of a hazelnut in the palm of your hand. 
May you gaze from your windows with eyes of understanding and be surprised by signs of Love.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Say My Name

Image
  Respect the dignity of every human being. It begins with their name. It honors who they are. It speaks their name lovingly. Say My Name by Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi ( A Torres Strait Islander and Tongan storyletter. They descend from the Zagareb and Dauareb tribes. ) My name was my name before I walked among the living before I could breathe before I had lungs to fill before my great grandmother passed and everyone was left to grieve My name was birthed from a dream A whisper from gods to a king A shout into the stars that produced another that shone as bright They held me without being burnt, humming lullabies in pidgin My name was passed down from my ancestors They acknowledged my roots grew in two places So, they ripped my name from the ocean and mixed it into the bloodlines of my totems My name has survived the destruction of worlds and the genocidal rebirthing of so-called ones It’s escaped the overwhelmed jaw of the death bringer Many a time It has survived the conflicts that r...
Read more

Tragic Optimism

Image
Tragic Optimism...there it is, another one of those paradoxical couplings! But it speaks to me somehow, resonates really, as our time of disorientation and disillusion continues in lengths for which we have no comparison. Except perhaps in history as in slavery or holocaust or the Bible as in the Exodus! Tragic optimism is a term coined by Victor Frankl which came to life after 9/11 when research on resilience found a strange and strong meaning in these words, a synergism in their inherent tension. While telling similar stories and confessing similar emotions that which separated the resilient from the not so resilient was a capacity to make tragically optimistic meaning of the horrific event, to acknowledge pain and tragedy while holding hope, the thing which does not disappoint, the thing with feathers! Tragic optimism then seems to be much like the Christian virtue which Jesus modeled of holding sorrow and love gently together. It is a healthier psychological framework of...
Read more

What is in the Waiting?

Image
“ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope” Psalm 130:5 What is waiting, besides you and me, in this time of isolation? Much has been written about what we will do when we are sprung! Haircuts, restaurant visits, gyms, hugs, jobs, in church worship, book group actual gatherings, ...just to name a few of the things for which we are waiting. But what is waiting for our attention differently; what have we learned? What is in the waiting? Is there a spirituality of waiting?   Waiting on God is a favorite topic for many mystics. It might be wondrous and contemplative. But during this time of Covid 19 waiting is more often than not connected to anxiety and fear. We wait for results, we wait for financial news, we wait for cures.   Much has been collapsed into the phrase, “I cannot wait to get back to normal!” To which I respond: Wait! What!? When confronted with this kind of waiting or any translation of waiting which aligns it with “norm...
Read more