Emily Rose Meditations

Julian speaks at length here about the anger we experience as humans, and how she sees no anger at all in her visions of the Godhead. She sees only mercy, grace, and love. Given this quandary, she wonders how mercy and forgiveness might overcome or overpower or have an affect on anger. And I wonder how we might apply this wisdom to our own practice. This is inspired by the forty-eighth chapter of...

Early in her visions, Julian records that she was sure she’d be overcome by fiends if she shifted her focus from Jesus on the cross in front of us to look up to God the Father in Heaven. She recounts how glad she was that she chose Jesus as her salvation and refused to look away from him. Today she seems to say the same is true of us, in a figural sense; when we lose our attention from Jesus, when...

What a mysterious thing we are – we are created and we are mortal, and yet we possess a soul, a dwelling place and home for the divine, within us, somehow. With that dedicated real estate inside us, Julian wonders at the relationship between God and evil that might be played out among our bones. She emphasizes the truth we know which is that all created things are good. And she affirms – what a co...

Julian wonders about the worth of human judgment in comparison with God’s judgment. She doesn’t dismiss human judgment out of hand, but does explore its limitations. This is inspired by the forty-fifth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden

Julian tells us today that truth lets us see God, that wisdom allows us to contemplate God, and that through those two things we are gifted God’s love, to fill us and to share with one another. May it be so! This is inspired by the forty-fourth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden

These visions are sparked in the first place by Julian focusing her literal eyes on a literal cross with an image of Jesus carved on it. She begins by fixing her eyes on the Lord, and here, as she continues through this spiritual journey of visions with God, she comes to a more figural understanding of what her body had already been doing. Julian finds that the purpose of prayer, indeed, the purpo...

“The Lord is the foundation from which our prayers arise.” Julian insists that the relationship between the divine and our own spirits is woven together in such an intimate way that our very prayers are directed by God himself. What might it mean for our lives if that is true? This is inspired by the forty-second chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conver...

Feelings are unreliable, changeable, not good for judging much of anything in our lives as far as decisions might go. Julian tells us to pray even when we don’t feel like it, when we feel great or when we feel dry, as if prayer is drinking water or eating food or getting sleep. Have you thought of prayer that way? This is inspired by the forty-first chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revela...

God looks clearly and directly both at love and sin, it is the greatness of God’s love that overcomes and engulfs and defeats the power of evil, and so to eschew or seek to ignore darkness does not defeat it, but allows it to thrive, unmonitored and unchecked by the love which flows through each of us from God. We need not be afraid to look at our sin, our darkness, our failings, our shortcomings;...

Julian revisits the wounds she asked for before she experienced these showings, tying them to her understanding of sin and suffering. May we all have the courage to ask for contrition, compassion, and an earnest longing for God! This is inspired by the thirty-ninth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden

Julian was so amazed to have a local saint of her country brought to mind along with Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. It made me wonder, who in your life, or story, or community might be a person whose life and witness give you courage? If they’ve died, how might you imagine them spending time with God in heaven? How does that image make you feel? This is inspired by the thirty-eighth chapter of J...

Julian tells us today that all our suffering comes from a failure to love. I wonder what that failure might show up as in your life or relationships, and how you might counteract it. This is inspired by the thirty-seventh chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden

It is so hard to trust in the midst of trials and so hard to focus on God in the middle of suffering, and so here’s a question to help us think through how to fight against the darkness and depression that might pick and pull at the corners of our minds: How have you found, in your life, that you tend to get distracted? And having identified that, what could help you to keep your attention, or bri...

Today we hear that the mercy of God is what rescues us and draws us up, and will keep doing so again and again as many times as we are attacked and knocked down. Our progress is not linear, and our story is not a predictable line stretching to the horizon, but our companion, that is God, is constant and continual, and unabated, and always, always present. This is inspired by the thirty-fifth chapt...

Our vision can be so murky. It’s one of the reasons that Julian urges us again and again to trust in God, she quotes us Proverbs 3:5, using different words – “Trust in the Lord with all your might… lean not on your own understanding.” In our blindness and ignorance, we can so easily believe and commit to lies instead of truth. All we have the power to do is admit that we might be deceived even by...

Trigger Warning: Julian speaks of hell, purgatory, and the “curse of the Jews” in this passage. It seems to me that she does it to engage God in the most sticky questions she can muster about limits in God’s mercy. She always seeks to square the “teaching of Holy Church” with the visions she has been receiving, and today she plumbs the depths of whether God’s mercy has limits and what the implicat...

We see evil, we see the train wreck, we cannot see any way out, we cannot imagine how all this mess could possibly be made right. And we cannot find it in ourselves to trust. We’re asked to remember and to admit that we have less power than we imagine we possess. We’re goaded by circumstances to recall that we do not have as much control as we so often think. What’s left for us is always the quest...

There’s a quotation from St. Augustine of Hippo in his spiritual memoir which states, “Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” I hear the same echo of longing and restlessness in the vision shared in today’s chapter; what might it mean that Jesus feels restless too? This is inspired by the thirty-first chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love.

Julian’s passage today, speaking of God’s perspective and what he chooses to reveal to us his beloved children, reminded me of a meditation practice which you might find helpful; listen to find out! This is inspired by the thirtieth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden

Is Julian naive to declare that Adam’s sin is the worst harm ever done? What if we take her word for it; what does that mean for Jesus’s sacrifice in his Passion? This is inspired by the twenty-ninth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden

The balance of power being with me, at my disposal, sounds good to this control freak, but I haven’t really found in life that my efforting is the cause of success or of inner peace. I do find echoes of truth and resonances of reality with the vision given to us through Julian that the key is surrender and acceptance that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. The power of peace and tran...

Our suffering is always caused by sin, whether it is our own, or someone else’s, or our community’s cooperative sin, or an echo of evil from the past. Julian wants us to focus not on the person or community who perpetrates the evil, but on what we ourselves can do about the suffering we’re undergoing – it’s really very well-boundaried of her! – So what can we do? How doe she urge us to respond? Th...

Julian reveals what she hears Jesus saying to her; what do we imagine that Jesus might say to each of us today? What do you need to hear from God? This is inspired by the twenty-sixth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden

Whatever we might believe about the devotion she continues to enjoy, surely we can agree that she was a devoted follower of Jesus, and a faithful woman of God. She was also just a regular person, not divine in any special way, nor a demi-god of some kind, but a human, just like you and me. This is inspired by the twenty-fifth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Jo...

“Look how much I loved you,” Jesus says. Jesus lives in his flesh on the cross the covenant that God made with humanity that we would never be left alone. You are never overlooked, you are never abandoned, you are never companionless. This is inspired by the twenty-fourth chapter of Julian of Norwich's long text, Revelations of Divine Love. Join the conversation at patreon.com/emilyhylden