Dear friends,

Following this summer’s pilgrimage, the CYFM Commission finished its work updating formation rooms for the children and youth cohorts on Sundays—as well as other groups during the week.

The small room just south of the West Murphey Gallery is now home on Sundays to our 3-4th grade Christian Formation class. This group is skillfully shepherded by parishioners and volunteers, Mo Owen and Peggy Rowe, who bring faithfulness and creativity to their work with the StoryMakers curriculum. The rest of the week this room is available for small groups—provided they are comfortable with stools rather than chairs.

This room has served many different functions. It has been the Little Shop, the Parish Nurse’s office, and the Lounge. With its recent tweaks, it is now called the Julian Room.

It is actually a little smaller than Julian’s cell in the side of the church in Norwich, and has a cozy feel. Within this room that has served multiple functions, I think you will find a sense of steadiness, beauty, and creativity. I invite you to take a peek to look at its latest incarnation.

The StoryMakers work with a curriculum designed to guide children into the knowledge that God is the great StoryMaker, and we, too, are called to be StoryMakers. This resonates with Julian’s work: seek God where you are, leave your mark with love and beauty, remain true to who you are made to be, and be witness to God’s faithfulness.

I am grateful to the members of the CYFM Commission for their cost-conscious efforts to beautify the space. It is now more accessible for those who use it, and more beautiful for those who might visit and be curious about formation at Saint Philip’s.

The way we care for our spaces says a lot about how we care for the people within them. There are many who care for this campus and that hospitality invites people to healing, hope, and relationship with God and others. Thank you for your efforts to create prayerful, welcoming spaces!

A bit about Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich was an honored laywoman in the church, not yet canonized, but considered holy and very special to the history of the church’s practice and theology—which is why we have renamed one of our smaller meeting rooms the Julian Room.

Julian of Norwich is sometimes called Mother Julian, Blessed Julian, and sometimes Dame Julian. On their recent youth pilgrimage in England, our senior youth had the opportunity to learn more about her at the church where she lived out her adult life as a religious recluse.

We visited the church where her cell was, and were warmly welcomed by Fr Richard Stanton, Priest Director of the Julian Centre. We learned what is known about Julian of Norwich—her written works and her visitors—and had the opportunity to celebrate communion at that church. It was a wonderful way to provide some formal closure to our pilgrimage.

As a young woman in 1373, when Julian of Norwich had become so ill that she and everyone around her believed she was about to die, she received a series of revelations about divine love.

Despite feeling inadequate as a woman to write about these experiences, she was persuaded in the last revelation that God’s desire was for her to teach others what she had been shown. Consequently, she wrote down what she had experienced, then proceeded to ponder and pray about the revelations for the next 20 years. She did this while intensively studying many theological texts.

The expanded version of her “showings,” as she called them, is a significant theological document on many levels. It was not only the first book written by a woman in English but it was also the first theological book written in English by anyone.

Julian of Norwich dedicated her life to God as an anchoress, which meant that she lived as a solitary rather than as a nun in community. She lived alone in a cell for the rest of her life, with a window through which to give counsel and receive gifts such as food, and another window through which she could see the services of the church and receive the Eucharist.

Of her writings while in this cell, one scholar has said, “The subject of The Revelations is love— God’s love for mankind shown in the Passion, suffering and death of Jesus Christ, and the response of man towards God, his Maker, Keeper and Preserver. This love creates all that exists; it sustains all and redeems all; it is unfailing even in times of sorrow or trial; it is unconditional; it is a love plenteous beyond imagining; it is all powerful and all embracing; and in this love there is no place for anger or wrath. God’s whole purpose is to bring all into the bliss of heaven, so that ‘All shall be well!’” (https://www.stjohnstimberhill.org/julians-revelations)

The cell eventually fell into disrepair and was badly damaged in World War 2. It was rebuilt and re-dedicated in 1953.

If you would like to read an accessible but scholarly work about her writing, I encourage you to take a look at Julia A. Lamm’s God’s Kinde Love: Julian of Norwich’s Vernacular Theology of Grace, which sites some of the scholarly work done by one of our Affiliate Clergy, The Rev’d Dr Paula Barker Datsko. Additional details can be learned here.

Julian of Norwich has been a favorite mystic of mine for a long time. But visiting the church where she lived further enlivened her writing to me. There was a felt steadiness in her cell and the adjoining church.

Her writings’ far-reaching, joyful, and zealous character is made all the more fascinating by the steadiness and rootedness her vocation called for. To stay in place, to pray in place for 30-some years as a way to dedicate herself to God, is inspiring in our fast moving world—where the Christian virtues of stability, humility, stewardship, prayer, and hospitality take much practice.

In Christ,

—Mtr Taylor