Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] 10/29/2020, Progressing Spirit, Matthew Fox:The Astounding Accomplishments of Julian Norwich; Spong revisited

8 Nov 2020

      Hi Ellie,

Today seems to be a good one for catching up on email. What a wonderful day it is!

As ever, thank-you for forwarding Progressive Spirit.

From time to time I loop back into the words and experience of Julian of Norwich. Growing up Anglican gave me my first minute window into her witness. It grows through the years.

This time, I was deeply struck by Mathew Fox when, 10 days ago in Progressive Spirit he writes:

On Oct 29, 2020, at 11:40 AM, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote:

On non-dualism
Julian also deconstructs Patriarchy by insisting on non-dualism.  Rosemary Reuther and many other feminist theologians identify dualism as lying at the heart of patriarchal consciousness. Says Julian:

There exists a ‘true oneing between the divine and the human.”
“In our creation we were knit and oned to God.”  It is a “precious oneing.”
A “beautiful oneing was made by God between the body and the soul.”
“God has forged a glorious union between the soul and the body.”
“God willed that we have a twofold nature: sensual and spiritual.”
“God is the means whereby our Substance and our Sensuality are kept together so as never to be apart.”
“God is in our sensuality.”

This experience is not at all mundane nor metaphysical.

Grateful as ever,

Ken
...
On Oct 29, 2020, at 11:40 AM, Ellie Stock via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net <mailto:dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net>> wrote:
View this email in your browser <https://mailchi.mp/01d50d8c7fd0/the-astounding-accomplishments-of-julian-norwich?e=db34daa597>
 <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=c532db8a68&e=db34daa597>
 <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=43fd2cac18&e=db34daa597>
The Astounding Accomplishments of Julian Norwich
 <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=df9c218576&e=db34daa597>Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox 
October 29 2020
Most people, if they know anything about Julian of Norwich, know two things. First, that she said “all things will be well, every manner of thing will be well,” a testimony to hope or what Mirabai Starr calls “radical optimism” that arises near the end of her book Showings and ought not to be understood as “spiritual bypass” or denial of suffering. Second, people have heard that she talks about the “motherhood of God” quite often.
It has been my privilege to know Julian for at least forty years as I was instrumental in publishing her in our series of “Meditations with” books that Bear & Co. published in the 1980’s to get the mystics into everyday peoples’ hands in a straight-forward manner. Her book, Meditations with Julian of Norwich, authored by Brendan Doyle who translated her work very wisely and carefully from the original fourteenth century English (she was, after all, the first woman writer in English), was only our second book in the Meditations with series. And I wrote a Foreword to it. I frequently taught her over the years.
What I did not know then and learned this year while writing my new book on Julian, working from both Doyle’s translation and that of Mirabai Starr who translated the entire Showings, is not only what a powerful and creation-centered mystic Julian is, but also what a prophet she was. This helps to explain why her book was not published for 300 years after her death—partly explained by her being a woman—but also by how thoroughly she resisted the zeitgeist of her time and of what transpired in centuries following her death.
I am referring to the utter pre-occupation with redemption that dominated the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and that completely imbued the religious invasions and destruction of indigenous peoples in Africa, the Americas, the Pacific islands. All of it charged up by three notorious papal bulls of the fifteenth century that collectively we know as the “Doctrine of Discovery.”
In a nutshell, Julian thoroughly represents a creation spirituality. That lineage thoroughly grounded her during the midst of the worst pandemic in European history. The Black Death first struck in England when she was seven years old and then returned in waves throughout her long lifetime.  She remained sane and focused even though she surely lost friends and family members all around her as she continued her life work of writing and rewriting her book over a fifty-year period. While she is very much a pilgrim in the lineage of wisdom literature (which formed the roots of the historical Jesus’ spiritual tradition), St. Benedict, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Mechtild of Magdeburg and Meister Eckhart, she is the only one among this rich heritage that practiced and preached creation spirituality during an on-going pandemic.
People around her were freaking out—after all, estimates are that between 35% and 50% of Europeans died from this plague and, lacking science, all sorts of causes for the pandemic were put forth, one of them being that it was a punishment for the sins of humanity. Other excuses included scapegoating Jews and outsiders but Julian shows not a hint of anti-Semitism in her work. The punishment-for-sin trope inspired a number of men to take up flagellation, going from village to village (three villages per day was their goal) and beat themselves publicly for their sins. Is there a connection between this sense of guilt and certain politicians today going from town to town gathering hundreds and thousands of people for rallies to gather without masks and risk illness and death in the process?
When one considers the context of belief that nature is wrecking its revenge on humankind for its sins, it is all the more remarkable to read Julian’s profound teachings on the goodness of nature and the godliness of nature. One must read her teachings within the matrix of fear and suspicion of nature that was all around her to realize her amazing courage and independent thought and theology.
The rupture between nature and humanity was so traumatic in her time that geologian Thomas Berry says it was the Black Death that effectively ended creation spirituality in Western religion.  I propose that this rupture between trusting nature and fearing and blaming nature set the stage for 1) the doctrine of discovery and the invasion and destruction of indigenous religions that was to come in the next two centuries (Columbus set sail in 1492, as we all know) and 2) the prominence of redemption over creation in Protestant and then Catholic theology and 3) the rupture of science and religion that I trace back in a special way to the year 1600 when Giordano Bruno, an ex-Dominican, was tortured (his tongue was cut out among other things) and burned at the stake by Cardinal Bellarmine and the Inquisition for trying to bring Copernicus into the faith (as his brother Aquinas had tried to do with Aristotle in the thirteenth century). Soon after came the Galileo attacks.
How might history have been changed—the history of slavery and the stealing of Africans to work plantations in the Americas; the history of indigenous genocides in the Americas and the Pacific islands; the dominance of patriarchal ideology and control fetishes and misogyny; the divorce between science and religion; even the eco-destruction and extinction spasm we are currently undergoing because nature is no longer considered sacred—if Julian’s theology has prevailed? Let us now consider some of Julian’s teachings.
On the sacredness of nature
“The first good thing is the goodness of nature.”
“God is the same thing as nature” and God is “the very essence of nature.”
“The goodness in nature is God.”
“To behold God in all things is to live in complete joy.”
One sees here not only a theology of original blessing and “original goodness” (Aquinas’s term) but a veritable metaphysic of goodness.  Julian is urging us to stay focused on goodness—even in and especially in dire times.
On Oneing of God and Nature, God and Us
There is a oneing (Julian invented this word just as she also invented the word enjoy) between God nature, God and us.
“Nature and Grace are in harmony with each other…Neither works without the other.”
“God is the Ground, the Substance, the same thing as Naturehood.”
“God is the true Father and Mother of Nature.”
Faith is “trusting that we are in God and God whom we do not see is in us.”  Here she is identifying faith itself both with trust and with trust in pantheism.
“The sky and the earth failed at the time of Christ’s dying because he too was part of nature.” A deep cosmic Christ awareness is revealed in this understanding of the crucifixion—it was a cosmic event.
On the Motherhood of God
“God feels great delight to be our Father and God feels great delight to be our Mother.”
“A Mother’s service is nearest, readiest and surest.”
“Compassion belongs to the motherhood in tender grace” and “protects, increases our sensitivity, gives life and heals.”
“Jesus is our true Mother in whom we are endlessly carried and out of whom we will never come.”
Julian does much more theologically speaking than praise God as mother.  She applies that concept not only to God the Creator but also to God the Liberator or Savior (developing Christ as Mother) and also to God the Holy Spirit and to the Trinity as a whole.  This is a complete deconstruction of the all-patriarchal God—and she is blunt about the implications. “I saw no wrath or vengeance in God” (q.v.).  She displaces a hierarchical Deity and a punitive Father God with a motherly and compassionate Deity. Wrath and vengeance come from humans, not from God.
Julian doesn’t just deconstruct Divinity but reconstructs it in terms of motherly characteristics which she names explicitly as: compassion, justice, caring, inner strength, service that is “nearest, readiest and surest.” Julian is not just speaking of God as Mother.
On non-dualism
Julian also deconstructs Patriarchy by insisting on non-dualism.  Rosemary Reuther and many other feminist theologians identify dualism as lying at the heart of patriarchal consciousness. Says Julian:
There exists a ‘true oneing between the divine and the human.”
“In our creation we were knit and oned to God.”  It is a “precious oneing.”
A “beautiful oneing was made by God between the body and the soul.”
“God has forged a glorious union between the soul and the body.”
“God willed that we have a twofold nature: sensual and spiritual.”
“God is the means whereby our Substance and our Sensuality are kept together so as never to be apart.”
“God is in our sensuality.”
This brief introduction to Julian’s genius helps explain why she was essentially ignored for 700 years but also why we are ready for her earthy mysticism and feminism and prophetic teachings today. “It is in our nature to reject evil,” she says. She offers us real medicine to stand up to the evils of Misogyny, Matricide (killing of mother earth) and Patriarchy with the “fatalistic self-hatred” (Adrienne Rich) that accompanies it. Clearly, she is a mystic-prophet for our times.
~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
Read online here <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=7b4a628007&e=db34daa597>
About the Author
Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 35 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 74 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and started Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=0f81f26cb4&e=db34daa597>.
Matthew Fox's upcoming book:  <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=57923d33d1&e=db34daa597>Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic – and Beyond along with his book:  The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=914a1bff47&e=db34daa597>  are the basis of his  Virtual Retreat and Teach-In 10/30/20 - 10/31/20 <https://progressivechristianity.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=43a0c80bb5&e=db34daa597> - see details below.
Dialogue mailing list
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http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net>
Hi Ellie,
Today seems to be a good one for catching up on email.

As ever, thank-you for forwarding “Progressive Spirit”.