What’s at the center – the center of your life, the center of your world, the center of your existence? What does everything else revolve around?
If someone were to ask us that question, we’d like to think that we’d have a lofty and inspirational reply to offer. But, if truth were told, a close observation of our lives would probably reveal that they mostly revolved around fairly mundane daily events and obligations…things like making meals, doing household chores, returning calls and emails, and meeting the demands of a busy work schedule. We get so caught up with these necessities of daily life, that an occasional awakening jolt to something bigger and more significant is a welcome reminder to reorient ourselves to a worthier center point.
One of our very favorite authors and thinkers about reclaiming a significant center point is the 14th century English mystic known as Julian of Norwich. Her actual name is not known, but history remembers her as “Julian” simply because she lived the majority of her life as an anchoress in a small cell, or anchorhold, attached to the side of the Church of St. Julian in Norwich. Her anchorhold had two windows. One window on the inside wall looked into the chancel of the church, and from this window she could observe the daily mass and receive Holy Communion. The second window was on the outside wall which overlooked the churchyard, and from this window she greeted her neighbors and offered them spiritual counsel.
What would lead someone to pin her life so closely to the church in this way, and center her existence upon it? Well, according to her writings (the oldest books in the English language by a woman), it began when she suffered a near fatal brush with an illness. In all likelihood, the illness was the bubonic plague, which swept three times through her region of England and resulted in Norwich losing an estimated half of its population. During a fevered spell, Julian received a series of mystical visions whose interpretations became central to her for the remainder of her life.
In praying to know the meaning of the visions, she received the response that the love of God is at the center of all things. All of her later extensive and thoughtful writings probed and interpreted that insight. The confidence she felt in the steady, loving guidance of God in the world, despite the hardships and heartbreaks that people of her day endured, led to her write the famous assurance many of us treasure: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” For Julian, that was a truth and was utterly central.
What’s central for you? If you were to strip away daily duties and trivial activities, what would remain as your bedrock? If you peered into the depths of your heart and soul, what assurances dwell there? We all need to rely upon our foundational claims now and then. Why not keep our lives focused upon something truly wondrous and worthy? If something could jolt us into the awareness that by God’s grace, “all shall be well,” then wouldn’t life be well-centered?
