Turning to Julian of Norwich

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.

I'm excited to be here to launch this season with Jim, and we have the wonderful Mirabai Starr with us, who's a writer, teacher, and translator of the mystics, and a wonderful friend of this podcast, and has been on for a number of seasons with us. So welcome, Jim, welcome Mirabai.

Mirabai Starr (0:47)

Thank you, Kirsten.

Kirsten Oates (0:49)

And Jim, I'm gonna hand it over to you to announce our mystic for season six.

James Finley (0:54)

Yes, thank you. Yeah, so we've been going through this series of Turning to the Mystics.

And so now this will be our first session on Julianne of Norwich.

And she's a contemporary in England, The Cloud of Unknowing, very close contemporary. So she's an English mystic with The Cloud, so I'm putting them together for that reason. And really one of the great women mystics in this whole tradition. And is launching this here, Mirabai and I with Kirsten will kind of be opening up about her life and kind of setting the tone for her teachings. So I look forward to spending time with Julian.

Kirsten Oates (1:37)

Thank you so much, Jim. I thought I'd start by asking you both about your interactions with Julian in your life and your career and how she's impacted you.

James Finley (1:50)

When I was in the monastery with Thomas Merton right out of high school and in the talk to the novices and with me in spiritual direction, he really introduced me to these mystics, John of the Cross, Teresa and so on. And it was there too that I was first introduced to Julian.

And I say I read her, was aware of her, but she didn't at the time really have the impact on me that the other mystics had. As a matter of fact, I would say, I still feel kind of new about her compared to John of the Cross and Teresa and Eckhart and some poets and so on.

Next, after I left the monastery, I was invited to England to give talks in London. And again, through Carolyn Mays, Finhorn, Scotland. And so that gave me a chance twice to be at her hermitage there in Norwich. And there I spent a year immersing myself in her. And that's the first time I think I really started to appreciate her. And then lastly, in my contemplative prayer group with St. Monica's, I would spend a year on a mystic. I'd give a talk, we would do a sitting. And I got even more into her. So that's been my history with Julian. And now this podcast has given me another opportunity to immerse myself in her teachings.

Mirabai Starr (3:14)

I was around the same age, actually. I was 16 I had dropped out of high school.

I don't recommend that, but that is what I did. And I was reading spiritual books, everything I could get my hands on. And I was going through a very difficult time because I was an adolescent and my hormones were raging, you know how it is. And an older friend who was a writer, with whom I was actually doing creative writing exercises, introduced me to Julian by quoting her famous line, all will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.

And I clung to that saying, like a life raft through the rest of my stormy adolescence. I would come back to it again and again. There was something about the rhythm of that teaching. It wasn't just like, everything's gonna be okay.

She repeated it three times, very intentionally. Julian's the queen of threes anyway. She's the Trinitarian goddess. Everything is in threes in her text. And so repeating it three times had this very powerful kind of alchem, almost an alchemical effect on me. You know, when I grew up in a totally non-religious family, non-religious Jewish family, and I just, the last thing I wanna say about that is years later, I said that to my, quoted Julian to my Jewish mother, who now quotes her all the time. Just that statement. It's so interesting how much power that carried. So many people know nothing about Julian of Norwich, except they know that beautiful triple affirmation that all will be well.

Kirsten Oates (5:10)

Mirabai, how did it come to be that you translated her work later on?