This book contains some beautifully expressed ideas about God written by a 14th century Christian mystic. I enjoyed reading it!

Two of my favorite excerpts:

“…it is the natural yearning of the soul touched by the Holy Ghost to say, ‘God, of your goodness, give me yourself; you are enough for me, and anything less that I could ask for would not do you full honour. And if I ask anything that is less, I shall always lack something, but in you alone I have everything.’”

“…for the goodness of God is the highest object of prayer and it reaches down to our lowest need. It quickens our soul and gives it life, and makes it grow in grace and virtue… it is the same grace which the soul seeks and always will seek until we truly know him who has enclosed us in himself; for he does not despise what he has made, nor does he disdain to serve us…through love of the soul which he has made in his own likeness; for as the body is clad in the cloth, and the flesh in the skin, and the bones in the flesh, and the heart in the chest, so are we, soul and body, clad in the goodness of God and enclosed in it…” ( )

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well...

It feels slightly odd to write a book review of the divine revelations of Julian of Norwich. This is a translation of the long text, which describes the 16 revelations and contains the longer discussion on their meaning, 'anent certain points'. Julian's vision of a God of love is as famous as it is comforting. ( )

It has been years since I read this book, and I do not remember enough about it to justify reviewing it. It comes as no surprise that, as a work of mysticism, it is somewhat opaque; this opacity makes the work difficult not only to understand but also to recall. I surmise, however, that I would gain more from reading it now as a result of knowledge I have acquired in the years since I first grappled with it.

In any case, I do remember some salient features of the author's (whose name was not Julian) thought that especially interested me. First, she states her steadfast commitment not to contradict any official Roman Catholic doctrine. Yet at some points she seems too sympathetic to human suffering to embrace fully and enthusiastically doctrines that promote or excuse such suffering. She seems to struggle most painfully with the church's doctrine of eternal torment of human beings in Hell. She believes that God is perfect Love and Goodness, and recognizes that this doctrine, to say the least, stands in the utmost tension with the teaching of infinite cruelty inflicted by a perfect God on his own creatures. In an effort to alleviate, if not allay, this tension, she proclaims that God, being perfect love, cannot be angry, and therefore he himself does not consign people to eternal torment; rather, the damnable fault is human sin. God must by no means be blamed, however much he allows what many philosophers now call "gratuitous suffering", the extreme instance of which is torment in Hell. The claim that the torments of Hell are permitted by a perfectly good, loving God is ultimately inscrutable, but "Julian"contents herself--or at least seems to do so--with the mysterious claim, which was revealed to her by Jesus himself, that "All will be well; all will be well; all manner of things will be well." It is pitiful to observe the humane "Julian" struggling to suppress her natural moral and sympathetic sensibilities in the interest of accepting even the most abominable dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. ( )

This medieval devotional classic gained new readers in the twentieth century through the combination of modern renderings of the Chaucer-era English and a boost from T.S. Eliot.
It’s uncanny how the meditations and visions (“showings”) recorded here, which reflect a medieval form of spirituality and belief, nevertheless speak across the six-century gap between the author’s time and ours.
I think this has to do with the honesty and simplicity with which the author writes. She is self-effacing, yet she saw what she saw. The dogma of her time expected the condemnation and suffering of countless souls. Julian doesn’t deny this; she simply states she saw no trace of condemnation in the “showings” vouchsafed her.
The ultimate expression of the view of reconciliation is the single most famous sentence of the book: “But all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” It’s no wonder that we respond to this encouraging message. Yet perhaps we do her injustice when we focus on this statement alone. Indeed, she warns against this: “Beware that you do not take one thing according to your taste and fancy and leave another, for that is what heretics do.”
So while the author plainly yet discretely distances herself from some of the teachings of what she calls “Holy Church,” she only welcomes readers who take her message in its entirety. So I’m in a quandary. If I wanted to engage this text on a theological level, there are several things I’d differ on. But it’s clear she wrote in a simple, reverent spirit, so is it wrong for me to read the text in the same way without discarding the points on which my belief differs from the medieval church? I may not be the reader the author would have approved of, but I remain confident that all will be well.

( )

This work, Revelations of Devine Love, is not well known. Julian of Norwich questions existence and it can take the reader to deeper thinking. Her religious views we far advanced of others of that age. This book was enlightening and fascinating.

I was given this book by NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. ( )