We do not even know her real name. "Julian" was the name of the church where she was enclosed — St. Julian's in Norwich. There, in a small cell attached to the church, she lived as an anchoress for perhaps forty years, receiving visitors through a window, praying, and contemplating the visions she had received on a single day in May 1373.
At the age of thirty, Julian fell gravely ill. As she lay dying, she received sixteen "showings" — visions of Christ's passion and of divine love. She recovered, and spent the rest of her life understanding what she had seen.
"And in this he showed me a little thing,
The size of a hazelnut,
Lying in the palm of my hand.
I looked at it and thought: What can this be?
And I was answered: It is all that is made.
I marveled how it could last,
For I thought it might fall into nothing.
And I was answered: It lasts and ever shall,
For God loves it."
Julian's theology was revolutionary. In an age of fear and judgment, she proclaimed that God is pure love. "I saw no wrath in God," she wrote. "For in my sight, God cannot be angry." Sin is not punished by a wrathful deity but healed by endless mercy.
She dared to speak of God as mother: "As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother." The motherhood of God nurtures, feeds, and protects. Christ on the cross is a mother in labor, giving birth to humanity's salvation.
"But all shall be well,
And all shall be well,
And all manner of thing shall be well."
This was shown to me with great certainty.
I asked: How can all be well, when great evil has come through sin?
And I was answered: All shall be well.
For just as the blessed Trinity created all things from nothing,
So the same Trinity shall make all things well that are not well."
Julian's optimism was not naive. She lived through the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, the papal schism. She knew suffering. But she saw deeper than suffering to the love that underlies all things. "He did not say: You shall not be tempested, you shall not be travailed, you shall not be dis-eased. But he said: You shall not be overcome."
Her book, "Revelations of Divine Love," was the first book written in English by a woman. It took six centuries for the world to discover its treasure.
Teaching 49
All that is made is the size of a hazelnut in God's palm, and it lasts because God loves it. There is no wrath in God, only love. You shall be tempested, you shall be travailed, but you shall not be overcome. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.