Julian of Norwich: Session 1

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our time here together, turning for guidance to the teachings of the Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich. In the previous session, we began this series on Julian with Kirsten leading Mirabai Starr and myself in a dialogue on Julian's life, like the autobiographical foundations of her own awakening, her own path, and looking for parallels, moments in her own life of her own awakening, like markers on this path that she's helping us to follow. And in this session, I want to share with you, explore with you the Chapter 10 of the long text. She begins a chapter like she does each chapter by referring back to the series of visions that she had at the brink of death, where she sees these vivid mystical realizations of Christ crucified, seeing in it the mystery of God's love for us, God's familiarity with us, sustaining us in love in our own suffering and in our own death.

And now years later in her anchor hold and her hermit in her cell there, she's reflecting back on this. In her writing, she's sharing this with us. She reflects back and says, this I saw bodily, recalling the moment of the vision. This I saw bodily, frighteningly and dimly. And I wanted more of the light of day to have seen it more clearly. And I was answered in my reason. If God wishes to show you more, He will be your light. You need none but Him. I'd like to begin by reflecting on this.

She's looking back at this moment where she was granted this, seeing something of God's love, like realizing something of God's love. And she's offering us a lesson for us to consider, guiding us along the path. And the lesson is this, that when we've been granted a taste of God, where there was a moment in our life where we were graced with an awareness of God's oneness with us, when we look back to that graced moment, however it came to us, however it concretized itself, where the granting occurred, it was understandable that we wish we could have seen more. That is, it whet our appetite to see more. And she's reminding us, saying, you know what, if God wills for you to see more, you will see more. The lesson is that your whole life is in God's hands, breath by breath, heartbeat by heartbeat, your very existence. Likewise, the extent to which you're able to realize God's oneness with you in all things is also in God's hands. And if God wills for you to see more, you will see more. So it's inviting us to kind of trust or to be at peace, and to rest with our present level of realization, knowing in God's providential ways there'll be further revelations yet to come, you know, in God's good time. She's also telling us that in seeing more, that is realizing more of God's oneness with us, God will be the light in which we will see more of God. That is only the light of God that allows us to see God, that we're interiorly illumined by the light of God, which is the light in which we see God or realize or taste or experience something of God's presence. I think here, too, it's helpful to realize that, you know, we were talking earlier with Mirabai about how in her little cell there, there was two windows. One looked out where she could see the altar or see the Eucharist, the celebration of the mass. And the other one was on the street, where people would come to her for spiritual guidance. So she's sitting here like these mystic teachers. And because she was writing this out, so now, just like the people who came to the window to talk with her directly, now years later she's writing this out so we can talk with her and receive her teachings, these kind of deep, simple truths of our awakening heart about the ways of God in our life. And then what she says, if God wishes to show you more, he will be your light, you need none but him. And so she's saying, you know, yes, it's understandable having tasted something of God's oneness with you, you would like to see more. And also know is the desire to see more is also from God. But to also know that you already have more than you need because you have God, that you have God, that God is completely being poured out in a self-donating act, and completely giving herself away whole and complete in and as the gift and the miracle of your life, each breath standing up and sitting down. If we think of God as generosity, that you are the generosity of God, your life is the generosity of God. You already have infinitely more than you need, because you have God. Reflecting on this back with Thomas Merton, you know, his insight in this is that the very fact you're seeking God bears witness that you've already found God. True or still, God has already found you. And God is incarnate in and as your very desire for God. God's the infinity of that desire, like the God-given desire for the desire for God, the divinity of all things intimately realized.