Lady at the Window: The Lost Journal of Julian of Norwich: A Novella

By Robert Waldron

Lady at the Window chronicles the last Holy Week in Julian of Norwich’s life. 

In her secret journal (because women are forbidden to write in English) the great English mystic chronicles her inner life, including her relationship with the “courteous Lord,” who when she was young was a constant presence in her life, but now in her old age feels to be more of a constant absence, Deus Absconditus.

There are two windows in Lady Julian’s anchorage: one looks upon the interior of St. Julian’s Church with its high altar and tabernacle; the other opens onto the city of Norwich with its publicans, sinners, poor, people in the marketplace, and neighbors. Among these there are those in deep distress who find their way to Lady Julian, now famous for her wisdom and holy counsel. There is the young woman with a child outside of marriage. There is a wounded young soldier, jobless, homeless, and afraid. There is a man who has betrayed his betrothed. And others. No one leaves Julian’s window without psychological and spiritual uplifting.

But the underlying theme of this novella is Lady Julian’s dark night of the soul. As with other mystics who came after her, e.g., St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Calcutta, Julian abides in a cloud of unknowing, praying daily that her darkness be dispelled by divine light. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paraclete Press
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781640605350

Robert Waldron

Robert Waldron is the acclaimed author of twenty books, six addressing the life and work of Thomas Merton, two on Henri Nouwen, and three novels. He is the recipient of four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has also received three First Prize awards from the Catholic Press Association for his articles on modern spirituality. Waldron lives in Boston.

Book preview

Holy Monday

On awakening I pray to my courteous Lord. I beg Him again to render his presence to me. I miss my Lord Who had previously enfolded me in His love, His love clothing my mind and soul. I believe He is present here in this cell, closer to me than I am to myself. There was a time, however, when I possessed certainty about His presence. I now know only His absence, thus I am acquainted with aloneness, a constant companion, one I do not cherish, but if it is His will that I live alone and lonely, then let His will and not mine be done.

I rose from kneeling and praying to cleanse and dress, my garments threadbare from years of wear and wash, but to me as holy (with their holes) as priests’ vestments. I go to the window to praise God and His creation: the rising sun, the golden sky, the lanes pearled in dew, the trees’ branches lifted toward the sky as if raised arms and hands in prayer. I thank God for another day and pray that this day His presence will return to me.

I hear whistling and know Thomas is leading his family cow to pasture. He sees me and waves and I smile. He is a good boy who is mourning the loss of his father to the Pestilence, and he is now the man of the farm, far too young for such a burden. With the war with France and the Pestilence, so many fathers have died. He stops to speak. I praise his growing into a man lyke his father, his muscles bulging in his far too small clothes. He brightens and when he leaves to assume his duties, he appears stronger and taller.

I was thirty years old when our Lord revealed Himself to me in sixteen shewings. I was near death. Mother had concluded that I had indeed died, and her hand stretched forward to close my eyes when to her astonishment my living blue eyes gazed into hers.

I had prayed unceasingly ever since I was a girl for my deare, courteous Lord to reveal Himself to me. I clearly remember the day I first requested His visitation. It was Easter Sunday. Mother and Father and I attended Easter Mass at our holy cathedral. When the priest held up the consecrated Host, I gazed with all my attention and prayed, Deare Lord, permit me to see You in this life.

Oh, such an innocent girl I was, but I was a mature girl, for I had too well perceived the darkness of life. I had seen the emaciated, naked bodies defiled and dead from the Pestilence, their remains tossed by muscular masked men into wagons, all human dignity foresworn. I heard the despairing, piteous wailing of mothers and children. The cries of children were piercing wounds to my young heart, and I begged mine Lord to end the Pestilence. My own family became its victim, my two sisters and deare brother John, whom I loved more than anyone except my parents, he with the kindest blue eyes, the gentlest brow, the sweetest smile, who was a mere ten years old, his life barely begun, who loved me as I loved him. Shall I ever forget seeing him in his bed, soakened with swette, hot with fever and weakened by moans. He suffered unspeakable pain for seven days until our Lord released him from his