An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Dame Julian of Norwich (1342–Circa 1416)
A devout woman, Julian of Norwich was deeply steeped in the Christian 
tradition but gave a new understanding of God as Mother as well as 
Father. She lived in a time of turbulence, when fourteenth-century 
England faced a devastating mass reduction in the population through 
the Black Death and of social upheaval, culminating in the Peasants’ 
Revolt of 1381. It was, however a time when mystics flourished, from 

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Mystics
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Richard Rolle and Walter Hinton in England, Meister Eckhart in 
Germany and Jan van Ruuysbroek (John of Ruysbroeck) in Holland.
Julian of Norwich is known for the 16 ‘shewings’ or visions, which she 
received during a 12-hour period on 8 May 1373. There are two accounts 
of her experience, a shorter, believed to have been written soon after-
wards, and a longer, more developed account, 
Revelations of Divine Love
written 20 years later, which includes her subsequent reflections upon her 
experiences.
She had asked for three gifts from God: 
(i) to understand his passion, (ii) to suffer physically while still a 
young woman of thirty; and (iii) to have as God’s gift three wounds
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She wanted to be actually there with Mary Magdalene and the others to 
suffer with Christ as he was crucified. The illness she desired was to 
undergo all those spiritual and physical sufferings she would have if 
she were really dying so that she would be cleansed and live more wor-
thily afterwards.
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It was as she had wished. At the age of 30, she became so desperately 
ill that the priest had given her the last rites. She was supported to sit up, 
and was just able to fix her eyes on the crucifix which the priest had set 
before her. She recounts: 
Then my sight began to fail, and the room became dark about me as if 
it were night, except for the image of the cross which somehow was 
lighted up; but how was beyond my comprehension. Apart from the 
cross everything else seemed horrible as if it were occupied by fiends.
Then the rest of my body began to die, and I could hardly feel a 
thing. As my breathing became shorter and shorter I knew for certain 
that I was passing away.
Suddenly all my pain was taken away, and I was as fit and well as 
I had ever been; . . . I was amazed at this sudden change, for I thought 
it must have been a special miracle of God, and not something 
natural.
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Her visions took place over about five hours. She vividly saw Christ’s 
suffering on the cross, and shared his pain as he slowly approached 
death. The outward, physical side of her nature suffered, yet the inward, 
ultimately superior side, was filled with love and peace. She came to 
understand how the two aspects of human nature, the higher and lower 

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Religious and Spiritual Experience
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are united. The higher part of our nature was united to God when we 
were created, and God united himself to our nature in its lower part when 
he became incarnate. Thus through Christ the two parts are made one. 
She says: 
God makes no distinction in the love he has for the blessed soul of 
Christ and that which he has for the lowliest soul to be saved. . .. How 
greatly we should rejoice that God indwells our soul! Even more that 
our soul dwells in God! . . . I could see no difference between God and 
our substance: it was all God, so to speak.
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She saw
the whole Godhead concentrated as it were in a single point, and 
thereby I learnt that he is in all things.
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She still assumed that she was dying, and indeed was not comforted 
by feeling better, as she thought that she would much rather have been 
taken from this world but, 
. . . he showed me more, a little thing, the size of a hazelnut, on the 
palm of my hand, round like a ball. I looked at it thoughtfully and 
wondered, ‘What is this?’ And the answer came, ‘It is all that is made.’ 
I marvelled that it continued to exist and did not suddenly disintegrate; 
it was so small. And again my mind supplied the answer, ‘It exists, both 
now and for ever, because God loves it.’ . . . In this ‘little thing’ 
I saw three truths. The first is that God made it; the second is that God 
loves it; and the third is that God sustains it. In short, everything owes 
its existence to the love of God.
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Here she realizes the ‘littleness of creation’. Her understanding is that 
we need to become detached from ‘trivial things which cannot satisfy’ 
in order to seek God. Detachment is necessary for spiritual rest. 
She explains that prayer, rather than petitionary, should be a source 
for revitalization of grace and virtue, and for the loving contemplation 
of our Maker. To understand the love of God, Julian uses the image of 
motherhood, seeing God as Mother as well as Father and Jesus too as 
Mother.
The human mother may put her child tenderly to her breast, but our 
tender Mother Jesus simply leads us into his blessed breast through his 
open side, and there gives us a glimpse of the Godhead and heavenly 

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Mystics
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joy – the inner certainty of eternal bliss . . .. In essence 
motherhood 
means love, kindness, wisdom, knowledge, goodness.
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This strange vision was given in the tenth of her showings. Julian draws 
the analogy of bringing up a child, allowing the infant to fall in order to 
learn the hard way. Thus humans learn through suffering. However, it 
was not until years later that she finally understood the meaning of the 
revelations.
You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love 
was his meaning. Who showed it you? Love. What did he show you? 
Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold onto this and you will know 
and understand love more and more. But you will not know or learn 
anything else – ever!
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‘You will not be overcome’ was said very distinctly and firmly to 
give us confidence and comfort for whatever troubles may come. He 
did not say, ‘You will never have a rough passage, you will never be 
overstrained, you will never feel uncomfortable’ but he 
did
say, ‘You 
will never be overcome’ . . . So all will be well.
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The process begun with her illness and visions, was one which contin-
ued all her life, leading her to learn to read and write and to live the life 
of an anchoress. This meant renouncing the world and living in a cell 
adjacent to a church, devoting herself to her own spiritual progress and 
that of others. Her shrine and cell can still be visited today in Norwich 
and there is a Friends of Julian group, continuing her spirituality. Julian 
of Norwich is perhaps best known for her saying ’All shall be well, and 
all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,’ cited by T. S. Eliot 
in ‘Little Gidding’ in his 
Four Quartets
. She enriched much Christian 
teaching, and her writings remain a potent source of devotion. Her stress 
on the motherhood of Christ is one which appeals greatly to contempo-
rary thinkers, in particular feminist theologians, as the male hegemony of 
the church is questioned.