This Sunday, our Parish Cantor, Ken Peterson, will preach on Dame Julian of Norwich, the great English mystic and theologian of the 14th and 15th Centuries. 

 Julian has the distinction of being “the earliest known woman writer in English” (Watkins and Jenkins’s Preface), and she was almost an exact contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343 – 1400). But she was a mystic, theologian, and thinker whose writings were revolutionary, not only in her use of the common tongue, but in her message that we are all – rich and poor, commoner and aristocrat, male and female, “kinned” in the absolute love of God for the totality of creation beyond all time.

 She became a recluse, an anchoress, at Norwich soon after her recovery from illness, living in a small dwelling attached to parish church. Even in her lifetime, she was famed as a mystic and spiritual counselor and was frequently visited by clergymen and lay persons.

 Julian understood that God was both Father and Mother to us and understood Christ as exemplifying this maternal face of God.