Rose Perkins: Julian of Norwich (Class Reading)

    Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love was very interesting to read and to delve into. As I read, there were several points that I noted as most interesting that I want to discuss. These points involve mentions of God's love and of Christians' love for one another. On page 29 in my copy of the Revelations, at the beginning of Chapter IV, Julian states, "Our lord showed me a spiritual vision of his matchless love. I saw that, for our benefit, he is all that is good and comforting and helpful to us. He is our clothing, who for love wraps and encloses us, embraces and encircles us, clings to us for tender love, that he may never leave us. In this vision I understood truly that he is everything that is good." A few pages later, on page 33-34, in chapter VII, she writes, " But I trust that our lord God almighty shall, in his goodness and for love of you, allow you to experience it more spiritually and more sweetly than my account allows - and so it may be, since we are all one in love. Throughout I felt a great love towards my fellow Christians." These are the statements I wish to discuss. 

    Basically, these statements are saying that God has unwavering love for humanity and all of his creations, and God is always good and everything that is good. Furthermore, it is saying that Christians and all of humanity have great love for each other as God does for us. As someone who is not Christian, these ideas are especially interesting to me, especially because I do not observe this much in practice. I was raised heavily Christian, and I felt anything but love from the people in my church. As someone who is a part of the LGBTQ+ community, I quickly learned that I would not find love or acceptance within the Christian church. However, the contradicting notions confuse me. God is supposed to be love and appears to humanity as love, for all of humanity no matter what you identify as, why do many Christians not follow the ideals that God is supposed to be? I was supposed to be welcomed and loved in the Christian church, according to what Christianity is meant to be and who God is. However, the people in the church pushed me away and made me doubt what Christianity was. Despite Julian making these claims, therefore, these ideas do not occur much in practice. It is very interesting to observe the ideas in practice and then read the claims within the Revelations.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kip Redick Introduction

Welcome to the Heroes and Mystics blog for 2024. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). . Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The student should bring ques...
Read more

The Untethered Soul

Another one of the many books that I am simultaneously reading with other books that I am really excited about is The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Alan Singer. Although I am not very far in the novel, I think that the first bit that I have read is already so rich and ties in well to Somewhere I Have Never Traveled because of the idea of the sense of self. Both works mention the idea that we as humans are always trying to grapple with our sense of selves. I think that it is a really interesting concept and my philosophy, perhaps it's just the easy out, is that our brains were simply not created to be able to comprehend things outside of our world. I think it's a great thing to try but I believe that there is so much more knowledge that we cannot know.
Read more

Iris Denner: The Iliad (Assigned Readings)

The Iliad is a Greek epic that follows Achilles throughout the Trojan War . Achilles becomes the hero of the epic by killing his enemy, Hector, brutally. This series of poems is rather violent and follows Greek tradition in writi ng style. It is simply titled with Iliad meaning the town in Troy. At the time it acted as a history story for the Greek people and was passed down through spoken word. We now attribute the writings to Homer and interpret them as something that one st rives to accomplish the greatness that Achilles reached. The journey took place during the war, making it connect well to today’s society of veterans who go on journeys throughout their time being deployed.  
Read more