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Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond
This historical biography follows the extraordinary life of Julian of Norwich. She lived through the dreadful bubonic plague that killed close to 50% of Europeans. Being an anchoress, she ‘sheltered in place’ and developed a deep wisdom that she shared in her book, Showings, which was the first book in English by a woman.
A theologian way ahead of her time, Julian develops a feminist understanding of God as mother at the heart of nature’s goodness.
Fox shares what isn’t typically written in a medieval history Julian of Norwich’s teachings that goes beyond religion and spirituality. It also contains sensible advice on how to live in light during this unpredictable times. If you’re into feminist history books or lives about female authors, this one is definitely for you!
A theologian way ahead of her time, Julian develops a feminist understanding of God as mother at the heart of nature’s goodness.
Fox shares what isn’t typically written in a medieval history Julian of Norwich’s teachings that goes beyond religion and spirituality. It also contains sensible advice on how to live in light during this unpredictable times. If you’re into feminist history books or lives about female authors, this one is definitely for you!
139 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 2020
307 people are currently reading
375 people want to read
About the author
Matthew Fox
156 books174 followersTimothy James "Matthew " Fox is an American priest and theologian. Formerly a member of the Dominican Order within the Catholic Church, he became a member of the Episcopal Church following his expulsion from the order in 1993.
Fox has written 35 books that have been translated into 68 languages and have sold millions of copies and by the mid-1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following"
Fox has written 35 books that have been translated into 68 languages and have sold millions of copies and by the mid-1990s had attracted a "huge and diverse following"
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
January 14, 2021
The wisdom shared in this book is phenomenal. Julian lived 700 years ago, yet her teachings and thoughts are very relevant to the events of the 21st Century. She lived in a time of pandemic: the bubonic plague was prevalent during her 80+ year life. She is one of the most optimistic, loving, sharing person I have ever read.
7 Chapters are entitled
Facing the Darkness
Goodness, Joy, Awe
The Oneing of God and Nature
The Divine Feminine and the Motherhood
Tasting Non-Dualism
Trusting Our Sensuality
The Power of Love Over Evil: A Call to Wellness
Chapter 8 enumerates the points of each chapter. What a wonderful way to review and remember the whole book.
Read slowly. Every sentence is worthy of extra thought.
5 stars
7 Chapters are entitled
Facing the Darkness
Goodness, Joy, Awe
The Oneing of God and Nature
The Divine Feminine and the Motherhood
Tasting Non-Dualism
Trusting Our Sensuality
The Power of Love Over Evil: A Call to Wellness
Chapter 8 enumerates the points of each chapter. What a wonderful way to review and remember the whole book.
Read slowly. Every sentence is worthy of extra thought.
5 stars
August 27, 2023
“To be a Mother is to be a source of life, and since divinity is the source of all life, divinity is preeminently a mother”. Julian of Norwich.
Such wise, insightful, inspiring and deeply spiritual words. This book was a a beautiful read. It has challenged and yet confirmed my own beliefs and spirituality, and filled me with hope and a new understanding of what feminism means.
Such wise, insightful, inspiring and deeply spiritual words. This book was a a beautiful read. It has challenged and yet confirmed my own beliefs and spirituality, and filled me with hope and a new understanding of what feminism means.
April 15, 2021
Notes to self:
Nook
This suffered by virtue of reading it at the same time as I was reading 2 other books I liked quite a bit more.
It also suffered because I just do NOT get Matthew Fox as an author. He writes on such interesting subjects, but his books seem like a jumble to me. A couple of other authors strike me the same way -- I like them on podcasts or as teachers or as people in general, but their books just leave me unenthused.
I liked the Chapter 8, which was a summary, and the conclusion. The rest seemed sort of aimless and repetitive.
Nook
This suffered by virtue of reading it at the same time as I was reading 2 other books I liked quite a bit more.
It also suffered because I just do NOT get Matthew Fox as an author. He writes on such interesting subjects, but his books seem like a jumble to me. A couple of other authors strike me the same way -- I like them on podcasts or as teachers or as people in general, but their books just leave me unenthused.
I liked the Chapter 8, which was a summary, and the conclusion. The rest seemed sort of aimless and repetitive.
March 25, 2021
I wish I'd had this book a year ago when the pandemic began. Julian lived through the bubonic plague, a pandemic that killed entire villages in medieval England. Yet her faith in God never faltered. I found her words wise and comforting. She was an amazing woman, unpublished in her own time, probably/possibly because she was a woman. (Chaucer was her contemporary and his works were published.) Thankfully, Fox brings her writings to us now, and we can know that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Very highly recommended.
October 14, 2021
2.5 stars. I had high hopes for this one, but didn't enjoy it much. I loved the Julian quotes, especially as summarized near the end of the book. However, the rest of the book was a bit disjointed at times. My biggest problem was with the sloppy editing, especially one example of poor fact-checking.
Fox refers to St. John of the Cross as a "dwarf" (his word, not mine). That's just not the case at all. John of the Cross, who is referred to in the book because of his "dark night of the soul," was a Carmelite priest and a contemporary of Terese of Avila. Statues and images made of him do not depict him as a little person.
There was another priest (a Coptic Desert Father) named St John the Dwarf, aka St John Colobus, who *was* a little person. These two men didn't live at the same time in history and have no connection between them. How did the editor miss such a glaring error?
Fox refers to St. John of the Cross as a "dwarf" (his word, not mine). That's just not the case at all. John of the Cross, who is referred to in the book because of his "dark night of the soul," was a Carmelite priest and a contemporary of Terese of Avila. Statues and images made of him do not depict him as a little person.
There was another priest (a Coptic Desert Father) named St John the Dwarf, aka St John Colobus, who *was* a little person. These two men didn't live at the same time in history and have no connection between them. How did the editor miss such a glaring error?
May 28, 2021
Interesting topic but very disappointing. This book is not well written at all. It is poorly organized and repetitive. It may have been written in a hurry, which contributed to the grammatical and other errors. Fox presents a fascinating thesis but he doesn't really support it.
May 19, 2023
I loved this book and learned so much about Julian of Norwich, and writers such as Aquinas, Eckhart, and Hildegard of Bingen, that I hadn't known before. I also very much appreciated the huge reliance on quotes, which allows the reader to make their own journey with Julian's writings. By the end of the book I found myself quite in awe of her in all manner of ways.
And I love the heart and courage of Matthew Fox. As a fierce advocate for Creation Spirituality, of course he fits Julian'a writing into that theology, which is criticised by some reviewers, but I would say that a) it doesn't take much to do so as Julian was so centred in God as nature and b) it is a way of thinking and believing much needed in these times.
I very much enjoyed and valued this book, even though I read it long after lockdown ended. Some of Fox's hopefulness in the ways in which Covid might encourage us to rise out of our destructive behaviours made me feel rather sad now that we have seen how readily most of us determined to return to our old ways, but Julian's words are the antidote to even that sadness. All shall be well.
And I love the heart and courage of Matthew Fox. As a fierce advocate for Creation Spirituality, of course he fits Julian'a writing into that theology, which is criticised by some reviewers, but I would say that a) it doesn't take much to do so as Julian was so centred in God as nature and b) it is a way of thinking and believing much needed in these times.
I very much enjoyed and valued this book, even though I read it long after lockdown ended. Some of Fox's hopefulness in the ways in which Covid might encourage us to rise out of our destructive behaviours made me feel rather sad now that we have seen how readily most of us determined to return to our old ways, but Julian's words are the antidote to even that sadness. All shall be well.
June 28, 2023
Like so many of Matthew Fox's books, this one is a book to be read, reread and savoured. Fox does an excellent job of bringing the writing of Julian of Norwich into our era and proving its worth in modern times.
June 23, 2021
This book has much excellent content. Julian was amazingly perceptive and integrated into God's being. She lived in a time of intense pandemic and the way she responded has very valuable lessons as we live through the Covid-19 pandemic. In the time of the Plague which was much worse than our pandemic not only because the virus itself was more devastating but also because they did not have the capability to medically respond and it went in waves over decades of time causing the death of a substantial portion of the population. In the midst of that she saw joy and immense love in God and creation. She fully embraced a loving God and did not see God as being into punishment at all. She saw the feminine in the divine. She believed in the essential goodness of creation and human beings. She believed that "all shall be well" even though she lived during one of the worst pandemics in history.
This book is self-published, presumably to get it out quickly while we were still in pandemic. But this meant it went without an editor, and it would have been much sharper and better if a good editor had worked on it. Also, the print and Kindle versions wound up not fully meshing. The pagination is very different in the two. In the Kindle edition which I read, it starts with page 1 right from the beginning. In the print edition, page 1 doesn't start until Chapter 1 after the lengthy Foreword and Introduction. Also the Kindle edition messes up the endnotes. In the text they are numbered consecutively throughout the book, but at the end they actually appear with numbering beginning again with each Chapter, meaning there is no correspondence between the two so the notes become almost useless.
Substantively, Fox's approach is to fit Julian into his own paradigm of understanding. I believe it largely fits, but Fox appears to prioritize fitting her into his own framework over presenting her as she really was. I would have preferred the reverse, and was left wondering if in some places he did not fully capture Julian's thinking because he was obsessed with fitting it into his own framework. This is exacerbated because his quotes from Julian are mostly from translations which he admits changed language to reflect the translator's understanding. We all tend to fit everything into our own framework, but Fox carries it to an extreme.
Fox has been a leading thinker in creation spirituality and ties it to many aspects of the problems in the world today. He has been called to this for decades and he speaks a lot of truth. Julian is definitely someone who had many of these ideas centuries ago.
Despite some limitations, the book is very worth reading and I recommend it.
This book is self-published, presumably to get it out quickly while we were still in pandemic. But this meant it went without an editor, and it would have been much sharper and better if a good editor had worked on it. Also, the print and Kindle versions wound up not fully meshing. The pagination is very different in the two. In the Kindle edition which I read, it starts with page 1 right from the beginning. In the print edition, page 1 doesn't start until Chapter 1 after the lengthy Foreword and Introduction. Also the Kindle edition messes up the endnotes. In the text they are numbered consecutively throughout the book, but at the end they actually appear with numbering beginning again with each Chapter, meaning there is no correspondence between the two so the notes become almost useless.
Substantively, Fox's approach is to fit Julian into his own paradigm of understanding. I believe it largely fits, but Fox appears to prioritize fitting her into his own framework over presenting her as she really was. I would have preferred the reverse, and was left wondering if in some places he did not fully capture Julian's thinking because he was obsessed with fitting it into his own framework. This is exacerbated because his quotes from Julian are mostly from translations which he admits changed language to reflect the translator's understanding. We all tend to fit everything into our own framework, but Fox carries it to an extreme.
Fox has been a leading thinker in creation spirituality and ties it to many aspects of the problems in the world today. He has been called to this for decades and he speaks a lot of truth. Julian is definitely someone who had many of these ideas centuries ago.
Despite some limitations, the book is very worth reading and I recommend it.
November 10, 2021
Thought provoking
This author did a great job of summarizing Julian’s teachings and presenting them in view of our world today. He very blatantly is presenting his agenda and political views. He makes many statements without backing them up with factual proof. Ie: corona virus is caused by climate change. Much of what he says is dead on true but it felt like he was attacking those he considers wrong instead of presenting what he believes is right.
This author did a great job of summarizing Julian’s teachings and presenting them in view of our world today. He very blatantly is presenting his agenda and political views. He makes many statements without backing them up with factual proof. Ie: corona virus is caused by climate change. Much of what he says is dead on true but it felt like he was attacking those he considers wrong instead of presenting what he believes is right.
November 20, 2021
Fox doesn't give the reader much that they couldn't get from just reading St. Julian's work directly.
I found his attempts to systematize her theology reductive. The references to the divine feminine and sacred masculine were extremely dated and odd, and felt like a way to avoid a more compelling queer or trans interpretation of Julian's depiction of Christ as mother.
Just read Julian's work directly, they're more fun.
I found his attempts to systematize her theology reductive. The references to the divine feminine and sacred masculine were extremely dated and odd, and felt like a way to avoid a more compelling queer or trans interpretation of Julian's depiction of Christ as mother.
Just read Julian's work directly, they're more fun.
July 30, 2022
The author of this book has a personal agenda. He is the founder of "Creation Spirituality" and is here claiming Julian of Norwich as a forerunner of that movement. The main focus of the book is the author and his movement so that Julian takes a secondary position. The exposition of her work is no more than a summary and leaves too many gaps. My next move will be to read her mystical book Revelations of Divine Love.
April 28, 2021
Now I want a Julian tattoo 😜
June 6, 2021
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic and Beyond, was just the book I needed at this point in my life. There is so much dualism and negative energy in the world that seems to be trying to harm the world, as well as, pull us apart. In comes the wisdom of Julian, re-examined by Matthew Fox, hundreds of years after she wrote her book, and it seems more timely than ever. She reminds us that God is a loving God. She reminds us that "All will be well." Her wisdom teaches us that as a loving God, she is a loving mother. I was underlining so many parts on my Kindle that I bought a copy of the book to be able to go back and more easily reread it. If you are open to the idea that God is love and is a loving God, that nature is God, as well, as in everything and everyone, if you believe in the oneness of everything, then you will find this book as amazing, energizing and comforting as I have.
April 24, 2021
Fox gives us the gift of contextualizing Julian of Norwich as a prophet for the 21st century.
She calls us to creation spirituality that joyfully welcomes the gifts of the earth and nurtures it, rather than endlessly exploiting it, to our own ruin.
She calls us to gratitude, joy, and letting go amidst the fearful suffering of our age, which - hard as it is - can not compare to the trials of the bubonic plague.
And she calls us away from fear-based, punitive images of God and religious practices toward a God who is Love, who is Mother, who is Christ who grieves with us and nourishes us.
Really timely and beautiful. I'm reading this while also slowly reading Starr's translation of Julian's Showings - great companions for spring in the second year of a pandemic.
She calls us to creation spirituality that joyfully welcomes the gifts of the earth and nurtures it, rather than endlessly exploiting it, to our own ruin.
She calls us to gratitude, joy, and letting go amidst the fearful suffering of our age, which - hard as it is - can not compare to the trials of the bubonic plague.
And she calls us away from fear-based, punitive images of God and religious practices toward a God who is Love, who is Mother, who is Christ who grieves with us and nourishes us.
Really timely and beautiful. I'm reading this while also slowly reading Starr's translation of Julian's Showings - great companions for spring in the second year of a pandemic.
May 21, 2021
Helpful introduction to an incredible woman in history
Reading this book made me want to read Mirabai Starr’s translation of Julian. It also made me ask myself questions about how the divine feminine relates to the climate crisis.
At times the writing felt frantic, with a lot of references to other thinkers. I recognize it may be given the publication date and a need to speak to the current pandemic.
The book did an excellent job at making me want to learn more about Julian and re-ignited my love for women mystics. It also sparked excellent discussion in the book club I go to on Sundays.
Reading this book made me want to read Mirabai Starr’s translation of Julian. It also made me ask myself questions about how the divine feminine relates to the climate crisis.
At times the writing felt frantic, with a lot of references to other thinkers. I recognize it may be given the publication date and a need to speak to the current pandemic.
The book did an excellent job at making me want to learn more about Julian and re-ignited my love for women mystics. It also sparked excellent discussion in the book club I go to on Sundays.
December 13, 2020
Matthew Fox, Mirabai Starr and Julian of Norwich! What can I say? 💕
I’ve long been fascinated by Julian of Norwich, a deeply spiritual women of the 14th Century. Her book Revelations of Divine Love, based on visions she received while lying on her deathbed at age 31, was the first book written by a woman in English and was long ignored. Perhaps, in Fox’s words, “... we are now ready, in the midst of a pandemic and climate change, to listen to Julian and her creation-centered mystics and prophets anew. Julian’s time has arrived.”
I’ve long been fascinated by Julian of Norwich, a deeply spiritual women of the 14th Century. Her book Revelations of Divine Love, based on visions she received while lying on her deathbed at age 31, was the first book written by a woman in English and was long ignored. Perhaps, in Fox’s words, “... we are now ready, in the midst of a pandemic and climate change, to listen to Julian and her creation-centered mystics and prophets anew. Julian’s time has arrived.”
December 29, 2024
Miscogeny and Patriarchy Condemned
Fox continues his devoted journey on the creation spirituality path with this wonderful reading on Julian of Norwich. He mistakenly expects our Covid crisis to be the turning point from a culture founded on original sin to a culture grounded in Divine Love. Nevertheless, this needed cultural transformation is inevitable. Patriarchy, domination of others, controlling others based
on their fear of Hell will not survive much longer.
Fox continues his devoted journey on the creation spirituality path with this wonderful reading on Julian of Norwich. He mistakenly expects our Covid crisis to be the turning point from a culture founded on original sin to a culture grounded in Divine Love. Nevertheless, this needed cultural transformation is inevitable. Patriarchy, domination of others, controlling others based
on their fear of Hell will not survive much longer.
March 15, 2022
Important approach to reality in our time of pandemic, climate change, reptilian-brain policies of misogynistic “leaders” like Putin and trump.
Time for a new normal of trust and faith in the goodness of nature and non-dualism, and death to fundamentalism, racism and sexism and teaching the Facts of “doctrine of discovery.”
Time for a new normal of trust and faith in the goodness of nature and non-dualism, and death to fundamentalism, racism and sexism and teaching the Facts of “doctrine of discovery.”
May 20, 2021
Julian is inspiring
It is the wisdom of Julian reflecting on how she lived during a pandemic and what she did about it. We need a need new "normal" and not living the same way as before. We need to change or this world will not survive.
It is the wisdom of Julian reflecting on how she lived during a pandemic and what she did about it. We need a need new "normal" and not living the same way as before. We need to change or this world will not survive.
February 24, 2025
This book was burdensome and it put me to sleep. The comparison of Covid to the plague of Julian's time was very loose and probably dated the book since it was written a few years ago. Frankly, I couldn't get past 33% and godknows I tried.
February 16, 2021
This is an interpretation of Julian of Norwich's texts by Matthew Fox. Creation-oriented focus with a celebration of Julian's panentheism.
February 22, 2021
I picked this book up because of its title and knowing a bit of the theology and history of Julian of Norwich. It was an excellent and engaging read. I highly recommend it!
May 19, 2021
Wisdom
Mathew Fox has channelled the wisdom of Julian of Norwhich with simplicity, respect and awe.
The time is now for the feminine Devine to empower our souls and our life choices
Mathew Fox has channelled the wisdom of Julian of Norwhich with simplicity, respect and awe.
The time is now for the feminine Devine to empower our souls and our life choices
June 28, 2021
I liked this book but I have a lot of questions. I wish Julian was still alive so I could ask her. I think I might read her book and I am trying to decide what translation to use.
July 28, 2021
Interesting perspective on suffering, goodness and believing in hope.
September 9, 2021
A Challenge to Patriarchy
What I most like is his (Julian’s)challenge to patriarchal convictions and practices exhibited by white supremacy, consumerism, materialism, and violence.
What I most like is his (Julian’s)challenge to patriarchal convictions and practices exhibited by white supremacy, consumerism, materialism, and violence.
October 2, 2021
A good read, it has moved me forward finally.
SJ
SJ
July 17, 2022
Interesting read. Helped to realize some of my own ideas and interpretations of sections of the bible are more widely accepted.
April 28, 2021
A tinely look at a mystic whose whole life was lived during the Black Death of the 13th-14th centuries.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews