Julian of Norwich on the Question of a Pandemic

I have just finished reading Matthew Fox's Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic - and Beyond and found it to be full of useful and challenging insights. Julian lived through a time of what was then called the plague, and without all the possibilities of modern science. She knew well the challenge of such a time, and yet maintains a positive spin. As Fox points out: "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, 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.”

She offers a vision of engaging with life, even in the midst of grave difficulty. “The first thing we must learn from this vision is the bluntness and directness with which she faces Jesus’s—and, correspondingly, our—suffering. She is teaching us not to sentimentalize, cover over, or (like many politicians) go into denial about the suffering we are undergoing as we face both the coronavirus and climate change. We should not run from the sorrow, fear, and grief, but we should stay connected to our feelings. Only the truth will make us free, and we must confront that truth directly. James Baldwin put it this way: “Not everything faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Fox, commenting on Julian and the lessons she teaches, reminds of the importance of discovering a ‘new normal’ that takes account of what we have been through and the opportunities for learning that it has provided. Pandemics do have their positive side, and the risk is that we don’t see the important things that are staring us in the face.

“It is not enough to “return to normal” after this coronavirus, even if it does finally go away. That “normal” was far from healthy to begin with. It brought us climate change, the extinction of millions of species, with our own species on the cusp of extinction as well, and, of course, lots of denial in the name of those whose gods are Wall Street and multinational corporations. It brought us racism and sexism as a way of life, and it has distorted education and religion, politics, media, and economics. Who wants to return to that? A pandemic is too important to waste. This pandemic is here to wake us up. To what? To a “new normal.” One that honors the sacredness of the earth and of all its life forms. One that honors the divine feminine alongside a sacred masculine. One that honors the human body and its basic needs, along with those of the earth’s body, and on that basis gives birth to a new body politic. One that does not put billionaires and the structures that create them on pedestals. And one that does not elect narcissistic politicians who incarnate the very meaning of fatalistic selfhatred by watching hundreds of thousands die with a shrug of the shoulder (“It is what it is”). Julian absolutely lays waste to a punitive Father God who operates on anger, punishment, and what she calls “vengeance.” She found none of that in Divinity—only in humans (who project it onto Divinity)!” 

We live in a world that needs to learn a lot. Let’s hope the pandemic lessons take us to a better place.