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In the Media

Bare Trees in Fog

Interview with Marie Laure on her book
Return From Exile: Revelations from an Anchoress in St. Augustine

In this video, author Jake Doberenz interviews fellow author Marie Laure about her upcoming book Return from Exile: Revelations from an Anchoress in St. Augustine. Marie shares how she came to write the book. Return from Exile is for anyone who's gone through a life transition and survived a pandemic, just like what the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich experienced.

Click here to view more videos of Marie Laure https://youtu.be/ZAvETmk06f4

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See NEW  video of a conversation at the gallery of Berlin artist Susanne Rikus with Marie Laure about Bending Time.

https://youtu.be/ZAvETmk06f4?feature=shared

In the Footsteps of Julian of Norwich
Things Not Seen: Conversation with Marie Laure

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In her recent book, Return from Exile: Revelations from an Anchoress in St. Augustine, our guest Marie Laure tells us about a multi-year attempt to visit the home of the mystical writer, Julian of Norwich, and the serendipitous pilgrimage there and back again.

To listen to Marie Laure on Things Not Seen: Conversations About Culture and Faith, click below.

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© 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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