themes of creation-centered spirituality for the alert reader and pray-er.
return to education as the quest for wisdom as much as the development of knowledge and information.
5. Humanity's divinization, Another theme that Julian dares to develop is that rich theme in creation-centered spirituality of humankind's divinization. While Eastern Christianity never lost this theme in its theology, the West struggled to keep it alive after the all-pervading influence of Augustine's guilty conscience reduced salvation to cleansing from sin instead of awakening to divine potential, divine beauty. The tradition of our divinization is well attested to in wisdom literature, in the theme so underdeveloped in the West about our being images of God, and in John
2 Paul. Yet even in our time translators of Julian have made efforts to "clean up" her references to our divinzation. In fact, the theme is altogether orthodox, and when it is lost, spirituality often gets reduced to boring religious pronouncements and sterile legalisms. The reader of Julian would do well indeed to keep this in mind and heart while reading, discussing and praying her meditations in this book. Ponder, for example, these words:
"We are of God. That is what we are. |_saw no difference between God and our Substance but as if it were all
God"
Notice, however, that Julian never confuses our divinity with pantheism but has a well-developed and nuanced grasp of panentheism. For continuing on in the phrase | have quoted from she says: "I take this to mean that our substance is in God: that is, God is God, and our substance is a creature in God."
Ng ee ake 6. Other themes. There is a rich treasure house in Julian of all the themes of creation-centered spirituality for the alert reader and pray-er.
Not only the five | have alluded to but also the themes of Original Blessing (no creation-centered theologian makes a big thing of original sin).
Julian says: "Il saw that God never began to love us for. . .we have always been in God's foreknowledge, known and loved from without beginning." Be alert to themes of gratitude, thanksgiving, praise. Of dialectical
(both/and) as distinct from dualistic (either/or) images and ways of thinking. Of humor and laughter. Of realized eschatology. Of joy and resurrection, of a mysticism of the empty tomb. Of universal salvation. Of a keen penetration of sin and evil without there being an exaggeration of either's importance. Of church as people, the New Temple, of the mystical body. Of trust and not fear or guilt as the basis of a psychology of spirituality. Of a vulnerable God who suffers and who celebrates.
Julian is a mystic and for our times a prophet who brings us the Good but challenging News of creation-centered theology. Her intellectual and mystical contribution to our lives is untold if we take the time and space to meditate with her, to share and be touched. | can guarantee that it will
be time well spent, a time beyond time.
As Brendan Doyle points out in his introduction, every translation is ideological and in fact political. It is therefore especially wonderful to welcome this translation by Brendan Doyle which is born of a deep and mature familiarity with the non-dualistic, creation-centered spiritual tradition from which Julian springs. Thank you too to Patricia Vinje for her considered reflections and concern for Julian and her message that emerges from her foreword.
Matthew Fox, op Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality Holy Names College, Oakland Oakland, California 'Brent Pelphrey, "Review of Julian of Norwich, Showings,
14th Century Engli i Newsletter" (September, 1978), p. 28. a Races ean
Introduction "WE were all created at the same time," says Julian of Norwich, "and in Our creation we were knit and oned to God." Furthermore, she adds,
"God never began to love us. . .we have always been.
. .known and loved from without beginning."
This cosmic perspective of a woman of the fourteenth century could almost be grasped as a commentary on the first three words of Genesis.
There the Hebrew words are "br'shyth br' 'Ihym,' so familiarly translated as "In the beginning God Created." The first word "br'shyth" is a combination of the preposition ("b") "in" or "with" and the word "rsh" meaning the head of the body. This word is used to express the sum total arrived at by head count and in the book of Numbers the same word is used for the counting of the community of Israel by Moses and Aaron. The second "br'" create, is related to the words for blessing, choose, pure, child, and beloved—all images that are suggested by the word creation.
The parallel use of the roots "br' " in the first two words of Genesis seems to underline the act of creation with a faith that is both poignant and poetic. The word "sh" within the first word of Genesis happens also to be the word for fire or flame—another powerful image that beckons our imagination. Thus in the opening three words of Genesis are found the following words: With/everyone/flame/created (blessed, chosen, beloved, pure, child)/God ('Ihym). Given this context for Genesis 1.1, Julian's statement takes on even greater significance: "We were all created at the same time and in our creation we were knit and oned to God.
. .God never began to love us. . .we have always been. . .known and loved from the beginning."
The preposition "with" is further echoed in Julian by her belief that "between God and our soul.
. .there is no between." To believe in between is to believe in a separation, a subject/object dualism. The Middle Ages were ruled by Augustine's dictum that we are all under the power of the devil by virtue of original (the "beginning") sin. Original sin destroyed our relationship with God—the beginning of between, you
might say. With her constant emphasis on "oneing" and "compassion"
Julian transcends this dictum with a rich theology of original blessing. In doing so she appears to be in league with the other artists and poets of her age, giving the lie to any accusation that an anchoress could not be in touch with her own culture and respond to it like the prophet that she was. This was the age of wandering minstrels and poets who created the legends that are still alive today, particularly those of the Grail, Percival and Tristan and Isolde. Julian's images are images found in these tales—
"longing, "desire," "thirst," "compassion," "sensuality." Her understanding of love as being oned has much in common with them. The legend of Percival, who reunites the sacred lance with the Grail, speaks to us as Julian does with its call to wholeness and liberation. This wholeness and liberation applies to all of nature, for Julian says: "The sky, the earth, failed at the time of Christ's dying because he too was part of Nature."
Like Percival, Julian had a cosmic sense. This whole artistic and mystical tradition found another voice in the nineteenth century with Richard
Wagner, who created music dramas from these legends. When Julian tells us that our uneasiness is due to finding rest where there is no rest she also seems to echo the same eternal truth so well articulated by the Buddha, another major influence on Wagner.
But Julian's prophetic consciousness goes even further than being in touch with the art of her age. She also turns the tables on the art of courtly love. Much of her language is the language of courtly love, God's
"courtesy" (courtliness) probably being the best example. The virtues of courtesy, largesse (hospitality and generosity), truth (fidelity, loyalty) were virtues sought for and respected by chivalrous knights of medieval times.
But Julian was a woman. She was not the object of love, not an unattainable married woman lusted after from a distance by some knight—the femme fatale who enjoyed her unattainable status. Instead Julian writes of her love and passion for a God whom she saw as a lord reigning in his castle entertaining his guests. Her love and passion is for a man who showed himself in the pain and graphic wounds of a crucified liberator who was one of and one with us. In courtly love a man of low estate loved from afar a married woman of higher social class. Julian, an anchoress vowed to poverty, sings of her love, longing and desire that will find fulfillment for the God of Might, Wisdom and Love, with the emphasis on Love. Her lover God in turn accepts her love, thirsts for it and enjoys it. Hence Julian's discourse on the true meaning of love is a counterpoint and a redefinion of the virtues so sought after by her male contemporaries—a truly prophetic contribution.
In the Showings Julian spends quite a bit of time on Sensuality. Her erotic
images of seeing, feeling, hearing, drinking and breathing in God betray a profound and healthy respect for the body—not to mention her wonder at the ordinary and humblest needs of the body which she considers holy. We cannot know God until we know our own soul, and the soul is both Substance and Sensuality. Sensuality, of course, is the miracle of the Incarnation through which we are oned to the Trinity. The body must be kept healthy and strong, and one of the great feats of Compassion is the sorrow experienced on seeing a loved one's body in pain. No masochistic asceticism here. We must remember that Julian's age was also the age of the Black Death, and this experience must have been a vivid one, an awakening to a respect for bodily health.
The Black Death also may have been responsible for Julian's discourse on Motherhood. Barbara Tuchman in her book on the fourteenth century,
A Distant Mirror, tells us that "women appear rarely as Mothers" in the art of Julian's time. Even the Virgin Mary is portrayed with the child Jesus always at a distance. No attempt was made to illustrate a close relationship. Ms. Tuchman's explanation for this is tied to the fact that the survival rate for children was one out of three. Therefore mothers were afraid to become too close to their children to spare themselves the agony of almost certain separation. Is Julian also trying to redeem the word
"mother"? We could say that Julian must have had a wonderful childhood and that she also must have had a very special mother. Another prophetic counterpoint to the culture of Julian's time.
Julian in her stress on the positive, creative and transformative experiences in life does not avoid a healthy acceptance of the Via Negativa. We have already mentioned her Buddhist attitude towards finding rest in material things since God is the True Rest. She also recognizes and speaks of sin. | find it interesting that she sees sin, a failure of our true capabilities, know-how and love, as stemming from sloth and losing of time. Sloth (contrary to a Calvinistic interpretation) was understood in the Middle Ages as a symptom of depression or melancholy leading to despair (what Julian calls "fearful awe"). Julian does not treat sin, therefore, naively. It is a necessary part of life. We are not basically sinful but are basically good, and through sin we grow. This psychology has not lost its freshness and relevance to our own time. We have much to learn from her acknowledgement of the harm caused by guilt and the privatizing of failings so natural to the human condition. Julian says: "Do not accuse yourself too much, allowing your tribulation and woe to seem all your fault; for it is not my will that you be heavy or sorrowful imprudently."
Julian often uses the phrases "in my understanding | saw" and "in my
reason | saw." Most of the Showings refers to the understanding. | think Julian here means "in my imagination." In our left-brain culture the word imagination (like the word romantic—and Julian was a romantic in the true sense) has taken on pejorative connotations. Gregory Baum has told us that "faith resides in the Imagination." | would add here that the faith of a mystic especially resides in the imagination. Gustav Mahler, the great composer, wrote in one of his letters: "What is it, after all, that thinks within us? And what acts within us? Strange—when | hear music, even while | conduct, | can hear quite clearly that there are no questions at all/" "There are no questions at all." What is this if not a firm faith or trust in an intuition received through the imagination? Julian had the same experience | am sure. The vivid paintings of "red, hot blood flowing" through the medium of an imagination stirred through compassion for a human being in pain led to the numerous connections with our own life that we read and call Showings—a true work of art. "Reason is the highest gift we have," but our understanding, our imagination is also a gift.
Any artists would agree. The experience of artistic creation is a both/and experience.
Julian's answers to all her questions through her imagination sometimes contradicted what she had been taught by "Holy Church" and "clerics."
But where her imagination was blessed with an intuition, she believed it, trusted it and let go of images she knew not to be true. Anyone who reads Showings can experience the struggle Julian went through between her intuitions and her religious education. Sometimes she goes on for pages trying to justify her religious upbringing, but to no avail. But she does tell us that "Holy Church is God's Holy Church,' a statement | find very revealing in this context.
A few words now about the language of Julian, especially to those of us who claim English as our mother tongue. In translating certain of Julian's words | found myself being constantly amazed at 1) how so many English words have either lost their meaning today or have taken on a new meaning, 2) the fact that certain translations give truth to the dictum
"every translation is an interpretation." Translating words such as "assethmaking" as atonement (as has been done) completely misunderstands and contradicts Julian's emphasis on our blamelessness and the necessity of sin. Asseth-making means making an assessment, i.e., an evaluation, and we have been evaluated as good (Cf. Genesis 1), as blessing. Just as Julian tried to redeem words such as "Motherhood" and "Love," | try to save words that have fallen into the hands of a fall/redemption outlook on life. When Julian says we must "empty ourselves of all that is created/'" she is not saying "we must despise creation", which some translators
would have us believe. (The word she uses is,"nowtyn.") In true Eckhartian fashion Julian is telling us to let go of between, to wake up and see that God is in all. Julian's use of the word "comfort" | have translated as "energize" since in medieval England comfort means to give strength to you; when she says "gentle" she is speaking of a relationship, a familial relationship, "of the same gens"; "kind/' of course, means "nature" and "sensuality" is "sensuality" not sense soul. The interpretation | offer in my translation is based on the creation-centered spiritual tradition of which Julian is so rich a part and of which many of her translators have had hardly an inkling.
Brendan Doyle Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality Oakland, California al
Since I was only thirty and a half years old, it pained me to think of dying — not because | had special plans for my life nor for fear of any pain.
But I longed to live to love God better and longer here, so I might know and love
God more in the joy of heaven.
In so short a time I have experienced so little of life.
I thought my life as nothing and no longer giving praise to the Good Lord.
I saw that God is everything that is good and energizing.
God is our clothing that wraps, clasps and encloses us so as to never leave us.
God showed me in my palm a little thing round as a ball about the size of a hazelnut.
I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and asked myself:
"What is this thing?"
And I was answered: "It is everything that is created."
I wondered how it could survive since it seemed so little it could suddenly disintegrate into nothing.
The answer came: "It endures and ever will endure, because God loves it."
And so everything has being because of God's love.
Until I am really and truly oned and fastened to God so that there is nothing created between us, I will never have full rest or complete happiness.
For in order to love and have God who is uncreated, we must have knowledge of the smallness of creatures and empty ourselves of all that is created.
We seek rest where there is no rest and therefore are uneasy.
God is the True Rest who wants to be known.
God finds pleasure in being our true resting place.
In our lack of undérstanding and knowledge of Love, We make many intentions when we pray.
But the Goodness of God is the highest prayer.
God's Goodness kindles our soul and brings it to life and makes it grow in grace and capacity.
It is closest in nature and most understood in grace because it is the same grace the soul seeks and ever shall seek until we know truly that we have all been enclosed within God.
Food is shut in within our bodies as in a very beauti purse. When necessity calls, the purse opens and then shuts again, in the most fitting way. And it is
God who does this because I was shown that the Goodness of God permeates us ever in our humblest needs.
God does not despise creation, nor does God disdain to serve us in the simplest function that belongs to our bodies in nature because God loves the soul and the soul is made in the image of God.
As the body is clothed in cloth and the muscles in the skin and the bones in the muscles and the heart in the chest, So are we, body and soul, clothed in the Goodness of God and enclosed.
For that our soul cleave with all its power is the one desire of our Lover.
There is no creature that is made that can know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Creator loves us.
We have the power to ask of our Lover reverently all that we desire.
For our natural desire is to have God and the good desire of God is to have us.
We can never stop this desire or longing until we have our Lover in the fullness of joy.
Then can we no more desire.
God is everything that is good and the goodness that everything possesses is God.
Those who have universal love for all their fellow Christians in God have love towards everything that exists.
For in us all is comprehended all, that is, all that is created and the Creator of all.
Thus I saw God and sought God.
I had God and failed to have God.
And this is, and should be, what life is all about, as I see it.
God wants us to allow ourselves to see God continually.
For God wants to be seen and wants to be sought.
God wants to be awaited and wants to be trusted.
To seek is as good as seeing.
God wants us to search earnestly and with perseverance, without sloth and worthless sorrow.
We must know that God will appear suddenly and joyfully to all lovers of God.
In my understanding I saw God in a point.
In seeing this I saw that God is in all things.
God works in creatures because God is in the mid-point of everything and does all that is done.
But I was sure that God is not responsible for sin, because I saw that sin is no deed.
We perceive some doings as good and some as evil, but our Lord does not perceive them so.
For just as everything that exists in nature is created by God, so also is everything that is done God's own doing.
There is no doer but God.
"See!
"Tam God.
See!
I am in everything.
See!
I do everything.
See!
I never lift my hands off my works, nor will I ever.
See!
I lead everything toward the purpose | ordained it to from without beginning, By the same Power, Wisdom and Love by which I created it.
How could anything be amiss?"
My understanding found itself in Heaven where I saw Our Lord as a lord in his own house who had called all his friends to a formal banquet.
But I saw that the lord took no seat in the house.
Instead he reigned as befit a king, filling the house with joy and glee, endlessly gladdening and amusing friends with kindness, courtesy and a marvelous melody of endless love.
4] Every soul who has willingly. served God in any degree on earth shall possess three degrees of happiness in Heaven.
First, our Lord will honor and thank them.
Second, all the creatures in Heaven will see this honor and thanks.
Third, this will last forever.
It is God's will that we do all in our power to keep ourselves strong for happiness is everlasting and pain is passing and will end.
Therefore it is not God's will that we pine and mourn over feelings of pain but that we get better and continue to enjoy life.
Of all pains that lead to liberation the worst is to see your loved one suffer.
How could any pain be more excruciating than to see the one who is all my life, all my happiness and all my joy suffer?
The greater, the more able and the sweeter the love is, the more grief it is to the lover to see the body of the loved one in pain.
I saw a great oneing between Christ and us because when he was in pain we were in pain.
All creatures of God's creation that can suffer pain suffered with him.
The sky and the earth failed at the time of Christ's dying because he too was part of nature.
Thus those who were his friends suffered pain because they loved him.
God assigns no blame to the grumblings and curses made by the flesh in pain without the consent of the soul.
The soul, that noble and joyful life that is all peace and love, draws the flesh to give its consent by grace And both shall be oned in eternal happiness.
When someone loves another creature in a special way above all other creatures, that someone wants to make all other creatures love and find pleasure in that creature loved so greatly.
(@) Our Lord Jesus oftentimes said:
"This I am.
This I am.
I am what you love.
I am what you enjoy.
I am what you serve.
I am what you long for.
I am what you desire.
I am what you intend.
I am all that is."
God said:
"It is necessary that sin should exist.
But all will be well, and all will be well and every manner of thing will be well."
I did not see sin: for I believe that it has no kind of substance nor any part of being nor could it be known except by the pain it causes.
And this pain purges us and makes us know ourselves and to ask compassion.
It would be contrary to nature to put blame on God or show any lack of trust because of my sin since God does not blame me.
On each person of empty affection and vicious pride. whom Christ loves for their own good he lays something that is no blame in his sight by which they are laughed at and despised in this world, scorned, taken by force and outcasted.
After that he will gather them and make them mild and gentle, clean and whole by oneing them to himself.
It is proper to the royal lordship of God to have a privy council free from disturbance.
And it is proper that those who serve God do not pry into this council out of obedience and reverence.
Our Lord understands and has compassion on those of us who make themselves so busy trying to pry into what is none of our business.
I am sure that if we knew how pleasing it would be to God, not to mention how much easier it would be on ourselves, we would let go of this nosiness.
Even the Saints in Heaven have no desire to know what God does not want them to know.
We ought to be like them since we are all one in God's sight.
We must trust and be glad for everything.
Our good Lord answered all my questions and doubts by saying with full energy:
"I can make all things well, I know how to make all things well, I desire to make all things well, I will make all things well.
And you will see with your own eyes that every kind of thing will be well."
I understand "I can" as referring to the Father; "I know how to" to the Son; "I desire to" refers to the Spirit.
And where God says "' will"
I understand the unity of the Trinity.
"You will see with your own eyes" refers to the oneing within the Trinity of all persons who will be liberated.
God wants us to be enclosed in these words restfully and peacefully.
The spiritual thirst of Christ is a love-longing that lasts and always will until we are all together whole in him.
For we are not now as fully whole in Christ as we will be one day.
Just as there is a property in God of compassion and understanding, so also is there a property of thirst and longing.
This will cease at the end of time but God's wisdom and love will not permit the end to come until the best time.
We see so much evil around us, so much harm done, that we think it impossible that there is any good in this world.
We look at this in sorrow and mourn so that we cannot see God as we should.
This is because we use our reason so blindly, so unfully and so simplemindedly that we are unable to know the marvelous wisdom, capability and goodness of the joyful Trinity.
Just as the joyful Trinity created all things out of nothing, so also this same blessed Trinity will make well all that is not well.
"That which is impossible for you is not impossible to me:
I will preserve my word in all things and I will make all things well."
This is the Great Deed that Our Lord will do.
Our faith is grounded in God's word and we must let this faith be.
How it will be done we will not know until it is done because God wants us to be at ease and at peace not troubled or kept from enjoying God.
I had a desire to see Hell and Purgatory — not to have proof that they exist but rather to leam everything I had been taught in my faith so that my life might profit from this experience.
But for all my desire I did not see them.
I understood this to mean that God and all the holy ones no more talk about them than they do about the devil.
The more we busy ourselves to know God's secrets, the further away from Knowledge we shall be.
Holy Church is God's Church — God is the ground, the substance, the teaching, the teacher, the purpose, and the reward for which every soul labors.
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.
Justice is that thing that is so good that it cannot be better than it is.
For God is Justice.
God creates Justice in all who will be liberated through goodness.
God wants to be known and loved through Justice and Compassion now and forever.
My own sin will not hinder the working of God's goodness.
As long as we are in this life and find ourselves foolishly dwelling on sinfulness, our God tenderly touches us and joyfully calls us saying:
"Let all your love be, my child.
Turn to me.
I am everything you need.
Enjoy me and your liberation."
God does not want us to be burdened because of sorrows and tempests that happen in our lives, because it has always been so before miracles happen.
God showed me that I will have to sin.
And I was not too happy about this revelation.
But I was given the grace to accept it.
But I made the mistake of privatizing this showing instead of taking it to mean my fellow Christians better What could make me love my fellow Christian better than to see that God loves us all as we were all one soul?
In every soul that will be liberated is a Godly desire that never says yes to sin, nor ever shall.
God showed me that we should not feel guilty because of sin for sin is valuable. - '
Just as truth answers every sin by pain, so also is happiness given to the soul by love.
Just as different sins are punished with different pains according to their seriousness, so also will these same sins be rewarded with different joys in heaven according to the amount of pain and sorrow they have caused the soul on earth.
For we are all precious to God and God would never have us come there without rewarding us for our failing.
Peace and love are always in us, being and working; but we are not always in peace and love.
God is ground of our whole life in love and wants us to know this.
God is also our everlasting keeper and wants us to know this.
God is our friend who keeps us tenderly while we are in sin and touches us privately, showing us where we went wrong by the sweet light of compassion and grace, even though we imagine that we will be punished.
Often our trust is not full.
We are not certain that God hears us because we consider ourselves worthless and as nothing.
This is ridiculous and the cause of our weakness.
I have felt this way myself.
"I am ground of your prayers.
First it is my will that you have what you desire, Later, I cause you to want it.
Later on, I cause you to pray for it and you do so.
How then can you not have what you desire?"
Thanking is, a true understanding of who we really are.
With reverence and awe we turn ourselves around towards the working that our good Lord incites us to do, enjoying and thanking with our real selves.
True thanking is to enjoy God.
The fruit and the purpose of prayer is to be oned with and like God in all things.
It is the will of the Lord that our prayer and our trust be large.
We must truly know that our Lord is the ground from which our prayer sprouts and that it is a gift given out of love, otherwise we waste our time and pain ourselves.
When we think that our prayers have not been answered we should not become depressed over it.
I am certain that God is telling us that we must wait for a better time, more grace, or that a better gift will be given us.
God is being and wants us to sit, dwell and ground ourself in this knowledge while at the same time realizing that we are noble, excellent, assessed as precious and valuable and have been given creation for our enjoyment because we are loved.
Prayer ones the soul to God.
Although we are always like God in nature and substance, having been made whole by grace, we are often unlike God in our sinful ways.
Prayer is therefore a witness to the fact that we want what God wants and this strengthens our conscience and empowers us with grace.
Fidelity sees God and Wisdom keeps God close by and from these two comes Love — a delight in God completely steeped in wonder.
God created all three.
Our soul, a creature in God, possesses all three and evermore does all three for this is the purpose of its creation.
We were made for Love.
We will all enter our Lord, fully aware of and fully possessing God.
This will last forever.
We will truly see, fully feel, spiritually hear, delectably breathe in and sweetly drink God.
Holy Church taught me that sinners are sometimes worthy of blame and wrath, but I could not see these in God in my showing.
I saw that our Lord was never wrathful, nor ever shall be.
God's lucidity and unity will not allow this.
God is the goodness that cannot be wrathful.
Our soul is oned to God, unchangeable goodness, and therefore between God and our soul there is neither wrath nor forgiveness because there is no between.
Our soul must perform two duties.
The one is we must reverently wonder and be surprised; the other is we must gently let go and let be always taking pleasure in God.
Seeing God in this life cannot be a continuous experience.
We often fail to see God and then we fall into ourselves and feel there is something wrong with us — that we are perverse and responsible for the entrance of sin into the world and all subsequent sins.
These feelings affect us mentally and physically.
But the Holy Spirit, the endless life living within us, makes us peaceful and at ease, harmonious and flexible.
I saw wrath and vengeance only on our part.
God forgives that in us.
For wrath is a turning away from peace and love and is opposed to them.
It comes from a failing of power or of wisdom or of goodness on our part.
The ground of compassion is love and the working of compassion keeps us in love.
Compassion is a sweet gracious working in love, mingled with abundant kindness: for compassion works at taking care of us and makes all things become good.
Compassion allows us to fail measurably and in as much as we fail in so much we fall; and in so much as we fall in so much we die; for we must die if we fail to see and feel God who is our life.
Our failing is fearful, our falling is shameful and our dying is sorrowful: but in all this the sweet eye of kindness and love never leaves us, nor does the working of compassion cease.
Compassion is a kind and gentle property that belongs to the Motherhood in tender love.
And grace is a beautiful property which belongs to the royal Lordship in the same love.
Compassion protects, increases our sensitivity, gives life and heals.
Grace rebuilds, rewards, endlessly disregarding what we deserve, spreading widely and showing the greatly abundant and generous hospitality of the royal Lordship in God's astonishing courtesy towards us.
I saw no kind of vengeance in God, not for a short time nor for long — for, as I see it, if God were vengeful even for a brief moment we would never have life, place or being.
In God is endless friendship, space, life and being.
I knew by the common teaching of Holy Church and by my own feeling that the blame for our sins clings to us continually while we are on this earth.
How amazing it was then to see our Lord God showing us no more blame than if we were as clean and whole as the Angels in heaven!
There is a treasure in the earth that is a food tasty and pleasing to the Lord.
Be a gardener.
Dig and ditch, toil and sweat, and turn the earth upside down and seek the deepness and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor and make sweet floods to run and noble and abundant fruits to spring.
Take this food and drink and carry it to God as your true worship.
God feels great delight to be our Father and God feels great delight to be our Mother and God feels great delight to be our true Spouse and our soul the loved Wife.
Christ feels great delight that He is our Brother and Jesus feels great delight that He is our Liberator.
These are five great joys that God wants us to enjoy.
Sometimes we experience such darkness that we lose all our energy.
But our intent in life is to continue to live in God and faithfully trust that we will be shown compassion and grace.
This is God's own working in us.
Out of the goodness of God the eye of our understanding is opened by which we see, sometimes more and sometimes less, according to the ability we are given to receive.
The mingling of both well-being and distress in us is so astonishing that we can hardly tell which state we or our neighbor are in.
That's how astonishing it is!
But the fact is that it is part of being whole both to feel God when God wants us to and to coexist with God with all our heart, soul and capability and then to hate and despise our evil tendencies and all that might be occasion of sin both spiritual and bodily.
We stand in this mingling all our life.
I saw that God never began to love us.
For just as we will be in everlasting joy (all God's creation is destined for this) so also we have always been in God's foreknowledge, known and loved from without beginning.
Faith is nothing else but a right understanding of our being — trusting and allowing things to be; A right understanding that we are in God and God whom we do not see is in us.
We are of God.
That is what we are.
I saw no difference betweend God and our Substance but as if it were all God.
And yet my understanding took this to mean that our Substance is in God: that is, God is God and our Substance is a creature in God.
For the all-capable Fidelity of the Trinity is our Father for he created us and keeps us in him.
The deep Wisdom of the Trinity is our Mother. In her we are all enclosed.
The high Goodness of the Trinity is Christ in whom we are all enclosed and he in us.
In spite of all our feelings of sorrow or well-being God wants us to understand and know by faith that we are more truly in heaven than on earth.
I understood that our sensuality is grounded in Nature, in Compassion and in Grace.
This enables us to receive gifts that lead to everlasting life.
For I saw that in our sensuality God is.
For God is never out of the soul.
Our soul is trinitarian like to the uncreated Trinity.
It is known and loved from without beginning and in its creation oned to the Creator.
Because of the beautiful oneing that was made by God between the body and the soul it must be that we will be restored from double death.
In the same point that our soul is made sensual, in the same point is the City of God established from without beginning.
God comes into this seat and never will remove it.
For God is never out of the soul.
God is nearer to us than our own soul, because God is the ground in which our soul stands and God is the means whereby our Substance and our Sensuality are kept together so as to never be apart.
Until our soul is in its full powers we cannot at all be whole.
By this I mean when our Sensuality is connected to our Substance we are made whole through the strength of Christ's suffering and the benefits of our own.
This is accomplished through compassion and grace.
o7 Both our Substance and Sensuality together may rightly be called our Soul.
That is because they are both oned in God.
Our Sensuality is the beautiful City in which our Lord Jesus sits and in which He is enclosed.
Our Substance — of the same nature as Jesus' — is also enclosed in Him with the blessed soul of Christ sitting restfully in the Godhead.
We can never know God until we first know clearly our own soul.
aa When God was knitted to our body in the Virgin's womb, God took our Sensuality and oned it to our Substance.
Thus our Lady is our Mother in whom we are all enclosed and in Christ we are born of her.
And Jesus is our true Mother in whom we are endlessly carried and out of whom we will never come.
We were all created at the same time; and in our creation we were knit and oned to God.
By this we are kept as luminous and noble as when we were created.
By the force of this precious oneing we love, seek, praise, thank and endlessly enjoy our Creator.
In Jesus we have the skillful and wise keeping of our Sensuality as well as our restoring and liberation; for He is our Mother Brother and Liberator.
Our whole life is in three — we have our Being, then our Increasing and finally our Fulfilling.
The first is Nature, the second Compassion, and the third Grace.
Just as God is truly our Father, so also is God truly our Mother.
God said:
"This | am — the capability and goodness of the Fatherhood.
This I am — the wisdom of the Motherhood.
This | am — the light and the grace that is all love.
This | am — the Trinity.
This | am — the Cnity.
I am the sovereign goodness of all things.
I am what makes you love.
I am what makes you long and desire.
This | am — the endless fulfilling of all desires."
A mother's service is nearest, readiest and surest.
This office no one person has the ability or knows how to or ever will do fully but God alone.
In God's being is Nature: that is to say that that Goodness that is Nature is God.
God is the Ground, the Substance, the same thing that is Naturehood.
God is the true Father and Mother of Nature and all natures that are made to flow out of God to work the divine will will be restored and brought again into God by the liberation of persons through the working of grace.
God has set all natures in some degree in different creatures.
But in us all natures exist: in fullness and in strength, in beauty and in goodness, in royalty and nobleness, in all manner of majesty, of preciousness and value.
Here we can see that we are indebted to God for our nature and grace.
Nature and Grace are in harmony with each other.
For Grace is God as Nature is God.
God is two in manner of working and one in love.
Neither Nature nor Grace works without the other.
They may never be separated.
Nature is all good and beautiful in itself, and Grace was sent out to liberate nature and destroy sin and bring beautiful nature once again to the blessed point from whence it came: that is, God.
Nature has been evaluated in the fire of trying experiences and no flaw or fault has been found in it.
It is natural for the child not to despair of the mother's love.
It is natural for the child not to be overconfident.
It is natural for the child to love the mother and each brother and sister.
I understand no higher state in this life than childhood with its minimum of capability and skill unto the time that our gracious Mother has led us to our Father's joy.
I understood that all the blessed children who come out of God by Nature will be returned into God by Grace.
We must take God's promises and energy as much as our Capabilities allow.
This is God's will.
We must also take our trials and dis-eases as lightly as we can.
For the more lightly we take them and the less price we set on them, for love, the less pain we will have in feeling them and the more thanks and refreshment we will have for them.
God wants to be thought of as our Lover.
I must see myself so bound in love as if everything that has been done has been done for me.
That is to say, the Love of God makes such a unity in us that when we see this unity no one is able to separate oneself from another.
I saw the Soul so large as if it were an endless world and a joyful kingdom.
And I understood that it is a beautiful City.
In the midst of that city sits our Lord Jesus, God and one of us, a beautiful person of large stature clothed as befit his role as Bishop and King.
And beautifully he sits, peacefully and restfully, in the Soul, his most familiar home and endless dwelling.
The soul that realizes on earth that it is the home and kingdom of our Lord Jesus is made like him and oned to him in rest and peace by his grace.
© This is full pleasing to God and great profit to us.
God did not say:
"You will not be tempested.
"You will not labor hard.
"You will not be troubled."
But God did say:
"Vou will not be overcome."
Glad and happy and sweet to our souls is the joyful, loving face of our Lord.
For he always fixes his eyes upon us who live in love-longing; and he wants our soul to smile at him in return for his favors.
Thus, I hope that with his grace he has led and evermore shall join the Outer Face with the Inner Face and make us all one with him and each of us one with another in true lasting joy that is Jesus.
I was shown three manners of our Lord's face.
The face of Suffering that he showed while here in this life, dying.
Though this face was mournful and troubled yet it was g'ad and joyful for he is God.
The face of Empathy ana Compassion he shows with the certainty of caring to all his lovers who let themselves go to his love.
The Joyful face was shown more than the other two and continued the longest because this face will exist endlessly.
Our spiritual eye is so blind and we are so borne down by the weight of our mortal flesh and the darkness of sin that we are not able to see our Lord's Joyful face not at all!
Because of this darkness, allowing and trusting his great love and keeping providence is almost impossible.
Some of us believe that God is All-Power and can do all, and that God is All-Wisdom and knows how to do all.
But that God is All-Love and wants to do all, here we restrain ourselves.
And this ignorance hinders most of God's lovers, as I see it.
Just as God courteously forgives our sin after we change our ways, so also does God want us to forgive our sin instead of falling into a false meekness that is really a foul blindness and weakness due to fear.
12] God showed two sorts of sickness that we have:
The one is our lack of ability to endure, or sloth — for we bear our toil and our pains heavily.
The other is despair, or fearful awe.
In general God showed sin in which all sin is comprehended, but in special I was shown only these two.
They are the sins that cause the most pain and tempest us.
We should desire to regard our Lord with wondering reverence rather than fear, loving God gently and trusting with all we are capable of.
For when we regard God with awe and love God gently our trust is never in vain.
The more we trust, and the more powerful this trust, the more we please and praise our Lord whom we trust in.
Without this, we cannot please God.
God is thirsty for everyone.
This thirst has already drawn the Holy to Joy and we the living are ever being drawn and drunk.
And yet God still thirsts and longs.
Not only will we receive the same joy that souls previously have had in heaven, but we will also receive a new joy which will be flowing copiously out of God into us fulfilling us.
God says:
"Do not accuse yourself too much, allowing your tribulation and woe to seem all your fault; for it is not my will that you be heavy or sorrowful imprudently."
Our Lord is with us, taking care of us and leading us into the fullness of joy.
Our way and our heaven is faithful love and sure trust.
I believe and understand the ministration of angels, as Clerics tell us — but it was not shown me.
For God is nearest and gentlest, highest and lowest, and does everything — not only everything we need but also everything that is valuable for our joy in heaven.
Astonishing and stately is our soul — the place where our Lord lives.
Therefore God wants us to respond whenever we are touched, rejoicing more in God's complete love than sorrowing over our frequent failings.
Love makes God long for us.
And in this manner of longing and waiting God wants us to do the same.
This is our natural penance — and the highest, as I see it.
For this penance will never leave us until we are fulfilled and possess God to the fullest.
Therefore God wants us to set our hearts away from the pain we feel into the joy we trust will be ours.
God says:
"I love you, and you love me, and our love will never be divided in two: for your benefit I allow sin to fall to you against your will.
I am taking care of you.
Believe me."'
The three properties of God are Life, Love and Light.
In Life is the astonishing familiarity of home, In Love is courtesy as befits a relationship, and in Light is endless Nature-hood.
I saw that our Reason is in God, and is the highest gift we have received.
It is grounded in Nature.
Our Faith is a light naturally coming from our endless Day, our Father God.
In this light our Mother, Christ, and our good Lord, the Holy Spirit, lead us in this passing life.
The natural light of Faith has its own separate bounds but needfully stands to us in the night.
The light is cause of our life; the night cause of our pain and woe.
We deserve refreshment and thanks from God because we, with compassion and grace and a firm desire, know and believe our light, going into it wisely and as much as we Can.
And at the end of our woe, suddenly our eyes will be opened and in this translucence our sight will be full.
It was said to me:
"Do you wish to see clearly your Lord's meaning in these Showings?
See it well.
Love was your Lord's meaning.
Who showed it to you?
Love.
What did you see?
Love.
Why was it shown?
For Love."
On the last day we will clearly see in God the secret counsels that now are hidden from us.
Then none of us will be stirred to say:
"Lord, if we would have known these things, then all would have been well."
Instead we will all say with one voice:
"Lord, may you be blessed!
For it is thus: it is well."
Other Books by Bear and Company
Meditations with™
A FEW WORDS WITH MATTHEW FOX, O.P.
"Bear & Company is publishing this series of creation-centered mystic/prophets to bring to the attention and prayer of peoples today the power and energy of the holistic mystics of the western tradition. One reason western culture succumbs to boredom and to violence is that we are not being challenged by our religious traditions to be all we can be. This is also the reason that many sincere spiritual seekers go East for their mysticism — because the West is itself out of touch with its deepest spiritual guides.
¢ Meditations with™ Meister Eckhart by Matthew Fox For Eckhart to be spiritual is to be awake and alive — Creation itself is sacrament. The spiritual life begins where life does—''the spring of life...the heart."
Reflections of Meister Eckhart with an introduction and versions by Matthew Fox.
"Spirituality begins with humanity's potential to act divinely in the ways of beauty-making, compassion, and sharing."
0-939680-04-1 $6.95 with ART Meditations with™ Hildegarde of Bingen by Gabriele Uhlein with foreword by Thomas Berry and Preface by Matthew Fox Sharings from the 26 "visions" of this ageless Benedictine of Medieval Germany. Visions which this 'new age," this age of alternative, holistic spiritualities is at ease with. From this famous Benedictine sharings of her 26 'visions'...
Gabriele Uhlein selected these messages from a woman of profound prayer and insight— Hildegarde of Bingen.
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In this book, the author, Sue Woodruff, brings together, in moving drawings, and well chosen verse from Mechtild a beautiful meditation experience— one based in God's beauty in creation, and humanity's dignity in God.
0-939680-08-8 $6.95 with ART Meditations with™ Native Americans—Lakota Spirituality by Paul Steinmetz, S.J.
The purpose of these versions is to lead the reader through rich association of symbols to an intuitive insight into Plains Indian spiritual experience and to touch one's own conscious depths and evoke personal symbols—symbols that express the unconscious depths of Native American People.
Paul Steinmetz ministered to the Lakota Sioux from 1961-1978, and during that whole time was accepted as a Healer, as a white man who possessed the Indian
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American consciousness. The Sioux opened their souls to Paul and fo all Americans. This is an important book.
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Original Blessing the primer in creation spirituality A new book by Matthew Fox, op The basics of creation spirituality in succinct, easyto-read, yet scholarly supported fashion.
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CREATION; Letting Go and Letting Be (Befriending Darkness);
BEFRIENDING OUR
DIVINITY, OUR
CREATIVITY; The New Creation: Compassion and Social Justice.
Matthew Fox's newest and best!
Chapters include: CREATION AS BLESSING; our earthiness as a blessing; OUR ROYAL PERSONHOOD; touching pain; THE EXPERIENCE OF NOTHINGNESS; the emptiness that precedes birthing; DISCIPLINE —
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— Review for Religious "WHEE! is provocative, exciting, and radical both in its scope and ideas. It is both socially relevant and psychologically sound." — Library Journal
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WESTERN SPIRITUALITY
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3rd edition sold out in months. This latest printing is just off the presses.
0-939680-01-7 440 pages $441.95
SYMBION A Glimpse into the future...
Spirituality for a possible future by Richard Woods A daring series of explorations in spirituality as a way toward a possible, better future...
In his latest book, Richard Woods, OP examines various elements and aspects of contemporary experiences, both problems and promises, ina view of trends already bearing us along some startling trajectories.
Symbion explores a mysticism for the future — ordinary mysticism, integration, the social dimension of religious experience, ecological sensitivity.
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THE HOSPICE HANDBOOK
Helping...Healing... by Jim Ewens and Patricia Herrington of the Milwaukee Hospice "This book contains much practical information..." — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
THE handbook for those who wish to participate in this prophetic compassionate movement of the 1980's.
Jim, Pat and the Milwaukee Hospice Community share their experience, strength and hope in caring for hospice patients and their "families." Sensitive photography by Don Doll, SJ enhances the presentation.
Sections include: 'FAMILY'; Questions on Hospice Care; REFLECTIONS FROM FAMILIES; Helping Children; SUPPORT SYSTEMS; Legal Considerations;
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PSALMS FROM THE HILLS
OF WEST VIRGINIA
by Janet Hurlow with introduction by Matthew Fox, op Can a simple and good mountain lady, poorer in this world's goods than the vast majority of Americans have a prosperity to share that even the richest among us crave?
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Inspirations for the prayer-life of creation-centered people. Good for personal and group prayer and reflection.
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MANIFESTO
for a Global Civilization Matthew Fox, theologian and Brian Swimme, physicist collaborate in...
Explore the connection between the universe and our Christian spirituality with Matthew Fox and Dr.
Brian Swimme in this dialogue of a vision to save the world for the beautiful. In a world of chaos, confusion and mistrust Matt Fox and Brian Swimme show us a vision of hope which will enable us to center our experience of the here and now into redeeming the world.
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Finding the Elf in Self A practical guide to birthing self by Lois Robbins Lois has written a practical guide to art as meditation.
Her stress is on process rather than product. The book is both an outline of the theory of creative development and a guide to birthing self. Sne combines the four Eckhartian paths of spiritual growth with the creative process. Exercises and games are provided to help eliminate the obstacles to creativity-the fourteen blocks to creativity are met head on!
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$8.95 pre-pub American Women: Our Stories and Our Spiritual Journeys in Our Words by Catherine Racette and Peg Reynolds Of all the religious literature about women in the past few years, none of it touches specifically on the personal spiritual dimension of our lives as we know them.
By spiritual, the authors mean the whole person. This book opens new vistas for women and men who seek to understand the feminine in church, politics, family, lifestyles, and relationships, and sexuality. These stories are shared so we can together work toward a most just and livable society.
The women portrayed are from diverse backgrounds, culturally and economically. They are women who have opted out of society in many instances. They are women who are on the edge, marginal women who have taken time to reflect and can now share their spiritual journey with us.
They are women of color, Native American women, white women, Hispanic women, vowed women, single women, celibate women, married women, divorced
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Now for the first time-
TAPES BY MATTHEW FOX
One of the country's most popular retreat masters and spiritual guides has prepared an extraordinary cassette program. e MATTHEW FOX has prepared eleven complete spiritual tape programs rooted ina vision of a prayer life that has its flowerin compassionate caring.
¢ Complete with study guide. e Spend a weekend with them...stretch them over days or weeks. e Use them athome...alone,ina group... in a classroom, orin your car.
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TAPE ONE: From Climbing Jacob's Ladder to Dancing Sarah's Circle.
TAPE TWO: Family Spirituality TAPE THREE: Psychology & Mysticism-Jung & Meister Eckhart TAPE FOUR: Images of Compassion: East meets West
TAPE FIVE: Pleasure, Contemplation and Social Justice: antidote to the idolatry of consumerism
TAPE SIX: Recovering Ritual in the West: Liturgy & spirituality TAPE SEVEN: Images of Soul: psychology of spirituality
TAPE EIGHT: Holiness as Cosmic Hospitality TAPE NINE: Social Justice, Art & Spirituality: a Holy
Trinity and indivisible unity TAPE FOURTEEN: Science, Spirituality, and Education
(in dialogue with physicist Brian Swimme) TAPE FIFTEEN: Spirituality and Education
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Meditations with Julian of Norwich ee Pale tr eehy t= OR LOTTE iia"
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FOR ALL THOSE DARING TO MAKE THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
MEDITATIONS WITH ™ is a series of poignant, vibrant versions of great mystics of yesterday and today with Meister Eckhart, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Hildegarde of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Native
Americans, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and others.
MEDITATIONS WITH ™ Julian of Norwich "We were all created at the same time," writes Julian of Norwich,
"and in our creation we were knit and oned to God." Furthermore, she adds, "God never began to love us... we have always been... known and loved from without beginning."
Julian of Norwich was steeped in Meister Eckhart's creationcentered spirituality and was an innovator and theologian in her own right who developed a veritable metaphysics of goodness. Her creation-centered vision— "God-with-in-us"
—was the basis of her meditation. She deserves the nondualistic translation and format for prayer and artistic response to her lively mystical images which this book provides.
This is the first creation-centered translation of her 14th Century text, A Book of Showings. Brendan Doyle, musician, composer, and instructor at the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality in Oakland, California, presents Julian for the creation-centered mystic/prophet that she was. Only now do we discover her true sensuality, her intimacy with God and with all of creation. Matthew
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