Last Sunday, I mentioned Dame Julian of Norwich who was a 14th century anchorite in England.  This week, the Church celebrated her feast day (May 8 or May 13 depending on your community) and Jessica mentions her in the Time for the Child in All of Us for our worship this week.

What makes Julian so remarkable?

Having lived through the plague and the 100 years war, Julian could probably commiserate with what we are going through.  She understood living in isolation; although hers was a chosen devotion.  She also knew about the struggle to know, to find and to understand God’s love in all times, all places and all conditions.

In seminary, when I first read her Revelations of Divine Love, I was drawn by the way Julian talked about God as Love and how she counseled one and all to forgive self, to not live in guilt but to revel in grace.  T.S. Eliot picked up one of her famous lines about God’s sustaining love and grace in his set of poems called The Four Quartets.  He quotes Julian’s comforting words saying, “All shall be well.  And all shall be well.  And all manner of thing shall be well.”

As week nine of home school draws to a close and I wonder if I will make it another six weeks (or if my children will), I cling to these words.  Remembering that God is with me and that God loves me even when I am more than frustrated by lessons and Zoom sessions and isolation; knowing that all will be well and all manner of thing will be well, keeps me going, keeps me prayerful, but most of all challenges me to be gracious and gentle with myself and the little ones … because all really is well.

By the way, whenever Julian is pictured, she is always shown with a cat!  I find that comforting too.

“See” you on Sunday,
Hope