The Way of Julian of Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent

By Sheila Upjohn

In this book about Julian of Norwich, Sheila Upjohn explores the 'Revelations of Divine Love' alongside passages from Scripture.

As part of the 'Prayer Journey Through Lent' series, 'The Way of Julian of Norwich' reveals how Julian's fresh perspectives on sin and judgement, anger and forgiveness, the Incarnation and the crucifixion can challenge and enlighten us, six hundred years later, in a world so badly in need of the assurance of God's unconditional love.

This inspirational book by Sheila Upjohn serves as a guide to Julian of Norwich that will deepen the reader's prayer life during Lent and throughout the year. Upjohn transports the reader back to the middle ages in this book about 'Revelations of Divine Love' and Julian of Norwich to give a deeper understanding of Julian who was so often perceived as an outsider.

As a foundation member of 'Friends of Julian of Norwich' and having first read 'Revelations of Divine Love' almost fifty years ago, Sheila Upjohn has a long and intimate association with Julian of Norwich and so offers a captivating perspective of Julian within 'The Way of Julian of Norwich'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SPCK
• Release date: Nov 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9780281083701

Sheila Upjohn

Sheila Upjohn, a graduate of London University, was born and grew up in Norwich. After ten years in London working in journalism and advertising, she returned to Norwich, by now married and with young children, and for 20 years lived in the Cathedral Close. She helped organise the celebration of Julian of Norwich's six-hundredth anniversary in 1973, and for many years was a daily communicant in Julian’s cell. She is a foundation member of the Friends of Julian of Norwich and has been reading Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love ever since she found a £1 copy in an SPCK bookshop nearly half a century ago. Sheila Upjohn has led retreats throughout England, and overseas in Canada, the USA and Australia. Her Australian retreats include the Holy Week at the St Charles Seminary in Perth, Western Australia.

Book preview

‘Many books on prayer are advertised as being accessible and never quite deliver on that claim, but this one begins by recommending the bathroom and the gym as opportune, everyday places of prayer, where God is avidly longing to hear from us. With Upjohn as go-between, Julian leads us into a way of prayer wherein we may know ourselves to be divinely befriended, and hope to requite that homely love and where we may hold together in confident trust, as Julian did, the already and the not yet of the spiritual life.’

Mother Hilary OJN, Guardian of the Order of Julian of Norwich

‘In today’s world, where time is at a premium and we always seem to be rushing from one activity to another, small wonder that, by way of contrast, there is a thirst for something quieter and more reflective to still our souls and slow us down. Sheila Upjohn recognizes that this desire is something that people of different Christian traditions now long for.

Julian of Norwich wrote of the many situations in life that are a door to prayer and wrote in a city suffering from the effects of the Black Death. She brings to us the insights of one who learnt from her own form of lockdown. Sheila Upjohn has made A Revelation of Divine Love thoroughly relevant to today.’

The Rt Revd Alan Hopes, Roman Catholic Bishop of East Anglia

‘Mother Julian’s wisdom and godliness shine through the centuries and can illuminate our lives. There is no better guide to enable us to benefit from her deep insights than Sheila Upjohn who, in this wonderful book, provides us with a highly accessible guide to her writings. To a carefully chosen selection of Mother Julian’s words, the author adds a very helpful commentary. This book should be a must read for Christians.’

The Rt Revd Dr John Inge, Anglican Bishop of Worcester

‘As you enter Norwich Cathedral, in the niche to your left on the west front is the figure of Julian – without doubt, the most enduring female figure borne by the city. So many books have been written about her, as her writing is the most vivid of all the fourteenth-century English mystics. As this book was prepared for publication, the whole world found itself involuntarily experiencing something of the life of the anchoress. Fixed in our own homes, we have learned anew how to focus on Christ and perhaps even imagine something of his loneliness in suffering. Sheila Upjohn captures Julian’s vivid showings with a new immediacy, relating her to contemporary experience. Julian’s unique gift of nourishing prayer will come alive in a new way this Lent.’

The Rt Revd Dr Stephen Platten, retired Anglican Bishop of Wakefield, former Dean of Norwich, and commissioner of the Julian statue on the west front of Norwich Cathedral

‘I thoroughly enjoyed and profited greatly from spending time with this work. It is well written and expressed and easy to read, and it touched my heart. We hear the voice of Julian, and Sheila Upjohn’s commentary is very helpful, situating Julian in her historical, theological and ecclesiological context, and sharing her personal engagement with Julian’s text.

The book’s message is so positive and uplifting, yet the more challenging aspects of our faith and relationship with God are not compromised. This is a useful book to spend time with during the Lenten season. I will certainly encourage many to draw spiritual nourishment from it. Sheila clearly loves Julian and she brings us to love her too.’

Aloysius Rego OCD, Prior, Mount Carmel Retreat Centre, Varroville, Australia

‘It is nearly half a century since the journalist Sheila Upjohn encountered Julian of Norwich. Like many of us, Sheila became an intimate friend of the fourteenth-century anchoress. Over the years, she has written and produced a film about Julian and has published three books. She has also been widely in demand as a speaker for talks about this great woman.

With all that done, one might ask, What could be left? Hasn’t she told us everything there is to know? By no means!

Like all of us, Sheila, has grown into her own maturity. As a result, she has embraced even deeper aspects of Julian’s writings. No longer a journalist, she now writes as the quiet contemplative, reflecting peacefully and warmly on her new insights into Julian’s work.

This is nothing less than a treasure of a book and is unobtrusively unique in the sheer depth of its intuitions.’

Fr John-Julian Swanson OJN, author of A Lesson of Love: The Revelations of Julian of Norwich and The Complete Julian of Norwich, and founder of the contemplative monastic community, the Order of Julian of Norwich

Sheila Upjohn has lived alongside Julian of Norwich for many decades and probably knows her better than any other living author. Her latest book, provided as a Lent study for 2021, invites readers to share in this intimate relationship and to enter into the mind and heart of Julian at a depth and with a breadth of empathic understanding that can rarely, if ever, have been surpassed.

The outcome is a book that may prove for many readers to be literally life-changing. One of the most serious (and legitimate) charges brought against religious belief is that it so often seems to induce in its adherents lifelong feelings of guilt and even self-loathing. Not infrequently too, it leads to judgemental attitudes towards others that only too rapidly foster punitive and condemnatory behaviour. Sheila Upjohn reveals to us through the words and visionary experiences of Julian, a God who is at all times unconditionally loving towards the human-beings who are the glory of his creation and from whom he can never be separated.

As Sheila permits her readers to be soaked in Julian’s words and insights, we enter into the medieval mystic’s struggles with her understanding of Christ’s Passion and crucifixion, the nature of sin and the notion of divine judgement. The result is a release from the guilt and anguish that so often accompany theologies of divine retribution at the hands of a wrathful and punitive God. That is why this little book has the power to be life-changing. Julian becomes the companion who never evades the reality of pain and suffering but who, through her hard-won wisdom, exercises the skill and tenderness of an expert therapist to guide us back safe into the hands of an ever-loving God.

Sheila Upjohn is Julian’s faithful companion and interpreter, but she is also present in her own right in the pages of her book. We have glimpses into her own journey through life, we meet her friends and encounter her great great grandfather, whose theology, as a nineteenth-century clergyman, left much to be desired. We enjoy a riotous party in a Norwich pub with a motley crowd of characters who enabled Sheila to embark on her transformative understanding of God’s judgement. Above all, we meet a writer with a delicious sense of humour — a splendid companion for a mystic who wrote: ‘For it is the greatest worship we can give him, that we should live gladly and merrily because of his love.’

Brian Thorne, Professor Emeritus, University of East Anglia, Norwich, and Lay Canon Emeritus, Norwich Cathedral

‘Sheila Upjohn skilfully weaves quotations from Julian of Norwich into reflections on her own experience of the Christian faith. This is a conversation Julian would have enjoyed. Julian comes alive through Sheila’s love of Norwich and her own faith and forthright sensitivity. Helpfully direct questions at the end of each chapter guide us through the conversation, prompting us to see the way of Julian as our way of the cross and the path to salvation and glory.’

The Rt Revd Martin Warner, Anglican Bishop of Chichester

Sheila Upjohn grew up in Norwich and read English at university but, even so, had never encountered A Revelation of Divine Love until she was recruited to help organize the six-hundredth anniversary celebration at Norwich Cathedral in 1973. She has now been reading Julian’s book for nearly fifty years. During that time she has written three books and a play about Julian of Norwich, translated A Revelation of Divine Love for daily reading, and led retreats on three continents. She is a founding member of the Friends of Julian of Norwich.

THE WAY OF JULIAN OF

NORWICH

Sheila Upjohn

For the people who prayed for me while I was writing this book

Contents

Introduction

1 Our prayer makes God glad and happy

2 The huge high wholeness of God

3 Sin is behovely

4 When Adam fell, God’s Son fell

5 The devil and all his works

6 A joy, a happiness, an endless delight

Last words

The Way of the Cross

Appendix: Margery Kempe’s visit to Julian

Notes

Further reading

Copyright acknowledgements

This fifteenth-century roof boss in Norwich Cathedral shows a woman holding open the door to a small room, as if Julian is inviting us into her cell to share God’s message with us

Introduction

Julian of Norwich seems an improbable guide in the twenty-first century. We orbit the earth. She spent her life in one small room. But she knew the message God gave her was not meant only for her. ‘I would to God it were known, and my fellow Christians helped on to loathing of sin and loving of God,’ she wrote. ‘This sight was shown for all the world.’

Julian was given that sight because she prayed. Most of us pray for good health. Julian prayed for an illness in which she and everyone else would think she was dying. She prayed to be present at the crucifixion, another unusual request. And above all she prayed for compassion, repentance and longing for God.