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Marie Laure

Bare Trees in Fog
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Marie Laure

Second in Serendipity Series

Return From Exile:

Revelations from an Anchoress in St. Augustine (2023)

A true story of two women speaking from self-imposed exile. Separated by seven centuries and an ocean, their stories intersect when Marie Laure makes a solo pilgrimage. She wants to understand why Julian of Norwich lived from age fifty in a cell, an anchorage, attached to a church during the Black Death plague. Her own so-called anchorage is a river porch attached to a Florida townhouse. How had she ended up in quasi-exile? Trying to make sense of it, she writes, just as Julian wrote to understand what had happened in a near-death experience. 

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Return from Exile tells the story of two women several centuries apart whose journeys are remarkably similar. . . . This story is one worth savoring, not only for its beautiful language, but for the significance of finding healing in a journey begun not in search of healing but driven by the call to search. Exile yourself for a bit and walk with Marie Laure and Julian on the road to healing.

Owene W. Courtney, Director of Formation and Spirituality,

St. John's Cathedral, Jacksonville, Florida

Praise & Reviews

This is a beautiful book that traces a woman's journey to 'heal her heart.' In connecting with her own story--including deep loss, pilgrimage, exile, and return--the author also delves into the life of the female mystic Julian of Norwich. She seeks self-discovery and renewal and offers in turn inspiration to the reader.

Claire Wolfteich, PhD, Boston University School of Theology

Readers and seekers who have recently lived through an externally demanded isolation will find a deeper and more soul-satisfying pause in Laure's story of self-imposed exile. . . . Readers will find in Return from Exile an expansion of understanding of Julian's 'showings' and an inspiring story of one woman's interior exile during a life's pilgrimage. Both will resonate with all who welcome an awareness of living in Spirit.

Ann Browning Masters, PhD, author of Floridanos, Menorcans, Cattle-Whip Crackers: Poetry of St. Augustine

​Sign up here for

 

Lunch time

Pilgrimage Presentations

December 3 at 3

Story and Song Arts and Culture Center

Fernandina Beach, FL

December 12 at 12

St. John's Cathedral

Church St. Jacksonville, FL

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e8BxsCLZ91wLRibhmTL24kVeodIZcu87/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107057418428373540493&rtpof=true&sd=true

 

2025 PILGRIMAGE 

May 5 - 12.

Pilgrimage to the Anchorage of Julian of Norwich, Medieval Mystic                 

     Contact: Pilgrimage Leader, to express interest:

CharleneMarieLaure Vincent 

marielaureauthor@gmail.com



 

Julian of Norwich lived out her life in a small anchorage, a room attached to St. Julian’s Church in the heart of Norwich, now a UNESCO City of Literature.

 

The pilgrimage will coincide with Julian’s Feast Day, May 8. 

 

What you can expect:

We will stay next door to the anchorage at the newly refurbished, All Hallows Guest House. Breakfast is included.

 

  • Daily Mass in the Anchorage.

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  • Julian presentations by Friends of Julian plus keynote speaker.

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  • Time for writing and sharing reflections daily.

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  • Day trip to the British Library to see the 16th century manuscripts.

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  • Attend Evensong in Norwich Cathedral. 

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  • Tour of Norwich Cathedral Library.

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  • Visit University of East Anglia Sainsbury Center of Art.

The 2024 Pilgrimage is Complete. All Pilgrims have Returned Home.

Writer in Residence                                                          October 2024

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Bare Trees in Fog

2023

About Marie Laure

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Marie Laure leads spiritual autobiography seminars and retreats. She is the author of Chances Are... (2016), the first book in her Serendipity Series. She co-authored Tuscan Retreat (2013), with Lance Carden. She holds master's degrees in theology from Episcopal Divinity School and Boston University School of Theology.

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On Pilgrimage

What makes

a pilgrimage

a pilgrimage?

© 2023 by Marie Laure

​Six Stages of Pilgrimage:

  • The Call:

  • The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an overscheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.

  • The Separation:

  • Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.

  • The Journey:

  • The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain and sacrifice of the journey itself.  This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.

  • The Contemplation:

  • Some pilgrimages go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation like walking a labyrinth.

  • The Encounter:

  • After all the toil and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling and blisters, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin veil where humans live in concert with the Creator.

  • The Completion and Return:

  • At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one's own world. "Seeing the place for the first time . . ."

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