I, Julian by Claire Gilbert and the Porous Self

Icon by Kara Gillette illustrates
Julian's most well-known shewing
of the world as a hazelnut, as
well as her cat, and the divine
illumination coming through the
 window of her cell

In May 1373, having survived at least two waves of the Black Death, a 30 year old woman fell into a life-threatening fever and illness. After lying sick for seven days and nearing death, she raved, "I raved today. I thought the crucifix bled" (126). But she came to understand these ravings as "shewings" or revelations - direct embodied mystical experiences of Christ. 

Amazingly, these shewings were written down in "the English of the fourteenth century," the same Middle English in which her contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer wrote. The shewings were written in the first person, which suggests that they were dictated by Julian to a priest who recorded her account. 

Julian became an anchoress - a solitary religious dwelling in a room connected to a church in Norwich - entombed or encased, bricked into the room from which she did not emerge. As an anchoress, she contemplated her revelations - they became the sacred text from which her theology emerged. After years of contemplative life, she gained further spiritual insight in the deeper meaning of her visions.  In chapter 86 in the Long Text she writes, "from that time that it was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord's meaning. And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly [i.e. spiritual or mystical] understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning."

I, Julian is a fictional autobiography of the 14th century anchoress Julian of Norwich by Claire Gilbert. Gilbert wrote a 2018 PhD dissertation on Julian, Restoring Porosity and the Ecological Crisis: A Post-Ricoeurian Reading of the Julian of  Norwich Texts, at King's College London. During a cancer diagnosis and more than two years of treatment, Gilbert turned to Julian as more than an academic interest, as a spiritual guide through her own experience with illness, facing death, and walking through grief. She drew close to Julian in a new way, as she says "almost experiencing the visions herself." She felt "a call" - perhaps her own mystical experience - to "tell Julian's story in the first person, in homage to her."  

The book deals with the problem of epistemology - how do we know things and what counts as knowledge? Julian's visions - were they ravings or divine revelations? Are they hallucinations or do they show something real and important? A knowledge of reality not obtainable in any other way? When Julian first awakens from her illness, she says to the priest "I raved today." But the priest did not laugh. "You did not laugh. You will not dismiss my visions. And so I do not dismiss them either. I was shocked then and I am still shocked at how easily I could have rejected them, had you not looked so serious." 

Mystics and mystical experiences have fallen into disrepute, and perhaps have always been regarded with skepticism. Yet for those who experience them - they hold a visceral power. The mystic sees something that alters their perspective about reality. Julian's theology begins neither with the Bible nor with her social context - nor does she proceed in the way of logical discourse or syllogistic reasoning. Her approach is far from that of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). Her theology emerges from the visionary experience and her mystical contemplations of them. She continues to be anchored in the "showing" - God showed me and I came to learn . . . " 

And although she is not a visionary herself, Gilbert agrees - if we let Julian's visions in, they can reshape our consciousness and our relationship to the world in a way that would be better for ourselves, others, and the world. Recovering Julian is a step towards a more porous sense of self that sloughs off the facade of autonomous agency and turns outward toward a relational way of being. 

In the novel, Julian has an audience with a noblewoman named Isabel. Isabel begins to share her hidden grief over her many miscarriages - secretly she has given each lost child a name and has held all this inside herself. Now, in Julian's presence, she opens and the grief comes out. In response, Julian models and experiences the porous self. "I listen. I receive her words. . . I feel like a sponge, not just Isable's words but the hot pain that sites inside them, a pain that stays hidden from the world and is intense form its suppression. As the words and the pain enter me, enter my hears and, it feels, my whole body, even as a part of me is wondering at what is happening and fearful for myself, the pain is so hot . . . it is not I who can determine how to receive and relieve the pain, but Jesu, Love herself, and I must allow this soft porosity to open to the healing love that is waiting to serve. So I sit quieter still, wondering, and trusting and unknowing" (145-46).

It is a sharing of selves that occurs, within the matrix of emotions. Isabel's pain bleeds into Julian's empathetic receptivity where it meets with Jesu's healing love. That communion becomes an efficacious and holy ground, "It sems to me," Julian says, "that as each name is called out, a child appears between us and before God, shines, is seen, just for a moment, and then lies down and sleeps" (146). Gilbert feels that the healing we need - personally, socially, and ecologically - needs this porous self, this porous humanity to really encounter the world and its beings as more than Other, as part of ourselves.