This book is begun by God's gift and His grace, but it is not yet performed, as to my sight. - Julian of Norwich

By the sight of the less that our Lord sheweth us, the more is reckoned which we see not. For He of His courtesy measureth the sight to us; for it is so vile and so horrible that we should not endure to see it as it is.

He said not 'Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased'; but he said, 'Thou shalt not be overcome.

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.