Grace is given to save our nature, not to save us from our nature.Richard Rohr writes: “One of my favorite mystics is the English anchorite Julian of Norwich (1342–1416). After a serious illness, during which she experienced “shewings” or revelations of Jesus’ love, she wrote about the compassionate, mothering God she had encountered.” John Philip Newell’s beautiful summary of Julian’s visions: She says that Christ is the one who connects us to the “great root” of our being. . . . [1] “God is our mother as truly as God is our father,” she says. [2] We come from the Womb of the Eternal. We are not simply made by God; we are made “of God.” [3] So we encounter the energy of God in our true depths. And we will know the One from whom we have come only to the extent that we know ourselves. God is the “ground” of life. [4] So it is to the very essence of our being that we look for God. . . . God “is in everything,” writes Julian. [5] God is “nature’s substance,” the very essence of life. [6] So she speaks of “smelling” God, of “swallowing” God in the waters and juices of the earth, of “feeling” God in the human body and the body of creation. [7] Grace is given to save our nature, not to save us from our nature. It is given to free us from the unnaturalness of what we have become and done to one another and to the earth. Grace is given, she says, “to bring nature back to that blessed point from which it came, namely God.” [8] It is given that we may hear again the deepest sounds within us. What Julian hears is that “we are all one.” [9] We have come from God as one, and to God we shall return as one. Work Cited
1] Julian of Norwich, Showings, chapter 51 (long text). See Revelation of Divine Love, trans. Elizabeth Spearing (Penguin: 1998), 123. [2] Chapter 59 (long text). Ibid., 139. [3] Chapter 53 (long text). Ibid., 129 [4] Chapter 62 (long text). Ibid., 145. [5] Chapter 11 (long text). Ibid., 58. [6] Chapter 56 (long text). See Showings, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Paulist Press: 1978), 290. [7] Chapter 43 (long text). See Revelation of Divine Love, Spearing, 104.[8] Chapter 63 (long text). Ibid., 146. [9] Chapter 6 (short text). Ibid., 10. Rohr, Richard. Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation: Our Deepest Desire. May 30, 2019.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Ian MacdonaldAn ex-copywriter turned punk rock pastor and peacemaker who dedicates his life to making the world a better place for all humanity. "that they all might be one" ~John 17:21“Prius vita quam doctrina.”
~ St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) * “Life is more important than doctrine.”
Archives
October 2024
|