{"id":26955,"date":"2026-05-12T09:43:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T13:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26955"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T14:33:12","slug":"26955","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26955","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Is He Worthy? (lyrics) ~ Andrew Peterson\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6FEuAr8f6bo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Mystic Who Suffered<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Tuesday, May 12, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/email.cac.org\/t\/d-l-guyhdit-dkgktyktu-y\/\">READ ON CAC.ORG<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>In a time parched for wisdom like ours \u2026 we are invited to return to our ancestors who have proven themselves wise. Julian is such an ancestor.<br>\u2014Matthew Fox,&nbsp;<em>Julian of Norwich<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Theologian Matthew Fox describes Julian of Norwich as a mystic for our times. He highlighted her writings during the COVID-19 pandemic, living as she did through the Black Death (bubonic plague). He writes:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A time of crisis and chaos, the kind that a pandemic brings, is, among other things,<strong> a time to call on our ancestors for their deep wisdom. <\/strong>Not just knowledge but true&nbsp;<em>wisdom&nbsp;<\/em>is needed in a time of death and profound change, for at such times we are beckoned not simply to return to the immediate past, that which we remember fondly as \u201cthe normal,\u201d but to <strong>reimagine a new future, a renewed humanity, a more just and therefore sustainable culture, and one even filled with joy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Julian of Norwich \u2026 is one of those ancestors calling to us today\u2026. Julian is a stunning thinker, a profound theologian and mystic, a fully awake woman, and a remarkable guide with a mighty vision to share for twenty-first-century seekers\u2026. Julian knew a thing or two about \u201csheltering in place,\u201d because she was an anchoress\u2014that is, someone who, by definition, is literally walled up inside a small space for life. Julian also knew something about fostering a spirituality that can survive the trauma of a pandemic. While others all about her were freaking out about nature gone awry, Julian kept her spiritual and intellectual composure, <strong>staying grounded and true to her belief in the goodness of life, creation, and humanity and, in no uncertain terms, inviting others to do the same. [1]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Julian was not afraid to face reality. By entering fully into it, she discovered God\u2019s grace:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Julian\u2019s response to the pandemic [of her time], as we know it from her two books, is amazingly <strong>grounded in a love of life and gratitude.<\/strong> Instead of running from death, she actually prayed to enter into it and it is from that experience of death all around her and<strong> meditating on the cruel crucifixion of Christ that she interpreted as a communal, not just a personal event,<\/strong> that her visions arrived\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is remarkable about her life and teaching is that <strong>instead of yielding to despair or blame, she sought out in depth the goodness of life and creation. Indeed, she established her entire worldview on this sense of goodness and the sacred marriage of grace and nature, a sense of God-in-nature<\/strong>. [2]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Julian\u2019s teachings are encouragement for our time:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our sister and ancestor Julian is eager not only to speak to us today but&nbsp;<em>to shout at us<\/em>\u2014albeit in a gentle way\u2014<strong>to wake up and to go deep, to face the darkness and to dig down and find goodness, joy and awe. <\/strong>And to go to work to defend Mother Earth and all her creatures, <strong>stripping ourselves of racism, sexism, nationalisms, anthropocentrism, sectarianism\u2014anything that interferes with our greatness as human beings. And to connect anew to the sacredness of life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>==================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thoughts&#8230;DJR<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday we sat with John&#8217;s sentence: God is love. Period. Today we meet a woman who tested it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Julian of Norwich lived through the Black Death. Estimates run from a third to half of her city dead \u2014 and this wasn&#8217;t a once-and-done event; the plague came back in waves through her lifetime. This is the world she was praying in. Walled into a small cell attached to a church, by choice, by vocation. Sheltering in place, as Fox puts it, before any of us knew what that phrase meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And out of that world, <strong>she wrote a sentence that ought to be impossible: There is no wrath in God.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not &#8220;less wrath than we thought.&#8221; Not &#8220;wrath balanced out by mercy.&#8221; None. She said it plain. And she said it after watching her neighbors die. Whatever we make of that sentence theologically, let&#8217;s sit for a second with the fact that it wasn&#8217;t written by someone who had the luxury of not knowing what suffering was. It was written by someone who had seen more death than most of us will ever see, and who came out the other side saying \u2014 He was good the whole time. The wrath was never there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is what I trust about Julian. She earned the right to say what she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fox calls her a mystic for our times. I think he&#8217;s right, but not mainly because we&#8217;ve been near a pandemic ourselves. <strong>She&#8217;s a mystic for our times because most of us are carrying some version of the question she answered. Can the goodness of God hold when the bottom drops out? Is &#8220;God is love&#8221; a sentence that works in the daylight but evaporates at 2am? <\/strong>Julian&#8217;s whole life is an answer. Yes. It holds. And not because we white-knuckle our way into believing it \u2014 because, if we go down<strong> far enough into the dark, we find it was already there. Holding us the whole time.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Her famous line \u2014 all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well \u2014 gets read sometimes like a refrigerator magnet. It is not a refrigerator magnet. It is something Christ said to a woman in the middle of visions of His own crucifixion, while plague-pits were being dug in the next parish over. That sentence has teeth. It&#8217;s the sentence of someone who looked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we&#8217;re in a hard stretch right now \u2014 and a few of us are \u2014 let&#8217;s not reach for Julian like a pill. Let&#8217;s meet her as a sister who&#8217;s been there. She&#8217;s not telling us to feel better. She&#8217;s telling us that the ground we&#8217;re walking on, even now, is held. The love John wrote about in our reading yesterday is not a fair-weather sentence. It&#8217;s bedrock.<strong> It was bedrock when her city was dying. It&#8217;s bedrock today.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s sit with that for a minute. Let it be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Contemplation:         Where in our own lives have we had to discover that &#8220;God is love&#8221; actually held \u2014 not in theory, but in the dark?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Mystic Who Suffered Tuesday, May 12, 2026 READ ON CAC.ORG In a time parched for wisdom like ours \u2026 we are invited to return to our ancestors who have proven themselves wise. Julian is such an ancestor.\u2014Matthew Fox,&nbsp;Julian of Norwich Theologian Matthew Fox describes Julian of Norwich as a mystic for our times. He [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26955"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26955"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26963,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26955\/revisions\/26963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}