All Shall Be Well Women's Pilgrimage

The theme for the 2025 pilgrimage is hope! 

May 5 - 12, 2025

Lady Julian of Norwich, England

a UNESCO City of Literature

We need hope more than ever these days. Lady Julian of Norwich who lived in the Dark Middle Ages amidst plagues, wars, and an oppressive Church is the right woman for our own times. She defied all odds as the quintessential insider/outsider in her 14th Century village. At age fifty she moved into an Anchorage (a small room) attached to St. Julian's Church. She spoke a hopeful message from her window while the Church preached doom from the pulpit. She spoke about God as mother and love. She became the first woman to write a book in the English language, still in print today. She continues to inspire us in her oft quoted mantra: "All shall be well".

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julian-of-Norwich

On Pilgrimage

We will join the "Friends of Julian" for their Festival Days to celebrate Julian of Norwich’s Feast Day. Keynote speaker, Author Dr. Hetta Howes Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife:The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women

 https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/discover/articles/interviews/although-they-were-living-hundreds-of-years-ago-these-women-were-in-many-ways-just-like-us/

https://www.julianshrine.org/visit/

We will stay next door to Julian’s Anchorage in All Hallow's Guesthouse which serves daily breakfast fresh from a farmer's market in operation since the 11th century. 

https://www.allhallowsnorwich.co.uk/

We will attend services in the anchorage shrine to celebrate Julians’ Feast Day.

We will attend Norwich Cathedral Evensong, a glorious place to hear the lovely young choristers from the Cathedral School. 

We will walk the large labyrinth within the cloister and have lunch at the refectory. 

We will have a personal tour with the librarian at the Cathedral Library to see some of their precious holdings like Queen Victoria's Bible! 

https://cathedral.org.uk/

We will take a train from Norwich to the British Library in London to see Julian's hand-written manuscripts of Divine Love from the 14th century and visit the Treasures Gallery.

 https://www.bl.uk/

We will take a day trip with the Vicar of St. Julian's Church to the Shrine of Mary of Walsingham, lovely in May.

 https://www.walsinghamanglican.org.uk/

We will take a tour of the National Writing Center’s DragonHall.

 https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/    

Optional day trips: University of East Anglia’s Sainsbury Art Center and Ely Cathedral, as time permits.

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You will have free time daily on your own to explore the Fourteenth Century walking city of Norwich.

https://www.visitnorwich.co.uk/

Each day we will share one meal together. Breakfast is provided and taken on your own, other meals are paid for individually.

Some evenings, a local poet/author and Julian scholar will join us in the cozy parlor for shared writing, reading and reflections.

Space is limited to six women in single rooms. Rooms are private (unless you want a roommate); three full hall bathrooms are shared. Innkeeper (a Medieval Studies Scholar) is on the premises at all times.  https://www.allhallowsnorwich.co.uk/

$1,200 Approximate Pilgrimage Cost (plus your own transportation arrangements including airfare). (Payable in two installments) 

$1,000 Early bird special price through January.

 (Payable in two installments)

NOTE: All transportation arrangements to and from Norwich are your responsibility.

Pilgrimage Leader: Charlene Vincent  has led groups to England and Thailand. Prior to leaving on pilgrimage, we will get to know one another in monthly group Zoom meetings. We will hear Julian of Norwich’s story and what makes a pilgrimage a pilgrimage. Required reading: The Art of Pilgrimage The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred by Phil Cousineau.

Email to inquire:

cmlvincent@gmail.com 

Subject: 2025 Norwich pilgrimage

Music for the Ages

Come gather ’round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon

You’ll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin’

Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin’

Come writers and critics

Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide

The chance won’t come again

And don’t speak too soon

For the wheel’s still in spin

And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’

For the loser now will be later to win

For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway

Don’t block up the hall

For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don’t criticize

What you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin’

Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin’

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin’

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’

Young twenty-three-year-old Dylan wrote and recorded his prophetic song in 1962, over half a century ago. That's how it is with prophets, they see the future most do not; They speak truth most dare not; They offer sage advice most heed not; They are remembered for their insights and courage to speak the truth.

I believe music is the antidote that brings us together in sad times and through trials while lifting us up with hope when we need it most. Wishing you Thanksgiving music to fill your heart with hope.

When Life is not a Bed of Roses . . .

Plant some. That is what George Orwell, famed author of that prescient "1984" futuristic book did in his own backyard. Those roses like his book still live. At the time he wrote his book, the year 1984 was a distant future horizon. When some of us lived through 1984 the book had a resurgence. It felt a little closer to our truth. We began to see that eye looking over our shoulders even then. Don't look now, but exactly forty years later, his futuristic ideas have eerily come home to haunt us jumping from the page to cameras everywhere we live and walk and meet our friends . . . even in our homes. The pool where I swim has not escaped the "evil eye". We have been both numb and naive to the dangers that Orwell knew lurked around corners. To counteract his fear and worry, he planted roses.

For some period of time, Orwell, whose actual name was Eric Arthur Blair, lived and wrote in a tiny cottage in England. The backyard was his "happy place" where roses bought for a song from the local Woolworth Department store served to create a secret world. This visible world of color and sensuous smells filled him to his inner core. He cherished his hours there. He did not write about them but about the complete contrast of beauty and bitter truths. He had a foot in both worlds. So do we.

The week following the recent election was described by so many as a "hard week". It was true for at least 50 percent of Americans who voted in a fair and free election. That we did so, once again, speaks volumes. I think we know today that in spite of the results we needed to acknowledge to ourselves and to the world that our Democracy lived on through the 2024 election. Now, we shall see if "1984" was fact or fiction. Orwell's imaginings were warnings. Had he lived to see this story unfold, he would recognize his characters with their own agendas. He left us much to consider as his dystopia comes into view. He also gave us hope in planting a living thing that lasts.

Each of us has that power. You may wonder why or how it matters? Simply put, there has and always will be beauty juxtaposed with bitterness in life. We can contribute to one or the other. We cannot do both easily because bitterness will not prevail in the face of beauty.

For sometime while living in the Southend of Boston, coming straight from a large Cape Cod garden that I had turned over every Spring and enjoyed every Summer for two decades, I felt something was missing. The "Friends of the Southeast Corridor" tended beautiful gardens along the walking path that I traversed often. I volunteered to tend the roses. They were prolific and needed much pruning. I donned my gardening gloves and joyfully broke out my shears. Once a week, I made my way out toward the busy nearby subway station where I smelled a mixture of street odors and sweet flowers. The red towering bush stood well above me. I could not trim the top, so I tackled the straggling outward reaching thorny branches. It gave me great joy to be back amongst the natural beauty, this time against the backdrop of a struggling neighborhood beyond, where I worked on Sundays mornings. The children there knew little of the "niceties of life". They could see the differences between their lives and mine. I knew it. I felt helpless against their adversities. Nothing I could say would change that; Music was my way in with some.

One day, as I arrived at the rose garden, putting down my basket of gardener's tools, I noticed the tiny sign: "Roses tended by Charlene". My heart swelled with pride and joy. As I reached for my gloves I saw something shiny catching the brilliant sunshine of the perfect Fall day. As I got closer, I saw a used hypodermic needle laying in the grass. I stood straight up, glanced around at the whole of life passing by on the corridor heading for the subway. The roses, I thought, make all the difference to some dreary and difficult existences, and brighten the eyes of small ones in strollers who may someday need to remember beauty in the face of bitterness. Life is not a bed of roses, but a bed of roses helps raise hopes.