Looking ahead, already

Welcome to the new folks.

I went on a bit about Julian of Norwich, medieval English visionary, and her showings last Thursday. I mentioned that they might be available online. It is, here, in irritating frames or downloadable as a PDF. This particular translation (Julian wrote in Middle English; not quite Chaucer, but "Off the which, the first is of His prettious coroning with thornys; and therewith was comprehended and specifyied the Trinitie with Incarnation") is pretty close to the original, and can thus be slow going; Penguin, happily, has recently put out one that reads a bit more cleanly and is available on Amazon for $4.50.

I'd recommend we all go with the same version, for ease of discussion; any preferences?

There are two versions of the "Showings;" the first, written soon after the sixteen visions of God, Christ, and the Crucifixion she had when she was thirty years old, is generally called the Short Text. She had prayed to God, requesting to understand the meaning and, more, the very experience of the Atonement; these visions came in response.

The second, the Long Text (ie, about 200 pages), is an expansion of the Short Text, produced at the end of Julian's life. She became a nun after the first vision, and after thirty-odd years of meditation and further visions clarifying the meanings of what she initially encountered, she wrote the Long Text.

Here's a good brief introduction to Julian.