[art from Fine Art America. By tradition, Julian had a cat.] In beginning a blog project on medieval women, I find that Julian must be first––not only because I met her first, but because she saved my faith life. I survived my first trimester of seminary; however, great chunks of my soul had been pulled out. I’d been unprepared emotionally and spiritually to face the questions and greater life experience of theological education. After decades among conservative Baptists, I was going to classes with future Methodist pastors and taught by professors with a variety of religious perspectives. When I visited my church in Springfield one Sunday, I told Bob, half of our clergy couple, “They’re trying to destroy my faith!” “No,” he told me, “they’re just trying to give you an answer besides ‘The Bible says so.’” I’d much enjoyed Early Christian History, and went right on with the next course, Medieval and Reformation History. During the break between sessions, I began reading ahead, having discovered that history classes meant a heavy reading load. And that’s when I met Julian in her book Revelations of Divine Love. She wrote only one book, but she wrote it twice, with a gap of twenty years between the two. They are known as the Short Text (50 pp. in my textbook) and the Long Text (170 pp). The Long Text is the fruit of thinking about the visions she had when she was thirty. In keeping with the sensibilities of her time (not ours) Julian had prayed for a vision of Christ’s Passion and for a bodily illness so severe that she was near death. God granted this prayer. Her first visions are medieval in their gory-ness; they did not appeal to me. Several elements of her writing did, though: her writing structure, with its use of three; her vision of Christ as our Mother; her emphasis on God’s purpose being love. Julian, who lived through three outbreaks of the plague and dwelled just down the road from where they burned heretics, believed. Even though everything seemed upside-down, I felt I could trust her.
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Saints Alive!
I have been privileged to offer Noonday Prayer at my church, usually on Thursdays, which doesn’t matter because it’s on Youtube forever. [It’s amazing what can be done with a smartphone and a smart, helpful parish administrator!] The service is brief, with a place for a meditation. We usually look at the Episcopal calendar of saints, who are nearly always honored on their death dates, not their birth dates. Here is a hymn by medieval saint Hildegard of Bingen to set the mood.
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