Cue the Anchoress

I've had a wearying week. It was meant to be refreshing, as my parents took Eva and Silas for a couple of days so Mr. Milkweed and I could spend some time together, but I ended up spending many hours at the hospital while undergoing a battery of tests. Mainly, these were x-rays, but some were extra fancy x-rays that involved drinking chalky goo and having blood tests and IVs and I'd just as soon not go through them again, thankyouverymuch. (As a side note, anything that involves a radioactive element in solution probably won't taste much like a milkshake, despite what the bottle says.)

The last day was the worst, as it was particularly dehumanizing, and I've been feeling extremely off-kilter ever since. While there's some relief that we're on our way to knowing what we need to know, I'm anxious about the outcome.

I don't know what it is about life or God the human brain that lines up the seemingly disparate only to go all William Tell and shoot an arrow through the whole bunch, but zing. Cue the Julian of Norwich.


Is this Julian of Norwich? No, it's a video of a Joanna Newsome song, but the two are similar in my mind because I've always imagined Julian of Norwich as a sort of twee elf, and Joanna Newsome basically is one. Also this song is delicate and mysterious, and their initials match.

Julian of Norwich was a medieval mystic and anchoress, which means that she voluntarily campaigned to be walled into a tiny structure built onto the side of a church in order to contemplate God for the rest of her life. There's no way to know what a typical day for her must have looked like, but she might have heard Mass and taken communion through a hole in one side of her cell and received food and counseled visitors through a hole on the other side. It's entirely possible she never went outside. Portions of her writings about her visions survive to this day, and it's her unflinching view of God as entirely loving and compassionate that make her so appealing.

Check her out:

"He did not say, ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall
not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted.’ But he
said, ‘You shall not be overcome.’ God wants us to heed
these words so that we shall always be strong in trust, both
in sorrow and in joy."

This, too:

"Flee to our Lord and we shall be comforted. Touch him and
we shall be made clean. Cling to him and we shall be safe
and sound from every kind of danger. For our courteous
Lord wills that we should be as at home with him as heart
may think or soul may desire."

And, of course:

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

Julian had things to worry about like famine and the Black Plague. I've got some medical issues, but they're well within the purview of modern science and thankfully don't involve pus-filled buboes.


Pus. Filled. Buboes. How'dya like them apples? As an aside, are there any happy images of anything at all from the Middle Ages? Did they not have kittens or puppies?

All the same, I'm feeling unsettled. But as Julian reminds me, I shall not be overcome.

_________________________________________