Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Beloved One, may you be blessed because it is so: all is well.
—Julian of Norwich, Showings
Spiritual teacher and translator Mirabai Starr describes how Julian’s positive experience of God sustained her when things were not “well” in the world around her:
The medieval English anchoress Julian of Norwich bequeathed us a radically optimistic theology. She had no problem admitting that human beings have a tendency to go astray. We rupture relationships, dishonor the Divine, make unfortunate choices, and try to hide our faults. And yet, Julian insists, “All will be well and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well.” [1]
Take that in.
This assertion is meant to penetrate the fog of our despair and wake us up. She does not simply state, “Everything’s going to be okay.”… She does not ask us to engage in a spiritual bypass by relegating everything that unfolds to the will of God, calling it perfect against all evidence to the contrary. She squarely faces the inevitability that we will miss the mark and that there is wickedness in this world. Even so, she is convinced that the nature of the Divine is loving-kindness, and she wants us to absorb this into every fiber of our being.
Starr considers Julian’s teachings on sin:
In her mystical masterwork The Showings, Julian shares that she used to obsess about sin. She couldn’t figure out why God, who is all-powerful, wouldn’t have eliminated our negative proclivities when he made the world. “If he had left sin out of creation, it seemed to me, all would be well.” But what God-the-Mother showed Julian in a near-death vision was that all shall be well anyway….
Julian unpacks this for us [in chapter 27]. In doing so she dispenses with the whole concept of sin and replaces it with love. “I believe that sin has no substance,” Julian writes, “not a particle of being.” While sin itself has no existential value, it has impact. It causes pain. It is the pain that has substance.
But mercy is swiftly forthcoming. It is immediately available. Inexorable! It is frankly rude of us to doubt that all will be well (and all will be well and every kind of thing shall be well). “When he said these gentle words,” Julian writes, speaking of God-the-Mother, “he showed me that he does not have one iota of blame for me, or for any other person. So, wouldn’t it be unkind of me to blame God for my transgressions since he does not blame me?” The merciful nature of God renders the whole blame game obsolete….
For those of us who do not subscribe to a belief in some perfect afterworld but, rather, are focused on making things better right here on Earth, this teaching may feel disconnected. But what Julian is saying, with heartbreaking compassion, is that we cannot know this now, from our limited, pain-drenched perspective. Yet eventually we will awaken to the truth that we are unconditionally adored by God. =
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| Never a Lonely Prayer. Skye Jethani |
 In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, we find the most well-known passage in all of Scripture: the Lord’s Prayer. Long before most people had access to the Bible, and well before most people were educated enough to read it, Christians were taught the Lord’s Prayer. It has been used in Christian worship since the beginning of the church, and continues to be a guide for how we commune with God. Interestingly, the Lord’s Prayer is found in the sermon immediately after the section where Jesus warns his followers not to pray openly in public for others to see. He calls them to pray alone, in private. However, the prayer he then teaches them to recite while alone is entirely corporate in structure and language. In other words, Jesus commands us to pray in private while understanding that our prayers themselves are never private.For example, the Lord’s Prayer begins by addressing God as “OurFather.” John Chrysostom, the early church father, noted that Jesus “did not say ‘My Father’ but ‘Our Father,’” and that when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we are “offering petitions for the common body, and not looking merely to each man’s own interests but everywhere to his neighbor’s.” Of course, he is correct. Nowhere in the prayer do the pronouns I, me, or my appear. Only our and us.The prayer of Jesus assumes we are connected—that we are part of a community. I appreciate how Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it in his book,Life Together: “The prayer of the Christian is never a lonely prayer.” The individualism that marks so much of our culture does not contaminate Jesus’ teaching. He recognizes that even when we are alone in prayer, our prayers are never lonely because we are forever connected to one another. We are all part of the great family of God, which transcends every boundary: national, ethnic, cultural, even generational. When we bow our heads and pray these words, we are taking part in a family prayer. The Lord’s Prayer binds the people of God together across time and space.This morning, as you commune with God alone in silence and in prayer, recite the Lord’s Prayer silently or aloud. As you do, allow the plural pronouns “our” and “us” to resonate and inspire your imagination. Pay attention to the faces that come into your mind. Remember your sisters and your brothers. Remember that we all share the same Father in heaven and that your communion with him cannot be separated from your communion with them. DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 6:9–13 ROMANS 8:12–17 WEEKLY PRAYER. Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me no longer desire health or life except to spend them for you and with you. You alone know what is good for me; therefore do what seems best to you. Give to me or take from me; conform me to your will; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. |
