Julian of Norwich

Donyelle McCray of Yale Divinity School joins host Karen Wright Marsh to tell the startling story of the visionary Julian of Norwich. 

During a terrifying time of deadly plague and war, Julian of Norwich (1342-c.1416) received an extraordinary vision of Christ’s saving, comforting presence. Now, more than ever, we need to hear sister Julian’s radical message: that despite the alarming events of our own present day, God’s love will have the final word. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” It’s a truth to embrace.    

Meet host Karen Wright Marsh, and learn more about the show here: www.karenwrightmarsh.com

Guest Donyelle McCray, Assistant Professor of Homiletics at Yale Divinity School, writes about the ways African American women and lay people use the sermon to play, remember, invent, and disrupt. Her book, The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich as Preacher, offers a homiletical reading of Julian’s life and ministry. Her current research examines the preaching and spirituality of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. She is also working on a documentary film on Race, Church, and Theological Practices. 

Learn more at https://divinity.yale.edu/faculty-and-research/yds-faculty/donyelle-mccray

For more reading, Karen recommends 

Revelations of Divine Love:Unabridged Contemporary English Edition by Julian of Norwich (Paraclete Press)

The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich as Preacher by Donyelle McCray (Fortress Academic)

Laughing at the Devil: Seeing the World with Julian of Norwich by Amy Laura Hall (Duke University Press)

Julian of Norwich, Theologian by Denys Turner (Yale University Press)

Julian of Norwich: A Contemplative Biography by Amy Frykholm (Paraclete Press)

Become a podcast partner! Make your gift at: www.theologicalhorizons.org/giving. Thank you!

Transcript

Karen Marsh (00:11):
Welcome to the vintage saints and sinners podcast. I'm Karen Wright Marsh. Do you wonder if Christian faith can be truly lived in today's complex and changing world? Well, this is the place to find broken and beautiful companions for your everyday pilgrimage. Here, you'll find embodied witnesses, Christians from different eras and from different cultures. They're people we sometimes call saints, but they were also sinners, just like you and me. Today, I'm here to tell you the story of Julian,of Norwich, and to talk about her with the writer and scholar Donyelle McCray. I'm glad you're here with us.

Karen Marsh (01:27):
One of my favorite stories comes from the 14th century, 650 years ago. It's about the first woman who wrote in vernacular English, but we're not sure when she was born or when she died. In fact, we don't even know her real name. She was called by the name of the church where she lived, St. Julian in the English city of Norwich. In the 14th century, most people who lived a religious life, a spiritual life dedicated to God, would withdraw into monastic communities. But Julian of Norwich, as we call her, was different. She chose to be an anchoress. And in this way, she was a common lay parishioner who lived right next to the church, in a little cell built right against the building. And she vowed to remain forever in that place, in her little space, no matter what. The life of an Anchoress is an odd way to live, especially for us now. But it had a certain brilliance to it.

Karen Marsh (02:30):
She could devote herself to prayer and contemplation, and yet still remain connected to the society around her. Her cell had three windows. The first window opened into the church. She could hear worship, she could receive communion from the priest. The second window opened into her garden. And the third window of Julian's enclosure faced out onto the turbulent Norwich streets. So though she was neither a nun nor a common lay person, she was a woman on the margins she was still fully engaged in the life of the church and the city. She was in that safe, interesting space between sacred and secular society. Now, people visited Julian at her open window, and think about it, they knew she was there, she promised that she would never leave. So they would come to her, this woman of prayer, they would seek her for counseling for spiritual insight, and you know they told her all their troubles.

Karen Marsh (03:32):
And they had many troubles because 14th century England was a harrowing time. The sounds, the sights, the smells of death were everywhere during Julian's life. The plague, the black death, swept through the town three times and killed more than half the people in Norwich. Bad weather and sicknesses came and struck down livestock and crops, driving desperate peasants to revolt. From her cell, Julian heard all kinds of terrifying news. She heard about assassinations, about the hundred years war, about the church in moral collapse. She heard about heretics burned at the stake. The people all around her saw these horrific events as evidence of God's wrath. And you would think that it was an unusual time to proclaim the boundless goodness and love of God, but this is what Julian did.

Karen Marsh (04:30):
An incredibly strange thing had happened to Julian. It happened on the afternoon of May 13th, 1373, where she witnessed a series of vivid, mystical visions of Christ on the cross. She saw red hot blood, his crucified body, his dehydrated face. She saw the innocent son of God tormented on the cross. But not all of Julian's visions are gory, some are quite tender. God reveals a tiny object. It's as small as a hazelnut, it's round as a ball. It's something you could hold in the palm of your hand. And Julian hears God say this, "This is everything that has been made, this is all of creation. It lasts, and it will always last because I love it." She knows that everything is kept, sustained and alive, by God's tender love. Julian shows us a God who is no wrathful avenger, but whose goodness is closer to us than our very bodies.

Karen Marsh (05:38):
For the visitors who came to Julian's window, and told her their troubles, and heard her visions, there was no sugarcoating of all the suffering that they endured and all the fear that they felt, because Julian never stopped questioning and wrestling. She was a theologian puzzling with a paradox. She had two opposing beliefs and realities. She saw that sin exists. She knew that there was evil in the world. And yet she held, too, to God's love. She believed that the world is created and sustained by an absolute, absolutely invincible love. That there is a God who does not condemn and who will not harm. So she wrestled with this idea of sin and love, and when she saw the evil in the world, she asked God in her vision, "why, why is there this evil?" And God said, "what is unpossible to thee is not impossible to me." And so God's, unpossible way remains known only to God, and Julian goes on, but we see her holding to God's love to the end of her life.

Karen Marsh (06:52):
There's a quote of Julian's that is very well known. And it goes like this, "all shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." But it's so much more than a cheery platitude, because both then and now, Julian sees both our pain and our hope, and she holds to a larger story. She tells us that the story of God is not over, that it's not complete, but that it is a good story and all shall be well, because the love of God is eternal and overcoming, ,and we will not be undone by the alarming events of the day. Indeed all shall be well.

Karen Marsh (07:43):
The Vintage Saints and Sinners podcast is the audio companion to my book, Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith. To learn more, come on by my website, karenwrightmarsh.Com. Please rate and review this podcast on iTunes and invite your friends to join us. Now, for a conversation about Julian of Norwich with my friend Donyelle McCray.

Karen Marsh (08:16):
I'm very happy to welcome Donyelle McCray to speak with me today. She's the author of The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich As Preacher. Donyelle is an assistant professor of homiletics at Yale divinity school, and she focuses on preaching on Christian spirituality. She has studied African American women preachers, including the life and witness of Reverend Pauli Murray. Thank you for speaking with me today, Donyelle.

Donyelle McCray (08:43):
Thank you for having me, Karen.

Karen Marsh (08:46):
So you wrote your dissertation on Julian of Norwich. Your new book is about Julian of Norwich. Why did you choose her?

Donyelle McCray (08:54):
Well, I was really, at the time I wanted to study a preacher who operated on on a fringe. And I really wanted to study a preacher who was really coming to voice while homiletics as a discipline was being formed. You know, so there was Augustine's On Christian Teaching that had come out long before, but it's really during the medieval era that we get homiletics texts.

Karen Marsh (09:27):
Well, tell us about her daily life as an Anchoress. It's such a, such an odd way to live, and how did she fit into society and the church? Tell us about that.

Donyelle McCray (09:39):
Yeah, so she was really sort of in the center of it and on the fringe of it. There were some anchoresses who actually had anchor holds that were not attached to churches, but Julian's was attached to a church. This would mean that she was in the center of town. The typical anchor hold was one with a window out to the street so that people could come to the anchoress and seek prayers and advice and wisdom. And one window that opened to the sanctuary. so the anchoress could participate in the mass.

Donyelle McCray (10:20):
The role left someone with a kind of Janus like position, this duality, where one is holding onto what's happening in the temporal and in the eternal world. So her day would consist of prayers, a great deal of silence, some conversation with people who had spiritual questions, and a great deal of writing. She spent decades working on Revelations of Divine Love, and after she had the visions at age 30 and a half, she spent a great deal of time afterwards, just mining them, pouring over them, trying to draw out the spiritual insight that emerged from them. Because she was convinced that the message was for the church, that her visions were not for her own benefit alone, but that there was this larger edifying purpose that the messages were supposed to serve.

Donyelle McCray (11:28):
And so her role was to understand them, to interpret them as best she could, and to make them know. Now she was also quite, very aware that because of the nature of the visions, there were some things that she could only share in a partial way. That they don't break down in a crystal clear way because they're spiritually discerned. Now I say that, also holding onto the fact that I think Julian was clearly a theologian. She was not trying to be obscure, but I think at the same time, she realized that there are cognitive limits when it comes to understanding divine things and she wanted to hold onto that.

Karen Marsh (12:13):
Well, I want to talk about the whole idea of a vision because, maybe at the time, did people accept this experience of mysticism of vision? And how do you think, if she were living today and she announced this vision, how she might be received? I just feel like we just see the world and we see spiritual realm in such different ways now, that the thought of someone having a vision, I think most people would respond with skepticism if not alarm

Donyelle McCray (12:47):
Well, you know, I think there's this long history of seers, mystics prophets being challenged with skepticism. And I think ultimately when it comes to matters of faith, these are matters of belief and they can't be proven. It requires that we move into a different realm of assessment. So I would expect that she would be met with skepticism about the visions, but, there are people in the contemporary scene who have what I would consider prophetic messages who are met with skepticism. Even, I think of Greta Thunberg, right? You know, this young, I would say prophet about our need to respond to the environment and care for the earth. And I think she's met with a great deal of skepticism too.

Donyelle McCray (13:47):
So I think the sense of what a vision is varies over time. Clearly Julian's was of a different kind that emerged during her illness. And I think some people can take it in and others can't, and that's just something that I think Julian would accept, and the energy goes less to to changing minds and more to helping people engage those who are responsive. And that's what I think Julian does so well is that she is a really compelling writer, and is able to bring things to life, make ideas vivid. Her humility is evident. It's clear that she's not trying to become the star, right? She's not trying to put herself on a pedestal with this. Which I think is one major counter-argument to the skepticism that, to think about the motives of the person bearing the message. But she's really trying to offer insights and comfort and empowerment in a moment where those things are direly needed.

Karen Marsh (15:06):
And what is her message of consolation? What does she end up... What's at the heart of her message?

Donyelle McCray (15:14):
We are loved beyond our knowing. We are held in ways that we can't fathom. We're loved by God as children and never grow out of childhood as far as God is concerned. And we're secured by God's love. We're not able to cognitively wrap our minds around that, of that divine security. And we do experience fragility, mortality, suffering in this world. But there's a security that we have in God's love that should guide our thinking and our prayers and our interactions. Her vision of love, her actual visions and her understanding of love, are things that emerge out of darkness. So both a metaphorical darkness and a literal darkness.

Donyelle McCray (16:14):
When she's giving the visions, you know, she's painting the scene for us. And it's a vision of darkness. There's this many waves of suffering that are flowing through the world at that time in terms of the violence and the banditry and the war and the plague. And, so the light, the message of love, emerges out of that sense of instability and fragility and chaos. So love is something that is alive, that is not muted by, or not compromised by, the amount of suffering around it.

Karen Marsh (16:58):
There's been so much written about Julian and so much attention to her. She she's so popular, she's the thing. You know what is it about this moment that brings Julian to the fore like this?

Donyelle McCray (17:13):
You know, she speaks to the moment in her attention to our need to feel loved. Her message of security, that's not a thin vision. You know, that is part of her vocation is that of consoler. And that's her gift for the moment. I think we're in need of consolation, a consolation that's not a thin, "it'll get better, now, now there," but a deeper kind of... There's a realm of activity that we can only partially perceive, but we're being held by something, even though it seems like we're being overwhelmed. Or even though it seems like we're being submerged in something that will topple us all, we're being held by a divine power. She's able to communicate that message of being held in a powerful way, being enveloped, being enveloped and kept in a powerful way.

Karen Marsh (18:17):
We do need that. Her voice saying, you know, "all shall be well," it's so hard to believe that. And yet that's what she says.

Donyelle McCray (18:25):
Right. And she doesn't mean it as kind of a cheap optimism. Right? It's all is not well, but all shall be well.

Karen Marsh (18:40):
Well, thank you for bringing us Julian today, the great consoler, and her good word to us in this fearful moment. Thank you, Donyelle.

Donyelle McCray (18:49):
Thank you, Karen.

Karen Marsh (19:02):
Julian of Norwich lived in the ancient past, and yet I feel like she sees straight into my heart today with its fears and questions. Through my conversation with Donyelle, I feel like I know Julian better too, as a woman who suffered and yet emerged with a comforting message of God's love, as a preacher who declares God's protecting closeness. Even when catastrophe is all around today, as Danielle says, we all need consolation. We all need to hear Julian's words again and again. As she says, "all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."

Karen Marsh (19:53):
Thank you for joining me today. I'm Karen Wright Marsh, and I'm the executive director of Theological Horizons, a ministry based in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia. I'd love to hear from you. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram at theological horizons. Come by my website, karenwrightmarsh.com. You'll find out more about the Vintage Saints and Sinners podcast, get show notes, and learn about my book, Vintage Saints and Sinners. You can download free principle study guides for your small group, or just for yourself, and keep the conversation going. Thanks to the generosity of the Lloyd and Vivian Noble foundation and to the friends of Theological Horizons. I hope you'll support the Vintage Saints and Sinners podcast with a tax deductible gift to Theological Horizons. Go to theologicalhorizons.org/giving, or donate on Venmo at theological dash horizons. The Vintage Saints and Sinners podcast is produced by Gabriel Hunter-Chang. Our music is by Will Marsh of Gold Connections.