Easter Reflections on Saint Julian of Norwich
by Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
(photo: Leo Reynolds/Flickr)
This concept of wanting to be one with Christ’s suffering…It’s so foreign to all of us. We do whatever we can to avoid and escape pain. And her goal was to be ‘oned’…in our culture, everyone wants to leap to Easter Sunday.
—Rev. Linda Loving
With Easter approaching this weekend, we’ve dusted off a vintage SOF show, “A Program for Passover and Easter,” which includes Krista’s 2002 conversation with Linda Loving, a Presbyterian pastor, actress, and writer. For nearly two decades, Loving has been performing a one woman play about the 14th-century Christian mystic Julian of Norwich.
As a young woman, Julian of Norwich fervently prayed to embody the depths of Christ’s suffering on the cross. At the age of 30, her prayers came true when she was stricken with a near-fatal illness. In this state of physical duress, she experienced a series of 16 mystical visions that she letter penned in Revelations of Divine Love. In the embedded audio link above, Krista and Rev. Loving probe Julian of Norwich’s ideas about pain, suffering, and healing.
Julian of Norwich is probably best known for the lines: “all shall be well, and all will be well.”
(photo, left: kristen.michelle/Flickr) | right: leilapea/Flickr)
And, as Loving explains in this clip, these spare words reveal the “simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Happy Easter.
