development of the theme of the motherhood of God, a theme that has
human—so too are we to become whole and healed. By Christ's passion Our sensuality is united to our substance by a great act of "oneing." Julian envisions Jesus sitting in our center which is "an honourable city" and which "is our sensuality.' Christ is enclosed there. "In our first making
God gave us as much good and as great good as we could receive in our spirit alone." Thus for Julian there were two creations: The First which was good, indeed very good; and the second which was Christ's coming as a New Creation which made us even better because it led to a fuller union between the divine and the sensual in us.
The on-going creative power of God is so much a part of us and of creation that all natural activities, including even going to the bathroom, involve us and God working together. "It is God who does this" she declares about going to the bathroom, meaning, it is God and us, cocreators that we are. What a far cry from the sentimental prudery of so much Christian spirituality is Julian's investment in our earthliness and in the Good News of Salvation as being the healing news of mind and body, soul and spirit, nature and grace, in unitive acts of peaceful, flowing grace.
4. The Motherhood of God. Julian is rightly famous in our time for her development of the theme of the motherhood of God, a theme that has been so conspicuously absent in the patriarchal spiritualities that have dominated the West in the past few centuries. While this theme is by no means original in Julian—it is present in the Hebrew Bible, in the New
Testament, in numerous medieval thinkers like Anselm, St. Francis of Assissi, Mechtild of Magdeburg and Meister Eckhart—still, no one has developed this theme more deeply or more broadly than has Julian of Norwich. Julian ascribes motherhood to God, to the Trinity, to Christ and to the Church. She says, for example, that "in our making,
God almighty is our loving Father and God all wisdom eae REE TR created "by the motherhood of Tove, a mother's love which never leaves. us," she declares. fe Julian refers to the Trinity as Mother when she says that "the deep wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother, in whom we are enclosed" and that "the property of motherhood" is found in the Trinity. The most prominent and most developed theology of motherhood is found in Julian's treatment of Jesus Christ. Though there is a long tradition in medieval literature on this topic, no one develops it as fully as Julian. "Our Saviour is our true Mother, in whom we are endlessly born and from whom we shall never part." The second person of the Trinity "is our Mother' wno by taking on our humanity "has now become our mother sensually. Who is our true mother? "Jesus Christ, who opposes good to evil, is our true
Mother. We have our being from him, where the foundation of motherhood begins." Jesus' motherhood applies to both creations, the first and the second. "Jesus is our true Mother in nature by our first creation, and our true Mother in grace by his taking our created nature."
After so many centuries of exclusively patriarchal images for God we are tempted to celebrate Julian's recovery of motherly God images and let it go at that. But this is not enough and it fails to do justice to Julian's considerable intellectual contribution to the theology of the motherhood of God. What in fact does Julian mean by motherhood? And what light does this shed on our spiritual struggles today? Julian identifies the following divine characteristics of motherhood: e Our experiences of motherhood are our experiences of "being enclosed" according to Julian. Julian is rich in her images of panentheism which she understands as maternal—an enveloping, embracing, welcoming, inclusive, cosmic, expansive, curved image of how we are in God and God is in us. We have here, and in Julian's rich images for these forms, a circular and non-ladderlike, non-competitive image for us, God and society.
® Motherhood reflects the compassionate side of God for Julian, one of 'tender love' But Julian resists fiercely any sentimentalizing of this motherly love when she insists it is service-oriented. "The mother's service is nearest, readiest and surest,' she declares. We are to consider
"motherhood at work," she says, if we are to grasp the motherhood of God.
¢ The work of motherhood includes birthing, with all the pain and struggle that birthing invariably involves. Pain, risk, courage are part of the motherly side of divinity. "We know that all our mothers bear us for pain and for death,' she says, and she considers Jesus to be an outstanding example of such divine motherly birthing. The cross is integral to the work of birthing and mothering. e What is it God gives birth to? God, says Julian, "is the true Father and the true Mother of natures.' Thus all beings are birthed by God and "flow out of God to do God's will." Creation itself is the primary birthing activity of the Creator. The relationship of divine motherhood to humans is necessarily a sensual one, according to Julian.
® God is mother insofar as God is "All Wisdom." Drawing on the rich imagery especially of the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible, Julian develops the theme of God as mother, God as wisdom. A patriarchal society defines education exclusively as knowledge. A holistic one would