A window between worlds--Dame Julian of Norwich (c.1342-1430)

Oops! We misread the time for the Sunday service. We tiptoed up the aisle in St. Julian's Church in Norwich as a resonate voice said, “The Lord be with you."We slipped into the front pew of the main sanctuary where we could hear but not see inside the adjoining chapel.I leaned back in the pew, my ears attuned to the familiar thanksgiving prayer.

My eyes fixed on an icon of Dame Julian holding a hazelnut in her raised hand and her book, Revelation of Divine Love, the first written in English by a woman, in the other. A rendering of this church, named for Julian, a male saint who predated the writer-mystic-saint who drew me here. Her given name is lost to time.  

There is a wonderful geometry to the icon. In the top left corner, Jesus reads from a scroll. A diagonal line can be drawn from Jesus’ eyes, through the scroll, the hazelnut, Julian’s revelations, and the small cell alongside the Church. Spiritually speaking, the line never stops it just exits the icon and goes on through eternity. The icon writer left no doubt that Dame Julian's life directly follows the way of Jesus. 

Dame Julian has drawn me to this hard-to-find chapel off a small alleyway. I have hoped to make pilgrimage here for more than 25 years. 

Soon the priest offers the final blessing and exits in front of us with a nods, He heads to the back of the church. A couple of elderly white man, a middle-aged black man and several women of various ages exit shrine and greet us. One man said, “You could have come in. There is always room.”  I wished we had.

We stepped down into the shrine and pause at a bowl of hazelnuts and slips of paper with Julian’s famous words: In this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazelnut. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was generally answered thus, ‘It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for it seemed it might suddenly have sunk into nothing because of its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasts and ever shall because God loves it.

I took a hazelnut, held it, and walked slowly around the room. To the left was is a small window that opens from the sanctuary into the shrine and a stone crucifix with the inscription “Here dwelt Mother Julian, anchoress of Norwich c.1342-1430, ‘Thou art enough for me.” On the right, four leaded glass windows look out to a garden and add light to the small, sunken room.

The priest, now in clerical collar and no vestments, re-enters the room. As he cleans the chalice and straightens the linen, he tell us that Julian probably attended her own funeral in the church. The local bishop would have said the office for the dead to commemorate her death to the world before she would have been sealed into this “anchorhold” to live out the rest of her life. She voluntarily declared her own life finished so she could devote the rest of her years to anchoring others to Christ through prayer.  

The small window above the stone crucifix allowed her to see the raised host—the high point of the Eucharist— and to listen to those seeking prayer and guidance. Margery Kempe, who wrote The Book of Margery Kempe, around 1430 described her visit to the anchoress Julian relaying much of what we know about Julian's life of withdrawl. Margery, a married woman with many children, felt a call to the religious life. She traveled to visit Julian and described her vision of Christian vocation seeking support and verification. Julian told her if her visions did not contradict the worship of God and helped others, they could be trusted. 

Just a few windows, one that reached the church, and a few others that extended into the garden, were Julian's portals to life. The anchoress, while living in solitary, remained a community person. She held the people of her plague-ridden village in prayer and wrote down her visions as a divine offering to help others find hope in such suffering. 

Father Chris said Julian was a young widow who had lost a child to the plague. She turned the tragic end of her family into a life of compassion for others. She was dead to her own future but not cut off Christ's hope or from the needs of the world. This cell is less than half a mile from the docks where goods from Europe came and went from Norwich’s medieval market. 

Julian nearly died in her cell on 8 May 1373. In that liminal time, she received her visions. She wrote them down in a short version. Twenty years later she wrote a longer version.

Father Chris said, “People are drawn here because of Julian’s, life but it is all of those who have prayed and brought their faith here that makes this place holy.” He wanted to clarify that this shrine is not a place where one holy woman lived centuries ago, but it is a living community of people who continue to seek God’s help in times of suffering.  

Father Chris left to pay a visit. His presiding at the Eucharist and care for his flock moved me. I was a pilgrim seeking to touch sacred history. He was the embodiment of the holy work in the present.

Julian's actual cell was demolished after the Reformation as the zealous new Protestants sought to erase all signs of monastic life. Centuries later heavy bombing during World War II  unearthed the foundation stones which showed the outlines of the cell. The current shrine was rebuilt on this footprint although several feet below the original floor. That information made the room make more sense. The window over the crucifix would have been at eye level rather than overhead.  I could better imagine Julian sitting there listening to those who came seeking aid.

On the way out of the church, we stopped at a bulletin board asking for prayers that would be brought to the Friday service. I added the name of a dear friend I had just learned was suffering from a debilitating disease. Julian wrote of the concept of “oneing”—that suffering and love make us one with Christ and one with each other. 

We left the church and headed across the Lady Julian bridge that spans the River Wensum.  A new development of modern restaurants and a theater stands on the other side. We stopped for a coffee and to ponder all that we had just seen. People were walking around enjoying the warmth of a Sunday morning unaware that there was a nearby place of prayer anchoring their city in divine love. 

I remain awed by those who hold the world before God through intercessory prayer. I want to live in that eternal line that connects all of life--Christ, creation, creatures, revelation, church--with the way of Jesus as Julian did.