tymelgren 's review for:

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich

3.0

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I don't know about you but sometimes I wonder if the problem is that I haven't read enough medieval mystics. Is there some great secret hidden in some semi-obscure text that'll make everything make sense for me?? Probably not, but how will I know unless I read every single book ever written! Julian of Norwich was a 14th century anchorite, probably now most well known for her phrase "but all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well." This book, REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE, is her account of a series of visions she had and her own interpretation of them. It's considered to be the first book written in English by a woman. She invented the word enjoy. When I first started reading it I was very into it, but it quickly started to feel monotonous and it ended up taking me almost six month to finish. Mystical experiences are fascinating to me, but they are definitionally kind of hard to write about or explain to anyone else, so reading about them can be frustrating and tedious. The main things I remember now are one of the visions in which she is extremely moved by the sight of the giant bleeding head of Jesus, and another in which she realizes that "as verily as God is our Father, so verily is God our Mother."