Comments on: Julian of Norwich: ‘A theologian for our time’

By: Kat Duck

Kat Duck — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 18:06:24 +0000

There is at least one other church in North America named for Julian-St. Julian of Norwich in Round Rock, TX (Austin, Tx), of which I am a member. St. Julian’s is a small but vibrant community of love and action, dedicated to Julian’s vision that God is good and loves us beyond measure. It is the most life giving Episcopal church I’ve ever been part of and really does live up to its patron’s vision of godly love and supportive communitu.

By: Cynthia Reyes

Cynthia Reyes — Fri, 08 May 2020 15:27:38 +0000

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, looking at Julian’s life and work through a more modern lens, and both deciphering and contesting some of what we learned about her. I first ‘encountered’ her on silent retreat at the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine, and was assigned to a tiny room named for her. I still shudder at the thought of being sealed up in a cell, though.

By: Jeyachandran Paulraj

Jeyachandran Paulraj — Fri, 08 May 2020 03:29:10 +0000

Excellent and good information of a woman church leader Juliana.

Jesus the mother

Redemptive suffering

Useful reflection during CoVid 19.

Paul JeyA
India

By: Curt Gesch

Curt Gesch — Fri, 08 May 2020 03:03:16 +0000

Ancorites? They did receive Eucharist, unlike Anglicans who are commanded to fast from Eucharist by most/all of their bishops. “In England, from about the 12th to the 16thcentury, an estimated 780 people chose to live permanently shut up in a room attached to a church. They were called anchorites, from a Greek word meaning “to withdraw,” and most of them were women. They left little record of their lives behind, and they’re little remembered today.

But, in their way, they were powerful women. Julian of Norwich wrote the first published book attributed to a woman in all of English literature. And although they had just two or three small windows letting a sliver of the outside world into their chambers, anchorites were influential. They could give counsel from the wisdom they accrued in their contemplative lives, and in this way, have an outsized impact on the places and communities they lived in.
Before anchorites retired from the outside world to dedicate their lives to religious devotion, a priest would say a rite of enclosure, akin to a funeral rite. The sealed rooms they lived in were not unlike tombs. (Some scholars have also likened them to wombs.) The small spaces were called anchorholds, and they were perhaps 12 feet by 12 feet, built onto the side of a church. They would have been sparsely furnished and dark: An anchorhold was supposed to have, at most, three small windows, sometimes called squints or hagioscopes.

One of these windows would have had a practical purpose: An attendant would pass simple meals and other necessities through it. One window would have given a portal into the church itself, so that the anchorite could receive the Eucharist and hear the services inside.”