Dialogue 1: Chapter 10, The Long Text

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season six of Turning to the Mystics, where we're turning to the 14th century mystic, Julian of Norwich, and her book Showings. So welcome, Jim.

James Finley (0:38)

Yes, good to start up again, it's wonderful.

Kirsten Oates (0:41)

Good to have our first dialogue. Today, we're reflecting on your first talk on Julian's book Showings.

And I just wanted a little help, a little reminder of this book and what it is, that it's focused on unpacking a vision she had. And so, yeah.

James Finley (1:05)

Yes, as a young woman, she was critically ill near death, and living a devout Christian life. They called the priest to administer the last rites, and as he was holding up the crucifix in this near death kind of ecstasy, she went into kind of an ecstasy, and saw these very vivid images of Jesus dying on the cross.

And she saw that it was given to her to understand the cross as love.

And so she was so moved by that, she felt that it called to live a life of solitude and prayer, living as a recluse in this little cell off to the side of a little church there in Norwich England. So she wrote the short text, it kind of lays out these images, these showings, with little insights into each. Then the long text, over years later, she very carefully reflects in a more in-depth way, offering us spiritual direction. So people would come to her little window for spiritual guidance in her cell, and the other little window looked out on the altar so she could see the mass being celebrated. So by these writings, we're able to kind of join the people coming to the window for spiritual guidance. So she's writing out these very carefully written insights into the interior life. And that was her fidelity to the path as a mystic teacher.

Kirsten Oates (2:38)

Thank you for that. That's really helpful. And then in the first session, you reflected on Chapter 10 from The Long Text.

And I'm wondering why you chose Chapter 10 to get us started.

James Finley (2:52)

Well, I could have chosen any chapter in the sense that every chapter is substantive. You know, it's intimate, it's clear, it sheds a light on our own spiritual path and the search for God and so on. But I chose Chapter 10 because there's two things that happen in the chapter that are key to our series here.

The first is she makes a distinction between seeking and contemplation.

That is, she sees seeking as the path of devotional sincerity, efficacious unto holiness.

And then she says the seeking spills over, it can spill over into contemplation where it becomes mystical. So like all these teaching mystics, they're trying to help us discern that point. Like how do we discern the birthing of a mystical depth dimension to our seeking? Because sometimes the awakening of the mystical is very dramatic, like with her, with the cross. But very often, actually, it's extremely subtle. It's very, very delicate. So how do we understand the nature of the mystical, discern that it's happening to us, and how do we cooperate with it? And then in the mystical, to see the mystical then, we circle back around, and the mystical then illumines the seeking. So she had these visions, but the reason her insights into the seeking are so beautiful is they're being illumined by the mystical. And she helps us to see how that happens to us, too. We can have a quickening.

And then in the ordinariness of our day-by-day quiet time with God and daily life, we see that our ordinary experience is illumined by the moment of our quickening. I chose this chapter because it's so, I think it so helps people, it helps us to understand that, the nature of our own path. That's why I chose it. And then in the next talk, which is the last half of that chapter, then she goes into the cross, the mystery of the cross. So the chapter has these two main parts to it. What we're looking at today in this first talk about devotional sincerity becoming mystical and then deepening devotional sincerity. And in the next talk, the last half of the chapter on the mystical dimensions of the cross in our life. So that's why I chose it, that's why I chose it.

Kirsten Oates (5:23)

Oh, that's so helpful. And I'm really interested to pursue both those parts of the text, these two parts of the path she described the seeking and the contemplation. And would it be correct to say, Jim, there's a sentence that struck me in the second paragraph and I wonder if this outlines the seeking path. She says, so I saw him and I sought him and I had him and lacked him.