Welcome to Between The Stools 7th May 2023. Today’s service is a split topic, based on two anniversaries either side.
Yesterday was the coronation of Britain’s King Charles III; and tomorrow is the 650th anniversary of Julian of Norwich’s visions.
https://shows.acast.com/between-the-stools/episodes/a-new-king-and-a
VIDEO at https://www.brighteon.com/channels/elspethr
Me on a Westminster-like chair behind my Julian painting: She Is Our Clothing
I’ve shared some thoughts on monarchy and our royal family less than a year ago – how they have changed since I began this blog...my thoughts, that is. I had planned to take the first Sunday of June to look at coronation, since that date was Charles’ mum’s – the late Queen – and that of Anne Boleyn, 490 years ago. I’m going to look at that topic as a whole here and then move into very different celebrations and invite you on a week long journey with me.
PRAYER acknowledging that this weekend is hard for some
As with last year’s Jubilee service, the part on coronation will be a bunting-free presentation.
We’re thinking about historic monarchs this year at Between The Stools, and spent two services on the current royal family last year: the new king’s mother and ex-wife. They were contrasting appraisals. Diana had been dead for 24 years; Elizabeth was yet alive – but only for two months.
I covered my thoughts on the biblical principles of kingship and the present royals and asked the question: when the Queen passes, do we want something different?
I hoped that we might get something different.
——-
It may be significant that the Three Colours film trilogy just got a digital re-release. This first weekend of May, we in Britain and beyond are very much aware of red, white and blue – the colours also of the American flag, as the Wonder Woman TV theme reminds us: the colours of [so-called] democracy (I made a satirical painting on that – scroll to the bottom to see it). The values behind France’s flag – liberty, equality, and fraternity – which underpin a French funded classic by a Polish filmmaker are noble and significant – but were they present in the coronation, and in actuality?
I realise that I have more interest in telling you about the mid 90s movies, but I will state this link before moving on: in the first film, Blue, starring Juliette Binoche, is a commissioned magnum opus, not unlike coronation music. But here, no person is being crowned: the country of France is being crowned, or more accurately, a group of countries is being crowned: the Unification of Europe. Massive music is composed to celebrate an amalgamation which had begun twenty years earlier. Charles was crowned a little after his country left that controversial conglomeration – the European Union; but at a time where a globalised new world order is being pushed…which he is part of driving.
Having heard three other national anthems recently, I’m struck that whereas other lands sing an ode to the country, Britain’s anthem is directly to the monarch. I understand why it’s felt that Blake’s poem Jerusalem, set to Parry’s stirring music, would suit us better – it is more in line with Nordic patriotic paeans. I’m struck by our pomp and circumstance music being just that, and that Zadok the Priest made for George III by Handel (which worsens when the singing starts) is no longer sublime to my ear, nor about touching the divine but in making its human recipient divinely untouchable by likening this worldly ruler to some mythic great (in this case, Old Testament King Solomon, in the line of David and Jesus). Caesar is another favourite.
I didn’t really want to participate in this show but did so because I wanted to have information for this service and because it is a significant event. It’s the first opportunity for anyone under 70 to have witnessed a coronation in Britain; and I wonder – and wish – that this might be one of the last, at least of this kind.
I’ve been surveying celebrations. Backpackers with Union Jack wellies queued ahead of me at the station loos, clearly planning to queue for even longer to get a place among London’s crowds. Bunting and flags and window displays appeared in many homes and businesses – but not all. Some of us donned our national colours, but this outfit was bought because I like it some years ago, between royal occasions; I also wore it to see Superman recently – another national figure. I noted that supermarkets stayed open as usual throughout the morning’s events and cinemas continued their usual programme – we seem less affected than by the Queen’s death. I know some regular events were suspended in favour of royal ones. Bonfires and fireworks (I abhor the latter, being so distressing for animals and others). Picnics and tea parties. Free public screenings in selected community centres, cinemas and churches. One parish church had a concert by “The Illuminati” – isn’t that illuminating?
The alternative media point out that Charles explicitly spoke of the Great Reset soon into the coronavirus period. We might note that ‘corona’ means crown. I share their alarm about that, and some of his values and friends…and whether this is a new era or the next stage of a game plan.
I support Charles’s architectural views but not how he treated Diana; and having explored their relationship from both sides, I still conclude in her favour. I have compassion on him for the cool upbringing and schooling he endured, but the apparent lack of emotional connection isn’t excused. At least we are in a world where we can air views, and I’ve been shocked by some of the daring intimacies revealed and assessments made, and the celluloid portrayals.
I’d like to make a few brief observations before moving on…that the cost is covert until after the ceremony, but met by the public purse. Elizabeth II and George VI’s cost about £20-50m today, depending on who you ask. Even £20,000,000 is 1/3 of a million for each person in Britain – or the price, quite shockingly now, of the average house….for a day, a morning…. of ridiculous costumes, pomp…. Yes, an attempt to nod to multiculturalism, but no Pagans and no Dissenters.
This near two hour communion service (followed by much marching) was as much about the Anglican church receiving a new figurehead as the Untied Kingdom and Commonwealth.
However, Charles did make a change to his oath regarding being ‘defender of the faith’ – so ironic considering that the first monarch to receive that title, who we’ll think of in January, was Catholic.
The archbishop said “the church established by law, whose settlement you will swear to maintain …will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely”.
I’m interested in the ‘may live freely’. It didn’t say ‘can freely and openly express those beliefs and practice their faith’. Charles will seek to foster such an environment…but he doesn’t guarantee it. Perhaps as constitutional monarch he can’t.
I am glad that Charles pledged that we may all live freely, for there’s been concern about how free we are and how free the establishment plans for us to be. But there’s its plans, and God’s, and ours. One can only rule by consent [the people’s and God’s].
Meanwhile – and I do wonder what this event is meant to get us to look away from – many interesting changes are occurring, especially on a financial front. I watch with interest.
I was going to discuss being crowned, linking it to the anointing by oil that’s behind the title Messiah; the servant King…. and the other Charleses, bookending Britain’s only period without a monarch, who abused the people in different ways, and what this meant for religious freedom. I think there’s much to learn from the C17 and I’d like to spend some time in it with you another year. I feel that much of the above has been or is being said elsewhere, or will come up later in our History Year. This is the one piece of planned history in the making that we’re witnessing and participating in, rather than looking back.
——————A little break… [maybe listen to Jerusalem…still no music access to play it to you]—————–
On the eve of the coronation, when concerts and vigils were taking place, in Norwich there was an eve of another event, also celebrated internationally. It was heralded by a half day of silent prayer. This was a date that could long be predicted – unlike the placing of Charles’ new headgear (or had that been planned like the first Elizabeth’s, with astrologers?). There was a solemn ceremony performed for a lifelong vocation, but it was in a small church in Norwich, and unlike a monarch, there could be several of these in one nation at a time. I know of two others in Norwich.
I’d like to introduce her to any who don’t know her – yes, Julian’s a girl – and then I invite you to spend a week with me, perhaps two. This is definitely a staycation – of a spiritual kind.
I note certain changes in the canon of knowledge since I’ve known Julian. I was originally told that she was probably a nun at nearby Carrow Abbey and that she changed her name to the church in which she lived, so that we don’t actually know her identity. Now I hear that Julian was a woman’s name – like Juliette Binoche, or as one manuscript renders her, Juliana. She might not have been a nun – she might have been a wife and mother.
All I can tell you is that the church is still called St Julian and that Lady or Mother Julian has an official saints’ day tomorrow, 8th May. And that churches dedicated to Julian are rare: there is one in Shrewsbury, and St Botolph’s priory in Colchester was jointly dedicated to Julian.
We have little biographical detail: her visions were received in this week in 1373, when she was 30; she was an anchoress, which I’ll explain, in this little church of King St, in the south of the walled city of Norwich; and a scribe tells us she was yet living in 1413…I have read she may have lived into the next decade, but her dates are unknown.
We do know that she entered the church after these visions and spent many years contemplating them, and wrote a book: The Revelations of Divine Love. It is the first to be authored by a woman in English.
She was visited by fellow Norfolk mystic and author Margery Kempe of Lynn.
There is a long and short version of Julian’s work: the short exists in a single manuscript, I’m told; the long has three texts. They are in old English, roughly contemporary with Chaucer, and so are usually translated; but there are these different versions to choose from or work in, and decisions to make about altering Julian’s words for a modern ear. I can’t find the one version which had the actual words next to modern ones, so I am always reading someone else’s choices.
Julian and I met exactly 25 years ago. I encountered her five years before in a Religious Studies seminar by the excellent Linda Woodhead and Andrew Shanks. I hadn’t come across a mystic before, but I was interested in this one because she came from my region.
Newly moved into Norwich, the city of my dreams, I was invited to an event to mark the 625th year since this famous daughter received her visions. It was a script in hand reading of the play by Shelia Upjohn, A Time Out Of Mind. Eleven years on, I’m laying on the hill overlooking the city with Shelia’s Why Julian Now, hoping to move back. Both of those are relevant sentiments…
This is the journey I’d like you to take with me is to think on and better yet read Julian this week – and if you can join a Julian event (including online), even better.
I’m going to come back to you and share my thoughts on this woman and her sixteen shewings.
I may also reprise the lecture I gave nine years on her comparing her to modern mystics – Neale Donald Walsch, Jo Dunning and Joni Eareckson… Not the names you were expecting to hear ofr modern mystics? Listen to my definition of mystic…you’ll probably qualify.
Not expecting to hear those names above in the same sentence? I love to make unexpected connections…and this began reading Shelia’s book that Easter of 2009.
For now, I wish to share my thoughts on modern and medieval nuns.
The mediaeval one is Julian and what they did to her.
The modern one is me.
I wish to speak against this horrific idea of anchorism, giving someone the last rites, walling them into a small room, and in some cases, making them dig their own grave and then live around it until they need it. They had unpaid servants (I call that slavery) under the guise of spiritual service. (It recalls that line in Austen’s Lady Susan about being vulgar to pay [your underling] when there’s an element of friendship involved. Substitute friendship with holy work and asceticism.) Of course, anchorites still needed to pay the church for their upkeep. I’ve heard of anchorism described as getting away from the control of patriarchy and remaining independent by AN Wilson in the introduction to my version (based on Grace Warrack’s translation published by SPCK) but I think he’s misunderstood this practice. I’m also cross at Deepak Chopra’s take on Julian in his book God where he lazily misread ‘wool’ for ‘wood’ trade, and then riffs on Norfolk’s great forests which created Norwich England’s then second city. It’s sheep coats, Deepak!
I note that the usual monastic vow of staying on one site (not normally one room) was couched as ‘stability’ but that word today feels far from losing the right to roam. Julian allowed herself to be imprisoned for life, without an exercise yard, and only a squint into the church she was attached to. She gave up touch for the rest of her years – at least 40. I think she was expected to give up too much. I watched a documentary about a modern Benedictine nun and wondered how her loved ones must have felt during her service of dedication. I wonder even more at the pain and confusion which Julian’s felt at her entering a living death – like that of the evil Kryptonian trio in Superman movies. Julian is banished to a phantom zone, taking the biblical ‘in the world but not of it’ (Romans 12:2) to extreme, making her life to be a holy example to be admired.
I wonder at what can have persuaded her to have taken such a step?
And what can have made the church conceive of such a ‘vocation’?
I’d like to briefly and finally think of myself, and perhaps you can relate…a modern, free range, plain clothes nun. Tomorrow my guest blog post on Lauri Ann Lumby’s website goes out about this topic. I’ve further thought that this name I gave myself at university briefly was increasingly apt. I like quiet days and silence and reflection and study. I choose them. But I see no reason to vow to give up the possibility of noisy days, of relationships, fun, of own clothes, holidays, own choice of bed time…Does God wish us to vow, or is that a human insistence on binding contracts? I also see that I have been called to this enjoyment and need of quiet among its antithesis: the row round me of my student days has oft continued. I am still in the world, although like others listening to or reading this, this world as it currently is can feel overwhelmingly harsh and alien at times. But I am comforted that not only am I not alone in feeling this – and thus, neither are you – but that I continue to hear how the old world is falling away and that we really will see a different one, where sensitive uncommon souls like Julian can thrive without being cut out of it.
Do introduce yourselves on betweenthestools@hotmail.co.uk and let me know your (constructive) thoughts on this, or how you are.
And do check back next Sunday night when I’ll have an update…I may do one more, but it probably won’t be another live service
The next of those is 25th June on Etheldreda, another East Anglian special lady with a special anniversary.
So…do join me on a Julian journey this special Julian week (see https://julianofnorwich.org) and check back next Sunday
The painting in the background is explained here
Blessings and thank you for joining me and hope to see you again
Elspeth R - A skewed world view 