Laurel Massé

All shall be well: Julian of Norwich

And in this vision, God showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind's eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, 'It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in this same way everything exists through the love of God.' In this little thing I saw three attributes: the first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God cares for it.  Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Julian was the first woman to publish a book in English (in what we now call "Middle English"). In it she tells of the visions she had in 1373. In it she describes Christ as a mother. In it she assures us that "sin is necessary, but all shall be well. All shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well."

Today the Episcopal Church celebrates dear Julian's feast day. Eat something wondrously good, with gratitude. She would like that. Remember that C.S. Lewis said her book was dangerous. I think she would like that, too. Stories about her suggest she had a cat. I like that.

There is more information about Julian here , and here is the podcast of a talk (the transcript's there, too) given by Rev. Mimi Dixon, Presbyterian pastor, about her experiences of Julian.

This extraordinary icon was written by Mihai Cucu. This, and his other exquisite icons, can be seen here.

It was Madeleine L'Engle who introduced me to the writings of Julian; for that, and for so much more, I am always grateful.

Now and forever, books!

 

Thanks to Susie Deane for showing me this, and thanks to friends who loan me books, to librarians, and to independent booksellers everywhere.

To the Christians in the House

I once had a manager who thought he was John Galt. Or at least a John Galt. Even though I adored him, I knew he wasn't. And when he went on to embezzle a substantial sum, it bore out my literary instinct.

I knew, though, who he was talking about because I had read Atlas Shrugged as a younger girl. So much younger, in fact, that my mother had taken the book away from me, saying, "You don't need to read that. You're selfish enough already." But I eventually read through to the end.

So when Ayn Rand's writings came back into public notice with the advent of and media attention to the Tea Party and the Libertarians and Paul Ryan's Randian Catholicism (an oxymoron), I did not have to run out to buy the book to understand that there would be trouble ahead for women, immigrants, and the poor from anyone who followed her precepts. Which are horribly, horribly selfish precepts, and idolatrous, and about as far as one can get from the teachings of Jesus.

A group of Christian faith leaders (Faithful Filibuster) gathers every day Congress is in session across the street from the Capitol  building to read scripture out loud, especially the 2000 verses that tell us how to care for the poor. This is both a protest, and a public education service. Obviously there are a few folks in the government who have clean forgotten that the Bible has any use other than as a weapon with which to bludgeon people.

Those same forgetful folks have also forgotten their Ayn Rand. For it is not, in Atlas Shrugged, the heroic capitalists alone who bring down the government, and with it, the entire culture. It is the giddy, greedy, cruel Wesley Mouches, out for themselves.

You have changed the rules in the House so as to prevent any change in direction. You bark about the Constitution. You would edit out the uncomfortable bits of Jesus' words. Show me how you are not a Mouch.

Listen up, House. You dance yourselves into a tunnel of an ever-shrinking width. It is not the narrow path to heaven. It is a death trap. You will soon lose the ability to turn around. You are worshipping power, and money, and individualism. You are throwing other people's children into the fires of Moloch, in the belief that wealth and particular interests will take care of you if you legislate the sacrifice of others. They will not take care of you. They will use you, and devour you, and fail you, and forget you. They are false idols.

Relent. Repent. Come back into the daylight. Help save our country by saving its people. The Lord, which you claim to proclaim, said to love God, and love our neighbor, to heal the sick, and raise the dead. 

It's time to take Him seriously. It is time to turn around. Come back to your senses. We need you. Come back to us.

 

Mark you this...

Writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) had read more than enough of the critical adulation accorded to James Fenimore Cooper, one of America's most revered early novelists (including The Deerslayer and The Last of the Mohicans). Accordingly, in 1895, he published his review of Cooper's works. Listening to the national news this morning, hearing about politicians' maneuvers and the confusions some are having about the mysterious connection between cause and effect, and about the difference between a law and a bill and such, I was reminded of that review. I found it and reread it, and here is the passage that had come to mind.

If Cooper had been an observer his inventive faculty would have worked better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of "situations" suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is constructing a "situation."

(Anyone in Washington, DC remember this passage? Apparently not.)

Twain then goes on to give an example of such a disadvantage:

...The ark [a houseboat that is about to be attacked] is one hundred and forty-feet long; the dwelling is ninety feet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety-foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him and when he had got his calculations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he judge, he let go and dropped. And missed the boat! That is actually what he did. He missed the house, and landed in he stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there unconscious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have made the trip. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.

There still remained in the roost five Indians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did -- you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. 1 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still further astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water away astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat -- for he was Cooper Indian. In that matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spacious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention; but it does not thrill, because the inaccuracy of details throw a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it. This comes of Cooper's inadequacy as observer.

Do treat yourself to the whole essay. It's been making me laugh - loudly! - since I was in high school.