The Way of Julian of Norwich

A Prayer Journey Through Lent

Sheila Upjohn

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780281083701
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

In this book about Julian of Norwich, Sheila Upjohn explores the 'Revelations of Divine Love' alongside passages from Scripture. As part of the 'Prayer Journey Through Lent' series, 'The Way of Julian of Norwich' reveals how Julian's fresh perspectives on sin and judgement, anger and forgiveness, the Incarnation and the crucifixion can challenge and enlighten us, six hundred years later, in a world so badly in need of the assurance of God's unconditional love.This inspirational book by Sheila Upjohn serves as a guide to Julian of Norwich that will deepen the reader's prayer life during Lent and throughout the year. Upjohn transports the reader back to the middle ages in this book about 'Revelations of Divine Love' and Julian of Norwich to give a deeper understanding of Julian who was so often perceived as an outsider.As a foundation member of 'Friends of Julian of Norwich' and having first read 'Revelations of Divine Love' almost fifty years ago, Sheila Upjohn has a long and intimate association with Julian of Norwich and so offers a captivating perspective of Julian within 'The Way of Julian of Norwich'.

1

Our prayer makes God glad and happy

Prayer will let us join Julian in her cell. But where to begin? On Ash Wednesday we are given instructions: ‘Go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you’ (Matt. 6.6)

But not many of us have a private room, and open plan means we increasingly share our space with other people. Sometimes the only room with a door is the bathroom. Julian most likely never had a bath in her life, but she knew about bodily functions. And one of the most unexpected things she says is something you would never think to find in a holy book.

A man walks upright, and the food in his body is sealed as in a well-made purse. When the time of his necessity comes, it is opened and sealed again most properly. And that it is God who does this is shown where he says that he comes down to the lowest part of our need. For he does not despise what he has made, nor does he disdain to serve our humblest earthly needs. For he loves the soul he has made in his likeness.

(Chapter 6)

So take heart. You can pray to God in the bathroom. You don’t have to wait for a special time and place. God is with us all the time, wherever we are. We just have to recognize it.

I grew up in an age when many people only had a weekly bath (and sometimes had to take turns in the bathwater) but now some people shower two or three times a day, so there are plenty of opportunities. Each time, you can remember your baptism. You can thank God for the gift of clean, pure water – not something to be taken for granted. You can stand naked before God – as naked as Christ at his crucifixion. And as you dress, you can remember God showed Julian:

At this time our Lord showed me an inward sight of his homely loving. I saw that he is everything that is good and comforting to us. He is our clothing. In his love he wraps and holds us. He enfolds us in love and will never let us go.

(Chapter 5)

But prayer begins when you first wake to a new day. One Lent I decided to give up 15 minutes in a warm bed each morning. I am a reluctant riser, but I dragged myself out of bed and prayed. It was the best thing I ever did.

Julian tells us that prayer is not one-sided. God is longing to hear from us.

Our prayer makes God glad and happy. He wants it and waits for it so that, by his grace, he can make us as like him in condition as we are by creation. This is his blessed will . . . He is avid for our prayers continually.

(Chapter 41)

All of us have known times when we have waited anxiously for a letter, or these days an email, to drop into the mail box. The thought that God feels the same is a revelation, and so is the assurance that we often find praying hard work. Julian writes:

So he says this: ‘Pray inwardly, even though you find no joy in it. For it does good, even though you feel nothing, see nothing – yes, even though you think you cannot pray. When you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me – though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious to me.’ Because of the reward and endless thanks he longs to give us in return, he is avid for our prayers continually. God accepts the goodwill and work of his servants, no matter how we feel.

(Chapter 41)

Praying can be hard work, and it also needs time. And finding time seems to get harder and harder in our busy world. One way is by multitasking.

Brother Lawrence, in The Practice of the Presence of God, wrote:

We can do little things for God; I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him . . . In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees before the Blessed Sacrament.

It would be hard to find tranquillity in the frenzied kitchens of today’s competitive television cooking shows, and our life seems designed more and more to blot out the awareness of God. But our growing concern with physical fitness is a great opportunity to multi-task. Even though I no longer have a dog, years of dog ownership have made me a daily walker, and the rhythm of walking makes it a wonderful way to pray. In the long run it is even more important than making time to go to the gym. After all, your body has got a die-by date, no matter how rigorously you exercise, whereas your soul is destined to live for ever. (You may well be able to multi-task and pray when on a treadmill or lifting weights. It is just that I have never tried it.)

There are a lot of prayers you can say while walking, and one that goes well with walking is the rosary. But just to mention the word can cause hostilities to break out once more. Thankfully the reaction is not as extreme as it was in a Devon village in 1549 when the local squire, Walter Raleigh (whose son was to become a superstar of the Elizabethan age), overtook an old woman saying the rosary as they were both on their way to church, and told her she would be punished and the village burnt down if she continued to use it. Her fellow churchgoers were so angry when they heard this that they set about him. The scuffle turned into a riot, and the riot became a rebellion. Troops were sent in. A thousand local men were killed at the battle of Clyst St Mary. Next day the nine hundred men taken prisoner were slaughtered, and the village was burnt to the ground.

The rosary can still draw a line between Catholics and Protestants. But the line is getting blurred. Christians of all denominations who practise meditation and contemplative prayer have come to recognize the virtue of a repeated word or phrase. The rosary, once despised as ‘vain repetition’ by many Protestants, and even by some Catholics, is coming to be seen in its true light.

Robert Llewelyn, the much-loved chaplain at the Julian shrine, first discovered its riches at the age of 67, shortly before he came to Norwich to be a praying presence in Julian’s cell. In A Doorway to Silence he writes:

The rosary is, in fact, a little Office. It has the great advantage of simplicity. No books, no distractions in searching for hymns, antiphons, psalms and lessons, and the rosary itself can be easily carried wherever we go. The rosary has been, for many, a way into silent prayer.2

I discovered this one day in an airport. My flight was delayed for an hour, so I had another coffee, bought a newspaper and did the crossword. Then it was delayed for another hour. People were angry and upset. Then I noticed a nun sitting a few rows away. She was calm and tranquil. I was on my way to give a talk on prayer, so I thought, ‘You had better try to practise what you preach.’ An airport is not an encouraging place to pray, but I had a rosary in my pocket which was given to me when I moved to Australia. It is olive wood from Bethlehem, knotted on cord, and slipping the beads through the fingers is an invitation to prayer. I still was not very practised at remembering the different Mysteries, so I took Robert Llewelyn’s advice to sometimes choose another prayer instead. Starting with the cross I said the Creed, then the Gloria and Our Father on the single bead, and then, on the first three small beads and all the groups of ten, said the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner’, instead of the Hail Mary. It seemed no time before my flight was called.

All prayer has a result, whether or not we recognize it at the time, but such repeated prayer often has dramatic and unexpected consequences, as Julian found. We can be sure that St Paul was praying repeatedly – and praying for the wrong thing – when he stormed down to Damascus to seek and destroy the blasphemous heretics whom he believed were profaning his God’s name. The result overturned not just his mistaken expectations but his whole life.

I have only once prayed in such a way, and it is worth recording here. Back in the 1980s a woman academic visited Norwich to make a series of videos about Julian. I made myself useful and got to know her. She was in her thirties and full of life, and so, one Sunday not long afterwards, I was surprised to hear her name in the prayers for the sick in Norwich Cathedral. I asked my priest friend Michael what was wrong with her. ‘It’s cancer,’ he said. ‘The specialist says she’s got weeks, not months.’

Now Julian writes:

A man has to stretch out his patience over the length of his days, since he does not know when he will die. This is great profit to him. For if a man knew when he was going to die, his patience would not last beyond then.

(Chapter 64)

So I wondered whether she was waiting patiently, and asked: ‘How’s she taking it?’

‘That’s just the point,’ he replied. ‘She’s finished her Julian book, but not the critical notes, without which it can’t be published. She’s got lectures lined up in Oxford and in Canada. She’s bitter, she’s angry, she’s resentful.’ And I thought, ‘I can’t let her die like that.’

There was only one thing to do, and that was to pray at St Julian’s. But on Mondays the Eucharist, I discovered, was not in the cell but in the chapel of the convent next door. There are few places more intimidating to venture into than an unknown church, but a convent chapel is one of them. In my anxiety I turned up far too early, but a sister tranquilly let me in, and I began to pray. From then on I was at St Julian’s every morning, lifting her up to be reconciled to God.

It must have been six or seven weeks later before I met Michael in the cathedral again and, thinking that her end must be near, asked how she was getting on. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ he said. ‘There seems to have been a miracle. She’s getting better.’ I stamped my foot and said, ‘She can’t do that! I’ve been praying for a good death!’ And we flung our arms round each other and fell about laughing. It was nearly twenty years before cancer sent her on her way.

There is no knowing what effect my prayer may have had on the cancer, but the effect on me was inescapable. I had to go back to say thank you, and so from then on I was at the daily Eucharist in Julian’s cell until I moved from Norwich years later.

We all pray in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all. But pray we must if we are to come to know God. And we can begin no matter what state we are in. Julian writes:

So he says this: ‘Pray inwardly, even though you find no joy in it. For it does good, even though you feel nothing, see nothing – yes, even though you think you cannot pray. When you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me – though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious to me.’

(Chapter 41)

When the soul is tempest-tossed, troubled and cut off by worries, then is the time to pray – so as to make the soul more responsive to God. But there is no kind of prayer that can make God more responsive to the soul, for God is always constant in love.

(Chapter 43)

Julian prayed unconditionally for compassion, repentance and longing for God. She prayed for the illness, and to be present at the crucifixion, with the condition, ‘if it is your will’. And in May 1373 all her prayers were answered. She became so ill the priest was called to give her the last rites, and the cross he held before her was transfigured.

At this, suddenly I saw the red blood trickle down from under the crown of thorns – hot and fresh and flooding out, as it did at the time of his Passion when the crown of thorns was pressed into his blessed head – he who was both God and man and who suffered for me. And I knew in my heart that he showed me this without any go-between. And in this same Showing, suddenly the Trinity filled my heart full of joy. And I was astounded at the wonder of it, that he, who i...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1 Our prayer makes God glad and happy
• 2 The huge high wholeness of God
• 3 Sin is behovely
• 4 When Adam fell, God’s Son fell
• 5 The devil and all his works
• 6 A joy, a happiness, an endless delight
• Last words
• The Way of the Cross
• Appendix: Margery Kempe’s visit to Julian
• Notes
• Further reading
• Copyright acknowledgements