A Teacher
Julian of Norwich
Divine love — ‘all shall be well’ and the motherhood of God
The transmission
Julian of Norwich, born around 1343 and living until at least 1416, was an English anchoress — a woman who withdrew into a cell attached to a church in Norwich to devote her life to prayer.
In 1373, gravely ill at the age of thirty, she received a series of sixteen visions or “shewings” of the Passion of Christ and of divine love. She recorded these first in a short text and later, after some twenty years of contemplative reflection, in a longer version.
Her Revelations of Divine Love is the earliest surviving book in English known to have been written by a woman. For a mind-power lineage, Julian offers one of the tradition’s most tender and radical visions of reality as grounded in love.
Pressed by the problem of sin and suffering, she received the assurance that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” — a confidence in an underlying benevolence at the heart of things that resonates with later “all is well” optimism.
She also developed the striking image of the motherhood of God, finding maternal tenderness within the divine nature itself. Her contemplative trust, her sense of being “enfolded” in love, and her focus on present assurance over future dread make her a quietly influential voice for an inwardly grounded peace.
What they gave
“All shall be well”: Affirmed an underlying divine goodness beneath all suffering, an early and influential statement of trust in reality’s ultimate benevolence.
- The motherhood of God: Found maternal tenderness within the divine nature, expanding the inner image of the sacred beyond the patriarchal.
- Enfolded in love: Described existence as held and “enfolded” within divine love, a vision of belonging that grounds inner security in the present.
- Visionary interiority: Treated her “shewings” as a lifelong contemplative text to be inwardly pondered, modelling sustained reflection on inner experience.
In their words
It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
He is our clothing that for love wrappeth us, claspeth us, and all encloseth us for tender love, that He may never leave us; being to us all-thing that is good, as to mine understanding.
God, of Thy Goodness, give me Thyself: for Thou art enough to me, and I may nothing ask that is less that may be full worship to Thee; and if I ask anything that is less, ever me wanteth,—but only in Thee I have all.
For He is the Very Rest. God willeth to be known, and it pleaseth Him that we rest in Him; for all that is beneath Him sufficeth not us.
For a soul that only fasteneth it[self] on to God with very trust, either by seeking or in beholding, it is the most worship that it may do to Him, as to my sight.
God willeth that we take heed to these words, and that we be ever strong in sure trust, in weal and woe. For He loveth and enjoyeth us, and so willeth He that we love and enjoy Him and mightily trust in Him; and all shall be well.
Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love.
I saw that He is to us everything that is good and comfortable for us.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: the medieval English devotional tradition; meditation on the Passion of Christ; the anchoritic contemplative life; and scripture.
- Taught / Influenced: the later English mystical tradition; modern contemplative spirituality; the poet T. S. Eliot (who quotes her in Four Quartets); and contemporary theologies of divine love and the feminine divine.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- Revelations of Divine Lovec.1395