What can we say about Tuesday? I have come to think of Tuesday as that one day of the week that stands out for its ordinariness. In our American way of life, for many, but not as many as once was true given our gig economy, Sunday is our day of rest while Monday is the first work day, or the beginning of a weekly routine; Wednesday is often felt as the midpoint, while Thursday looks to Friday with relief, at least when I was a worker bee, just aching for Saturday when the weekend officially begins. That leaves Tuesday, standing all on its own as just an ordinary space in a week of other days holding their own. Tuesday was my chosen day to write and post a blog as a kind of self-imposed deadline that has kept me thinking and writing from Tuesday to Tuesday. One week from today, Tuesday, May 7, a long-planned pilgrimage will officially begin with my Pilgrim Sisters in Norwich, UK. It will not be an ordinary Tuesday for us!
Six months ago, these women came together to learn about pilgrimage and to consider making a long journey from Florida to visit another woman who lived 650 years ago in a Medieval village known as Norwich, England. The history of that place is rich beyond the story of one woman, the Anchoress, Julian of Norwich. Julian, herself had no known name, and therefore has been given the name of St. Julian's Church where she lived in a cell from the age of 50 until her death. She is a figure that captures the imagination of many, especially women, in part because of her choice to become a solitary within the confines of a room without an exit. " . . . men were forbidden to enter the cell of an Anchoress, the space for an Anchoress became an exclusively female space. The anchoress' confinement to a cell and her solitude marked this mode of living as unique and remarkable. The anchorhold became an escape from every day responsibilities and obligations of medieval lay women."*
On my first solo visit five years ago, I sat for sometime alone in that rebuilt Anchorage. Without warning, an anxiety crept up on me. The street sounds of a late Friday afternoon with people perhaps headed for the pubs after a long work week, infiltrated the silence of St. Julian's Church without usual activity until Sunday morning. "What am I doing here?" I asked the empty 12 x 12 room. I suppose Julian, herself, would have asked that any number of times, though she never says so in her writing. She was a messenger of hope.
Julian knew well the messaging of the day ran counter to the words that she offered through her little window onto the street where townspeople would stop to ask her counsel. They knew she knew some things. Like everyone, Julian knew the Black Death, horrible ravaging plagues, were killing them; she knew the Church preached anger and wrath; she knew so-called heretics were being burned and dumped in the river close enough for her to skip stones; she knew two men thought they should be Pope at the same time, defying the election results (!); she knew the war was raging on between England and France with no end in sight; she knew, for all her solitariness that something had to give.
She wrote down her thoughts that have outlived her by seven centuries. She said in her own words that we need not accept the doomsday mentality that seized the day. She said there were other, more promising, more hopeful ideas that were wrapped in a different package. She said, looking for that alternative was the way to overcome the worst fears being projected on the people. She said all of us were free to accept a different way of seeing by rejecting what was being shoved down our throats all the time, every day and night. She knew that to help everyone to see this possibility, the message had to shift from fear to love. Fear is so powerful in the hands of the powerful, but love in the hands of the people is the counterpoint that changes thinking and things. Julian of Norwich was a change agent. She said Love, with a capital L, is what we can put our faith and trust in. That one thought alone has made its way through the centuries. She tells us what she herself had learned in the confines of her anchorage then offered to us an alternative way to think of our own times. The words most known to be hers, but were actually spoken to her through Divine Revelation**, were "All Shall be well. All Shall be most well. All manner of things shall be well." There are songs, poems, plays written using those very words. Any number of translations of her book, published posthumously 200 years after her death making her the first known woman to have written a book in English, provide easy access to her Middle English.
For a long time now, I have been thinking and writing about Julian. She has become a real woman to me. Questions remain, and the forthcoming pilgrimage, my third, may answer some, but truth be told, it is the questions that draw me to her. After all, she was an ordinary woman, much like an ordinary Tuesday, with a place all her own, physically, literally, historically and more so lovingly in a world not unlike our own. This pilgrimage to Julian of Norwich's Anchorage in my heart and soul is as much about going home as leaving home. In the coming weeks, I will offer snippets from the pilgrimage as the Spirit moves. Stay tuned!
*The Poetics and Praxis of Enclosure by Phillip Goodwin
**Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich
Commenti