Coming face to face with two women this week reminded me of my own words shared in a talk in late June at the Julian Center in Norwich, UK. That talk is the reason I traveled abroad, or so I thought. The first face I saw "across a crowded room" looked out at me from a painting in one of the many museums in Berlin. In fact, this particular museum was the one I most wanted to visit to see the works of Caravaggio, Donatello, Durer, and Rembrandt's "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel" which I had expected to see in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. So, I thought of this as a second chance. When I found the spot where it would have hung, all that was visible was an outline darkened over time against a pale blue wall. The painting was in a traveling exhibit as were most of the others I had planned to see. What I hadn't expected to see was a woman in a 14th century "winged bonnet" who looked completely familiar to me. When she caught my eye, I said out loud: "It's Julian!" I walked directly across the large room to the one painting at eye level, not often the case from my height of five feet. Unmistakably this was the face I had come to know from the book cover "Revelations of Divine Love". This very face was etched in my mind as Julian herself. Now, I had found her hanging around this museum as if she were waiting for me to show up someday. I stood a long time staring at her while trying to recall the exact book cover details on my desk in my study at home in Florida. The painting's title was not Julian of Norwich, but "Frau in winged bonnet", 14th century. I looked on Amazon to see that book cover, and sure enough that same smiling face was right before my very eyes! I knew that serendipity had brought me here in the same way it had brought me to Julian's 14th century anchorage in Norwich twice in four years. My own words came to mind: . . ."That's the way serendipity plays out in our life stories . . .allowing us to consider the Unseen." The circle felt complete in our coming face to face. How serendipity affects our lives is as mystical as the 14th century mystic herself.
Within days, another encounter stirred serendipity yet again. Readers may remember that I wrote about meeting a young woman selling strudel at the Farmer's Market. One comment on that blog was that this woman would be long remembered. Yesterday, when she greeted me, she said she had told her friends about meeting "a cute couple" from Florida who were spending time in her old neighborhood. I told her that I had written about her in my travel blog. Then, a most mysterious moment happened between us: Quite innocently, I asked, "What's your name?" "Lisa" she replied. Pointing to myself, I said my name is "Charlene". Her crystal blue eyes grew large. "My mother wanted to name me Charlene! I have never met anyone before now with that name." She extended her hand and said: "Nice to meet you." It was as surreal as the encounter with the painting! It seems like both women had been expecting me! How can this be? Some things defy explanation while creating links between people and places across time. These two recent events so very close in time couldn't have been planned. Together they seem more mystical somehow. Was I meant to be here at this very moment so that I could come face to face with two women who have been in this one place all this time? I believe so.
TIME, my friends, is not linear it is mystical. We are on that "carrousel of time" that Joni Mitchell sang about in her song "The Circle Game"* when I serendipitously encountered her in my twenties and was too young to really understand. But, there she was strumming her song in a near empty stadium at Berkeley College when I happened upon her on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. That moment lingers and found its way into this writing some forty years hence. I wondered why I had thought of her song before recalling that long ago travel encounter with someone who would go on from this moment in her own young life to become that icon we know today. To this day, I still do not understand, but I do believe that those connections that seem to come from "out of the blue" are nothing less than moments that are truly meant to be.
This seems like the auspicious time to share my Julian of Norwich talk with you.
June 18, 2023
Bending Time
Good afternoon . . . thank you for the lovely introduction and to all of you for coming today.
My book, Return from Exile, is the second in my “Serendipity Series”, so called for the way moments of serendipity come as a surprise to us in the midst of our daily lives. These unexpected threads that connect us one to another create a series of “what ifs” in our minds. Exactly three years ago, I sat in Julian’s anchorage as a solo pilgrim. What if, a year earlier, my flight from the U.S. had not been canceled by unexpected tornadoes and I had come as originally planned that summer? Everything would have been different. There is no way to know how, but I know that certain “chance” meetings that seemed to “just happen” could not have been foreseen when that flight was grounded.
Consider the following episode which I have played over and over in my mind and have written into my story:
What if when I arrived in London a year later, I had gone straight to the British Library that Saturday morning as I had planned?
What if I had not gone first to the St. Pancras station to pick up my train ticket to Norwich while on my way to the Library?
What if two women arriving by train into that station, that morning, at that time, had gone out a different exit?
What if I had gone out the other exit?
What if in that one brief moment standing side by side on a street corner I had not overheard them puzzling over directions to the Library?
What if I had not turned to them to say that the Library was up ahead on the right?
What if one or the other of us while crossing the street had not spoken the name “Julian of Norwich”?
What if we had never met? Would they be here today? I wonder.
That’s the way serendipity plays in our life stories, or at least through the serendipitous lens with which stories may be seen allowing us to consider the Unseen.
My colleague, Sarah Law and I have our own story of connecting from afar, that we will share with you during our conversation. She and The Friends of Julian graciously allowed me to choose the date for this event and serendipity struck again: In choosing this date, I was unaware that it was Father’s Day, and that 2023 marks the 60th anniversary of my beloved father’s passing, just as it marks the 650th of Julian’s Divine revelations. It got me thinking how these connections between souls suspend time whether for 60 or 650 years.
Once upon a time, Julian was no different than you or I sitting here. But, now, she and all of us are soulfully connected on the continuum of time.
Are we bending time?
By breaking through traditional time, Julian proves that time is not linear, but mystical. While she is fixed in time as she once was within her anchorage, she is not fixed to only her time in the 14th century. Otherwise, why would we be here today to celebrate Julian’s visions that ultimately changed her life and have touched ours across time?
Consider just for a moment, Julian in her anchorage, writing day after day, trying to understand what it all meant, that she, a self described “lowly, unlettered woman” should have been shown such mystical things.
What if Julian were physically sitting among us, or at the anchorage window? What a thought! What would we ask her? What might she ask us?
Twice now, within three years, and following one failed attempt, I have traveled a great distance to sit with her in the anchorage, the room where she chose to live out her life. I have heard that some people who live much nearer never do.
Why then should I?
That might be the question Julian would ask me! I have tried to answer it for myself. The answer is not so simple. It is all wrapped up in the mystery of soulful connections: me to you, you to me, her to us. Somehow, Julian seems to be bringing us together once, and for all, and forever.
Our encounters not only feel timeless but are timeless, just as Julian herself.
During the “pandemic pause,” which is analogous in so many ways with Julian’s plagues, the days of the week became blurred: Is it Sunday? Tuesday? Did it matter?
I came to think of everyday as Tuesday because I had always thought of Tuesday as the day of the week without expectations. It simply IS.
I am trying to be like Tuesday on what feels like an auspicious occasion. If today were just an ordinary Tuesday, we could all just have “tea and cakes” and go home. But, our coming together to remember the Divine revelations of a woman whose words called me from across an ocean and you to come here today from near and far, seven centuries notwithstanding, is anything but ordinary.
What if we are not simply sharing stories and “tea and cakes”?
What if each one of us came here today, some of us meeting, once again, because we were brought here for such a time as this?
What if all the serendipity that opened the way for us is a tangible expression of Divine Love?
In conclusion,
Today is not Tuesday. It is Sunday, and Father’s Day, and, clearly, the auspicious time for us to have come together.
It begs a bigger question that we might ask ourselves, and the one that I would ask Julian which she herself asked of God: Why me?
Some of those answers may be found in reading my book. I say some because I can honestly say that I wrote the book to find the answer that still seems somewhat elusive to me.
The answer for Julian came after fifteen years of waiting and longing within her ENCLOSED CELL without clearly knowing why! But what’s another fifteen years when compared with 60 or 650? What’s “fifteen years and more” when the answer that came was timeless? What’s fifteen years when she delivered a universal message that has outlived her and reaches us as if no time has passed?
I begin my book where Julian ends hers, with these words in her 86th chapter of the Long Text:
“And from the time that this was shown, I often longed to know what our Lord meant. And fifteen years and more later my spiritual understanding received an answer, which was this:
‘Do you want to know what your Lord meant? Know well that love was what he meant. Who showed you this? Love. What did he show? Love. Why did he show it to you? For love.”
While preparing for this talk, I serendipitously came across the following quote. “Love is made up of time. Love is an attempt to make of the instant, an eternity.” (Octavio Paz)
*jonimitchell.com

Hello Charlene, from NH, USA this is my second attempt to comment...I will begin with a stab at recalling my first comment. Unfortunately I was unable to open your blog until Sunday evening the 16th of July. On that night I focused my comment on a reference to a series of books which i have been reading by Kelly Rimmer. The first was titled The German Wife, the second is titled Orphan Warsaw. These chronical the era of Nazi Germany before "The Wall" was erected the wall first wall was built around The Ghetto. The atrocities which took place at that time were certainly not covered well in my grammer school textbooks. The length of time and the number …