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Why Julian Now?: A Voyage of Discovery
Sheila Upjohn explores the renewed interest in the 600-year-old writings of an unlettered Englishwoman, Julian of Norwich, concluding that her vision is needed today to transform our understanding of God and ourselves.
132 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1997
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January 11, 2026
This is the book I was reading, as part of my morning devotional reading, for the Season of Christmas, which started on Christmas Day and ended today on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. This is a book about the fourteenth century anchoress in Norwich, England, who wrote Revelations of Divine Love about her visions; this particular book, written for the sixth hundredth anniversary, asks the question of why we should consider her material now, in our modern world. And I loved reading this book.
After an introduction, the author considers how we in the modern world consider Eden, Original Sin, and the Devil, and finds Julian’s explanation of these topics much more of worth than the modern view that since Eden is mythical we need pay no attention to its lessons. In another chapter, the author discusses how Julian was careful to allow that she was not a (male) theologian, and that everything she said was in accord with standard Catholic Church teaching. (The author notes that St. Teresa of Ávila had much more trouble with the Inquisition in sixteenth century Spain, and that a lot of Julian’s teachings would not have been approved in the sixteenth century.) In another chapter the author discusses how Julian calls God the Father and God the Son our Mother, as well as being Father and Brother, without implying a change of sex. There are those who claim Julian was illiterate (she calls herself “unlettered”, which meant she had no Latin), and there is internal evidence that at some point in her life, before becoming an anchoress, she had married and had a child, but that the Plague took her husband and child.
Essentially, the book claims that though Julian only knew her own world, her own world is not that different from our world today, and that the lessons of her Revelations of Divine Love are valuable for us in any age.
After an introduction, the author considers how we in the modern world consider Eden, Original Sin, and the Devil, and finds Julian’s explanation of these topics much more of worth than the modern view that since Eden is mythical we need pay no attention to its lessons. In another chapter, the author discusses how Julian was careful to allow that she was not a (male) theologian, and that everything she said was in accord with standard Catholic Church teaching. (The author notes that St. Teresa of Ávila had much more trouble with the Inquisition in sixteenth century Spain, and that a lot of Julian’s teachings would not have been approved in the sixteenth century.) In another chapter the author discusses how Julian calls God the Father and God the Son our Mother, as well as being Father and Brother, without implying a change of sex. There are those who claim Julian was illiterate (she calls herself “unlettered”, which meant she had no Latin), and there is internal evidence that at some point in her life, before becoming an anchoress, she had married and had a child, but that the Plague took her husband and child.
Essentially, the book claims that though Julian only knew her own world, her own world is not that different from our world today, and that the lessons of her Revelations of Divine Love are valuable for us in any age.
Displaying 1 of 1 review