Page 52 - Through a glass brightly

From Judy at 13.22
Wednesday, 29th April
Thank you so much for sharing this with me. (A PowerPoint video about Julian of Norwich circulated using ‘Dropbox’.) I have always been interested in Mother Julian and can’t remember when I didn’t know the famous ‘all shall be well, etc.’ I have actually been to the church where her cell is attached. I have a friend, a former Uni one, who moved to Norwich, and actually works for something called the Julian Centre. It runs coffee mornings for people like refugees and does general pastoral sort of work. So my friend took me to see the church when I visited her in her new home for the first time. We had an anchoress in a church near here at Shere in the fourteenth century (I think) and you can see the ruins of her cell and the ‘squint’. She was called Catherine Carpenter, which always sounds quite a modern name. At one point she tried to leave her cell, poor thing, but was brought back and stayed there the rest of her life.
I think this friend would love to see your creation with your permission, but she is not technically minded, and I don’t think she could manage to download it, even if you agreed.
I received this twice from you, but could only open one; maybe you sent different formats?
How are you getting on? It’s nice to hear the memories of early days at the school, though I am mindful that you and Ann weren’t there then, and some on our list were not part of the Sixth form, I think, at least for the full two years. But it is good to hear all the different memories we are dredging up.
I am keeping busy, with various clearing out jobs, and have taken up Italian again, which I had rather stupidly abandoned after learning it for four or five years, which is quite a long time. Just doing it on Duolingo, but I think it’s an excellent learning tool and I need to revise some of the basics! At first I went out for some lovely walks, but developed plantar fasciitis which put a stop to that. It is getting better though, so I am hoping to get out walking again, albeit gradually. My husband has gone out on his bike, albeit alone, and worked on his allotment.
I wrote this yesterday, but in the meantime, your most interesting email arrived, for which also many thanks. Your house sounds absolutely huge!: ‘ a party room’ indeed! It was good of you to help this student out and I’m sure he was suitably grateful. The plans to turn it into a recording studio sound great and what a clever lady you are! I’m much impressed. Maybe you’ll become a proper film maker. Why not? It’s lovely to think of people developing new skills under lockdown, rather than becoming depressed and turning in on themselves.
Keep us all in touch with your burgeoning life!
From Ruth at 14.09
Fascinated to hear of your video, Glenda. How appropriate to be thinking of Julian of Norwich now that we’re all shut away with our own thoughts. Being an anchoress in quite such a confined space as she was would certainly give you visions. I wonder what visions we’re all having now. She was also the first woman to write a book, I gather, after Googling her ‘Revelations of Divine Love’. You can see the pages of it on the British Library website, but whether you can read them is another matter!
At first I mixed her up with Margery Kempe from King’s Lynn who was quite different and a bit of a favourite with me as she was quite a character with her noisier visions. Her fellow travellers to the Holy Land couldn’t get far enough away from her, apparently as she often went into fits of religious ardour. Her book is the first female autobiography we have. She was illiterate but dictated it to a scribe. She had 14 children, ran two businesses as a brewer and a horse miller, both of which failed and travelled to the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostella among others. I read a book on her by Louise Collis.
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