“For this is the cause why we be not all in ease of heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, wherein is no rest, and know not our God that is All-mighty, All-wise, All-good. For He is the Very Rest.”

“Although she was a recluse, she was not entirely apart from the world. She lived sealed in a cottage joined to the church in the city of Norwich. The modern fiction is that an anchorite was walled into a tiny church alcove with barely room for a prie-dieu and hard bed. Julian would probably have had a suite of rooms as well as a walled garden. Solitaries were even allowed to have cattle and property. They also had guests. The life was simple with much time devoted to prayer and contemplation, but it was not the cruel torture we might imagine. A main road passed right outside her house and Julian gave spiritual direction and advice to the many people who sought her out. One of these was Margery Kempe, who while certainly not of Julian’s sanctity, has entered history for writing the first biography of women in English. Nor was Julian entirely alone within her cottage. She would have had a maid (we know the names of two of them). And she may have had pets.”

“would”

“everything that is good is God; whatever goodness we experience in this life is truly a taste of God, for it is God.”

“Our falling is frightful our falling is shameful and our dying is sorrowful but still in all this, the sweet eye of pity and of love never departs from us, and the working of mercy ceases not.”

“Never does love's compassionate eye turn from us.”

“The human mother can suckle the child with her milk. But our beloved Mother Jesus can feed us with himself. This is what he does when he tenderly and graciously offers us the blessed sacrament, which is the precious food of true life. In mercy and grace he sustains us with all the sweet sacraments. This is what he meant when he said that he was the one that holy church preaches and teaches us. In other words, Christ the Mother is entwined with the wholeness of life which includes all the sacraments, all the virtues, all the virtues of the word-made-flesh, all the goodness that holy church ordains for our benefit. The human mother can tenderly lay the child on her breast, but our tender Mother Jesus can lead us directly into his own tender breast through his sweet broken-open side. Here, he reveals a glimpse of the godhead and some of the joys of paradise with the implicit promise of eternal bliss.”