Love Visions

After reading about both Hildegard von Bingen and Julian of Norwich, I feel more aware of the concept of mysticism and how it relates to the blossoming, influential perspective that magic primarily stems from a benevolent or malevolent religious origin. Julian's visions heavily assert that God is made of love, that "before He made us, He loved us, which love was never slaked nor ever shall be. And in this love he has done all his work" (Kiefer 2).

I also find it fascinating, as I always have, how people choose to depict God and the controversy that surrounds those images. The Norton Anthology source talks about Christ's humanity and how he died to "clear the debt" humanity owed Him as a moral obligation (Greenblatt, Abrams 355). Julian's visions about God's relationship to his greatest creation, an 'endlessness' of love and rebirth, feels like an answering balm to the suffering of life and the impossible chasm between human violence and God's magnificence. The line, "Julian never leaves the sight of the wounded, bodily Christ, whose very physical suffering is somehow simultaneous with these almost immaterial visions," perfectly encapsulates, to me, what Julian's life of solitude was about (Greenblatt, Abrams 371). If God can love us through endless time despite our flaws, then, Julian seems to say, we should devote ourselves to Him and simultaneously remember our physical bodies while ascending into our spiritual selves.

Overall, the concept of a loving and forgiving God reminds me of modern platitudes/sayings passed around as band-aids to a bad day or an assurance that "everything happens for a reason," and that sometimes "bad things happen to good people." I wonder if this welcoming perspective on God was semi-founded or made popular by Julian of Norwich.

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