Learning from Julian of Norwich

Part of my Lenten reading has been Sheila Upjohn’s The Way of Julian Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent. I have found it a fascinating drawing on the insights of Julian of Norwich. Julian clearly still has much to say of relevance, despite the passing of the years.

I was especially struck by some of the comments on prayer. Prayer is essentially the expression of a relationship. As Upjohn reminds, drawing on Julian’s insights: “Julian tells us that prayer is not one-sided. God is longing to hear from us.”

She also stresses that prayer is worth the effort. It takes effort, may produces surprises, but certainly brings us close to God. “Praying can be hard work, and it also needs time. And finding time seems to get harder and harder in our busy world.” ….    “All prayer has a result, whether or not we recognize it at the time, but such repeated prayer often has dramatic and unexpected consequences, as Julian found. We can be sure that St Paul was praying repeatedly – and praying for the wrong thing – when he stormed down to Damascus to seek and destroy the blasphemous heretics whom he believed were profaning his God’s name. The result overturned not just his mistaken expectations but his whole life.”

Prayer should be integral to our life with God but, just as someone we know in human terms may relate to us in a very particular way, so our prayer life should not be bound to a particular pattern. “We all pray in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all. But pray we must if we are to come to know God. And we can begin no matter what state we are in.”

Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

Akala's Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire is a powerful and important exploration of the way in which prejudice, especially racial prejudice, but also class prejudice, has had such a devastating impact on so many, often doing a great deal to dent the views and opportunities of those who are seen as not fitting. He holds nothing back, but rightly so, in demonstrating how limited perspectives create an unfair society.

For example, he writes: "The government and the education system failed to explain to white Britain that, as the academic Adam Elliot-Cooper puts it, we had not come to Britain, but ‘rather that Britain had come to us’. They did not explain that the wealth of Britain, which made the welfare state and other class ameliorations possible, was derived in no small part from the coffee and tobacco, cotton and diamonds, gold and sweat and blood and death of the colonies. No one explained that our grandparents were not immigrants, that they were literally British citizens –many of them Second World War veterans – with British passports to match, moving from one of Britain’s outposts to the metropole. Nobody told white Britain that, over there in the colonies, Caribbeans and Asians were being told that Britain was their mother country, that it was the home of peace and justice and prosperity and that they would be welcomed with open arms by their loving motherland."

He points out that the way people are treated contributes heavily to how they respond. As he says of himself - "I was not born with an opinion of the world but it clearly seemed that the world had an opinion of people like me. I did not know what race and class supposedly were but the world taught me very quickly, and the irrational manifestations of its prejudices forced me to search for answers."

Here is a telling reminder of what prejudice can do; and it ought to be a clear call to find ways, however difficult that is, to address our wrong and unfair perspectives. A powerful and compelling read - well worth it!