so much to scrub away an original sin as to heal the two sides to our
sin, and nothing is evil except sin/' Julian declares. Hers is not an introverted spirituality seeking to clean up a bad conscience. Rather, she turns outwards as well as inwards and finds goodness everywhere. "I know well that heaven and earth and all creation are great, generous and beautiful and good." She marvels at the beauty of that portion of creation which is humanity when she sings of "our noble and excellent making."
And she overflows with gratitude at the abundance with which the Creator has blessed all creation. "God's goodness fills all God's creatures and all God's blessed works full af endlessly ooeilews in then" Even God is "delighting without end" at the goodness and beatity of humanity which is "as beautiful, as good, as precious a creature as God could make.'
Clearly, Julian does not advise running from creation to experience the divine. For good reason it has been said that her teaching that "the realm of creation is the natural milieu of the Spirit (makes) a radical break with a | Neoplatonic mysticism:
2. The spirituality of our sensuality,Consistent with her theology of the goodness of creation, Julian does not create body/soul as dualistic or antagonistic. In fact, she does just the opposite: She praises our sensuality and its unique relationship to God. Body and soul form a "glorious union" —how differently Christian theologies of marriage and sexuality would read today had we followed Julian's insights on this topic instead of those of Augustine, who wrote: "The soul makes war with the body."
Like Freud, Julian traces our sensuality to our very origins: "It is when our soul is breathed into our body that we are made sensual." Body and soul are to make peace, "let each of them take help from the other,' she advises. It is through our sensuality that we receive divine gifts for "God is in our sensuality.' Our sensuality "is founded on nature, in mercy and in grace:
But Julian goes even further. She begins to question the use of the word "soul" as it has come to be used in western theology, as if it were a substance apart from our bodiliness. "As regards our sensuality, it can rightly be called our soul because of the union it has with God" One can hardly get any more incarnational than that in one's spirituality! Furthermore, the Creator is the very "glue" that binds our whole self together. "God is the mean which keeps the substance and the sensuality together, so that they will never separate" Here surely is a holiness of wholeness, a quest for healing and one-ing.
3. Salvation as healing. The purpose of the Incarnation for Julian is not so much to scrub away an original sin as to heal the two sides to our nature. Just as in Christ two natures are united—the divine and the