Julian's Day (original) (raw)

n 13 May 1373, a young woman in Norwich, as all thought, lay dying. Already given the Last Rites of the Church, the priest now brought her the Crucifix to gaze upon. Then began the series of visions, the Showing of Love, of Julian of Norwich. Miraculously, in partaking of that vision, the Crucifixion turned into Resurrection, tragedy to comedy, agony into laughter, death into life. And Julian continued writing of her vision in books, composed when she was fifty, when she was seventy. She lived to tell the tale and to console her even-Christian. For we are the One Body of Christ.

Dearworthy Godfriends,

Last night, Corpus Domini, was our 'Cena in Piazza', a Montebeni tradition begun years ago by Don Patrizio, our Olivetan monk of a parish priest, and he and other villagers prepared and served this tremendous meal which we ate outdoors, old and young together. Too much food! It was the Wedding Feast of the Parables, like our Godfriends. So I walked to Mass this morning to walk it off, an hour through our mountains from Montebeni to Fiesole in the golden dawn.

Before that, reading the morning Office of Readings, today about David garbed in heavy armour by Saul, unable to walk, taking it all off again and going to meet Goliath as just a simple shepherd boy, like our Giotto here. And thinking of Hebraism's smallest letter, yod, which becomes Greek's iota, our letter i , as the letter which begins the names of God, and Jerusalem, and Jesus. And how small Florence identified herself with David, though Michelangelo, who also was a child here in Settignano, his wet nurse a stone cutter's wife, joked with carving David out of the stone called 'Giant'. We need to turn our _i_s from giants into children, to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And realizing sin is the taking of power from another, and from God. For God is in the other, in the self where shared in love, where we see all as the One Body of Christ. And where we choose littleness over bigness, going on foot over the car and the plane, holding the hazel nut, the olive leaf, in the palm of the hand, we find God and goodness and peace and happiness. And realizing love is lost where we take power from another, why marriages now go toxic and children in turn are blighted. Why we must pay all debts in order to be forgiven debts. To reestablish God credit we need to earn it with our own labour, the sweat of our own brow, not another's in the Third World whose work we cheapen for our wealth.

The smallest bones in the human body are those in the ear, which the Psalm notes He has marvellously made. It is with those tiniest bones that we hear God and our vocation. Fibonacci, the Italian medieval mathematician, describes nature's curves, sea shells, whorls of ears.

My landlord has just given me a newspaper article on a poem written very shortly after Dante's death, 1321, in 1328, by a Jewish acquaintance of Dante, Immanuel Romano (Manoello Giudeo), and which is a Divina Commedia written in Hebrew, its guide to the author named Daniel (perhaps, Dante), a_Machbaroth_, now translated and published in Italian. There's a lovely sentence in the review: 'Immanuel e Daniele salgono poi al cielo arrampicandosi sulla scala di Giacobbe ' (Emanuel and Daniel climb to the stars, scrabbling up Jacob's Ladder). And in heaven amongst the women is Pharoah's daughter who rescued Moses. Cesare Segre, who writes the review, says that a difference between Dante and Immanuel is that Immanuel sees men's crimes as not one alone, but part of a web he chooses to weave, sending waves upon waves about him of wrong. A book I buy for our library. We have many copies of the Commedia, in Italian, in English, in Swedish. And we have the Moslem predecessor of Dante's Commedia, translated from Arabic into Italian. Where Mahomet is taken on his voyage through Hell and Paradise by the Angel Gabriel. It shall truly be an ecumenical library!

I am dreaming of having an annual 'Cena in Piazzale' in the Piazzale Donatello English Cemetery! Since I plan on tables that are boards on trestles in the Gatehouse anyway, this will be possible, for we can move these outdoors to feed a multitude! Don Patrizio funds his parish work through his Cena in Piazza and bonds his congregation with it. He reminds me of Cyril of Jerusalem saying 'Christ girds himself with the towel of our humanity, to minister to that which is sick'. We can do the same with the Biblioteca Fioretta Mazzei!

Blessings,