FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

Encounter the Mystics: Julian of Norwich

~ Dr. Frederick Roden is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Connecticut and lives in New York City. He has published primarily on homosexuality and Christianity. He is a lay Associate of the Episcopal Order of Julian of Norwich (see www.orderofjulian.org) and the author of a commentary companion to her text which will be published by Liturgical Press later this year. He is currently working on a book on Jewish/Christian intersections and can be reached at fsroden@aol.com.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well…”  This familiar phrase of the 14th-century English writer Julian of Norwich inspired poet T. S. Eliot to look around his broken world—the devastation of twentieth-century war and genocide—and glimpse the power of the Unseen working in and through All Created Thing. We read these words and immediately assume that we should get what we’re asking for, that our prayers should be answered, that the outcome we crave is the outcome God will provide. In Julian’s theology, the answer is: yes and no. For her, as for all the great mystics and poets, the Divine is ever bursting through the material world. She maintains that we cannot know ourselves without knowing God; that God is nearer to us than our own souls. The depth of our human experience is firmly grounded in the Divine: the Divine is fully known in our material experience, not outside of it. Our deepest longings— our truest selves—are inseparable from God.

The problem comes with how things look on the outside versus inside. This question of separation versus inseparability defines Julian’s theology. She had prayed for a full experience of Jesus’s Passion. She wanted to feel the depth of human suffering her God knew. Her desire led to a vision that opened her awareness. Julian could not turn from the suffering human body of her God because there she found her heaven. Her God willed to know human suffering so deeply that it physically “one-ed” God with All Created Thing. Julian’s famous “all shall be well,” so often cited out of context, is God’s answer to her questioning of this eternal “one-ing.” How can all be well given the brokenness, suffering, and separation in the world? How can all be well given what she had been taught to understand as “sin”? In the theology Julian develops, “sin” is literally no-thing. It is separation: the wound that God constantly works to heal—the brokenness of our experience for which we can never be blamed. In and by our wounds (our divisions) we are healed and the world is made whole.

In Jewish terms, that opening is the space of tikkun olam, the repair of the world. In Julian’s words it is the work of “mercy” and “grace” dynamic and active in and through Creation. Julian’s God is a verb. This God’s sole purpose is healing separation. In a sense we have a choice whether to answer this call. Yet Divine Love (inseparable from Divine Reason) continuously works in and through us whether we like it or not, whether we cooperate or not! Julian’s Christianity understands this as the Incarnation, the Real Presence of the Divine acting through our material existence. This “Incarnation” isn’t limited to Jesus: there is no difference between God in Jesus the Christ and God operating throughout the material world. The degree and level of perfection (literally, as “fully realized,” “fully made”) may vary, but the Presence and call to be present is true for all of us in all incarnations.

Julian lived at a time of plague and war. Her society rigidly separated “saved” from “unsaved.” As much as she was a product of her culture, Julian challenged this view in claiming God as one: unity as the work, truth, and destiny of all Creation. She rejected a world-view that separated sheep from goats. While grounded in Christian Trinitarian theology, the singular experience of Divine Love working in and through the world defined that meaning Julian put forth as God’s message for all humanity. 

Julian never stopped asking questions of her God. Although professed as a hermit, her hermitage was attached to a church in a busy market town. Hers was no escape from the world but a way of living deeply in it, fully present to the experience of All Created Thing. With a literal window open to her society (who viewed her as a spiritual director) Julian conveyed her God’s ultimate message: one she spent over twenty years contemplating—the final answer to her question.  At the end of her visionary text (written in a time and place where few men and fewer women read, let alone wrote), she concluded that “Love was His meaning.”  In the end, all shall be Love. Julian did not intend that we await the end of time for realization of this Love. Rather, we are called to awaken to it in our lives as we glimpse the Divine—our truest self—in the face of The Other.

Blessed Julian of Norwich (1343-1423)

THE DAY OF

my spiritual awakening

    was the day I saw

    and knew I saw

       God in all things

       and all things in God.

Live Words: Work of Human Beings

In the beginning, the Creator of the Universe, deciding to make a world, drew in the divine breath in order to make room for the creation coming into being. In this enlarged space, the Creator then set vessels, and into the vessels poured the brilliance of divine light. The light was too brilliant for the vessels, however, and unable to contain it, they shattered all over the universe. Since that time, the work of human beings has been to go about the universe, picking up the shards of creation and trying to mend and transform the vessels by refashioning them in a work called 'the repair of the world.'

                                    ~ Isaac Luria, 17th Century mystical Jewish theologian

Introduction to Muslim Spirituality: The Sufi Way

SUFISM MAY BE POWERFUL ANTIDOTE TO ISLAMIC EXTREMISM

(an article by Jane Lampman, staff writer of the CSM, Dec 5, 2007)

Images of Islam have pervaded the news media in recent years, but one aspect of the faith has gotten little attention – Islamic spirituality. Yet thousands in America and millions in the Muslim world have embarked on the spiritual path called Sufism, or the Sufi way. Some see its appeal as the most promising hope for countering the rise of extremism in Islam.

In recent weeks, celebrations in cities on several continents have marked the "International Year of Rumi." Sept. 30 was the 800th anniversary of the birth of Muslim mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, who is a towering figure in Sufi literature and, paradoxically, the bestselling poet in the United States over the past decade.

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to continue reading the article click HERE (Thank you Sylvia for the link!)

Live Words: Paradox of Hospitality

"Once we have found the center of our life in our own heart and have accepted our aloneness, not as a fate but as a vocation, we are able to offer freedom to others. Once we have given up our desire to be fully fulfilled, we can offer emptiness to others. Once we have become poor, we can be a good host. It is indeed the paradox of hospitality that poverty makes a good host. Poverty is the inner disposition that allows us to take away our defenses and convert our enemies into friends. We can only perceive the stranger as an enemy as long as we have something to defend."

                                                         ~ by Henry Nouwen

Lovedrunk

~ by Samir Selmanovic

Rumi (Jelaluddin Mevlana Rumi), arguably the greatest mystical poet of any age, was born in 1207 C.E. on the Eastern shores of the Persian Empire, then Afghanistan, and settled in present day Turkey. Over a period of 25 years, he composed over 70,000 verses of poetry about divine love, mystic passion and ecstatic illumination. In recent times, Rumi's work has experienced a renaissance across the globe, and is the most widely read poet in America today. The Year 2007 has been designated by Unesco as the International Year of Rumi. Although Rumi was a Sufi and a great scholar of the Qu’ran, his words reach across religious and social divisions. Even in his own time, he was known as a cosmopolitan. His funeral, which lasted 40 days, was attended by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Persians, and Greeks.

Last week I attended a short meditation class by a wonderful guide (Thank you Michelle!).  She taught us Square Breath, a Sufi practice. It was unlike anything else I have experienced before, centering first on one’s breathing, then on one’s heartbeat, bringing them in sync, one's own person becoming an expression of gratitude for the gift of life and love of God. Sufi's would say, "stain your prayer rug with wine." I did just that this week. I got lovedrunk with God.

After coming home, I resolved that it is time for Faith House to join other peacemakers around the world in honoring Rumi and his legacy at the 800th year anniversary of his birth.  And not only Rumi, but also all the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystics who stayed sane at the times when "rational" people lost their mind and warred with one another. I have to admit that my attempt to summarize Rumi's work for you has been frustrating. After years of spotty reading and now hours of collecting material about Rumi's extraordinary life, I threw up my hands and said with Attar, a Sufi master, who commented about Rumi: "There goes a river dragging an ocean behind it."

One of the most brilliant translators of Rumi into English is Coleman Barks.  With his “good ol' boy” soft Southern voice, he can, paradoxically, transport you to Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey of the Middle Ages. This connection between contemporary American South and ancient Middle East has been one of the most fitting global matches of spirit I have ever experienced. Author Robert Bly says of Coleman: "One of the greatest pieces of good luck that has happened recently in American poetry is Coleman Barks' agreement to translate poem after poem of Rumi. Coleman's exquisite sensitivity to the flavor and turns of ordinary American speech has produced marvelous lines, full of flavor and Sufi humor, as well as the intimacy that is carried inside American speech at its best."

Here are the readings of three Rumi's poems, by Coleman.  These might lead you to the threshold between two worlds. And you will emerge on the other side of this experience first crawling, then walking, then "spreading great silent wings."

"ONLY BREATH"


"CITY OF SABA"


"I HAVE NO NAME FOR YOU"

Get lovedrunk with the mystics. Explore. There are hundreds of poems like these on the internet and in a bookstore near you. May Rumi's whole, provocative, dangling, passionate words never give you peace.