1 0 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 5 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 1 9 Notes [1] There is vast body of interpretative theological literature on Julian’s Revelations. Many of this works are valuable theological and hermeneutic investigations, which aim to integrate Julian into a broader picture of catholic theological teaching. In this article, I do not inquire the Revelations from theological point of view. I am trying to be an observer who rather sees her work as an integral part of a deeper spiritual telos of the spiritually developing humankind, telos, which goes beyond its historical guises and theological limitations. Here I am not in discussion with theologians who picture Julian in more traditional catholic fashion. I focus on her spiritual experience and draw out its essential features upon which I built my further conclusions. [2] Julian is famous for feminine qualities, which she likes to ascribe to God, especially the motherhood. At some places the terms she uses have even an androgynous guise and aim beyond gender. She disturbs readers’ habitual way of theological thinking with expressions like “Our Mother Christ, He…” (Julian of Norwich, 2011, 160). John-Julian nicely notices that Julian does not ascribe anthropomorphic attributes to God (e.g. “God is tender as our mother”), but she completely turns the perspective saying that all the motherhood, fatherhood, as well as all the humanity is preexisting perfectly in God. She divinizes the human reality, including genders (John-Julian 2011, xii). [3] “[But] these two things – blame and anger – I could not find in God“ (Julian of Norwich 2011, 105). She even claims that God cannot forgive us our sins, simply because there is no negativity in the divine being, so it makes no sense to speak about forgiveness at all. “I saw no kind of wrath in God, neither for a short time nor for long. (For truly, as I see it, if God were to be angry even a hint, we would never have life nor place nor being.)” (Julian of Norwich 2011, 115). [4] If the intentionality is fully transcending. If we spoke in a more current terminology, we could speak of mindfulness. For classical articulation of mindfulness, see, e.g. Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (Nhat Hanh 2008). [5] Saints and contemplatives in every spiritual tradition are very sensitive toward the pain of the broken bonds and relations. That is why they emphasize compassion, which is the consciously and actively lived togetherness. Mystics show how every isolated and isolating movement hinders the vivifying divine flow. This phenomenon I treat elsewhere as idolatry (Trajtelová 2018). [6] Contemplation learns to “see” the real beyond the mental constructions, to hear the stillness beyond the mental noise, to transcend one’s own mind’s conditionings. [7] Eckhart Tolle speaks about sin as about an inherited dysfunction of human mind. Sin is an inevitable result of human unconsciousness (read unenlightened, usual, normal, everyday “conscious” form of a human consciousness) (Tolle 2005, 108). [8] For Julian, human nature is natural, including the body and the sensibility. At the same time, the human nature is the essential part of the divine mystery. The mystic speaks loosely about the natural desire for God or natural love. She claims that the human nature and the God’s grace are perfectly concordant: grace is God, nature is God (Julian of Norwich, 2011, 169). Grace and nature present the one and the same efficacy of the divine goodness within the creation. [9] However, the notion of an award itself remains mostly obscure and seems to have the weakest experiential power. Perhaps here it comes to Julian’s faith – simply embracing this point as God’s promise and future reality to come. [10] One way of looking at this troublesome point in Julian’s teaching is to think about the role of suffering in the process of mystical or contemplative awakening. Mystics claim that the way to mystical union leads through pain of radical dispossession (cf. “the dark night” in St. John of the Cross). Spiritual teachings in all the traditions have always acknowledged the role of suffering in spiritual transformation since abundance of suffering may serve as the vehicle for the spiritual surrender and awakening, which represents the breaking points when habitual egoic structures of human mind collapse.
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