It can be illuminating to find out what people "wanted to be when they grew up." And yet when that question comes my way, I still often find some way to sidestep it. Even I am a little embarrassed by the answer, as I may have already mentioned in a previous blog. Inspired by some 1930's-era English children's prayer and saints books (probably from my father's own anglophile childhood) -- and by my budding interest in English church music -- my earliest dream was to become a nun or a saint. As it is, I have been somewhat ridiculed over the years for being "goody-goody-two-shoes," and during my teens and twenties when other young people were doing the hippie thing, I was listening to records of Anglican chant. Once I hit "the real world," I did my utmost to hide my spiritual and musical interests for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that they were not going to pay back my student loans or pay the rent. It is only now, when I am no longer even embarrassed by how incompetent I have been navigating the waters of the real world, that I am willing to go back to the nun and saint piece. What did it say about who I am?
I know relatively little about Julian and have not read her Revelations of Divine Love. A BBC program last week referred to her, however, and it struck me that I needed to visit her site and find out what she might have to tell me. So on Sunday I bought a Cambridge to Norwich bus ticket and away I went.
Julian was alive during the late 14th-early 15th century. There is evidently some question as to whether she was actually a nun, but there is no question that she became an "anchoress"; in doing so, like other anchorites and anchoresses, she literally chose to undertake a ritual death, being bricked into a small cell against the side of a church for the rest of her life. There would likely have been only three openings in the room; a small window to the church and its services, an opening through which food could be passed to Julian and through which she could send waste back, and a window to the street, which might have been used by outsiders asking for spiritual advice or comfort. It is in this cell that Julian did extensive writing, most notably Revelations of Divine Love, which may be the first book written in English by a woman.
As I thought about it during my bus ride to Norwich, I have to say that I found the anchoress metaphor to be really quite troubling. Women of too many generations and nationalities have been involuntarily imprisoned, constricted, left invisible. Why, even 600 years ago, would a woman voluntarily make that choice?
The actual church and cell were destroyed in a bombing raid during World War II, and subsequently rebuilt. The side chapel on the site of her cell is nondescript, really rather grim. And yet when I walked in, I literally (and quite uncharacteristically) fell to my knees and burst into tears. What on earth?
Eventually, I got up and sat on the hard bench on the side wall of the chapel, wiping my tears, glad that no one else was there. It dawned on me where this emotion was coming from. I realized that truly she was a woman after my own heart, and not only because she evidently made similar conclusions about love to those I have made. In that cell, she had all the basics that I yearn for. I want to be anchored and at home in one place, not constantly moving. I want easy access to choral evensong services. I want a simple day-to-day life of writing, good food, and a ton of solitude. I want to wake early and go to sleep early. And yet I don't want total isolation -- I also want to be at the heart of things, where I can connect at times with other musicians, creative people and spiritual seekers, and be part of that communal energy for change and the creation of beauty.
Julian and I speak somewhat different spiritual languages, and I certainly don't seek physical imprisonment. But after a lifetime of considering (and either not pursuing or not succeeding at) a bewildering array of modern options for women, I guess I fell on my knees in the presence of the only one that has ever made sense for me. Finally, a life model that I "get." Last fall, I was beginning to see this part of myself more clearly, yet the tinny, modern, "I need to create a website and make money" consideration was distracting me from something important. Yesterday, on the floor of that drab chapel, I looked at the contemplative nun and saint in myself, and finally loved her. That's what had been missing.
Thank you, Julian.
