Julian of Norwich and Other Tibetan Lamas

In 1988, Vincent Gillespie, J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at Oxford, and Maggie Ross (Martha Reeves), an Anglican Solitary or Anchorite, made a commitment to read and discuss Julian’s A Revelation together. ₁ But this was no ordinary collaborative reading endeavor. Although they together brought years of study, reflection, and discipline to this process, both acknowledged the humility with which they began this journey. For her part, Ms. Ross shared her realization that Julian’s text was “far more important than I had suspected. In consequence … I held myself innocent of the text.” ₂  And the seasoned Oxford professor and much-published author confessed that A Revelation was “one of the hardest texts I had yet encountered.” ₃  The conversations took place ultimately in Ms. Ross’ flat, where the two partners in dialogue would prepare a “a pot of tea or coffee” and arm themselves with “bibles in various translations, scripture concordances, and concordances of Julian’s texts” – with the latter being developed on the spot as they “went along.” Describing something of their reading format, they write:

When we began a new chapter, we would read the whole thing, slowly and deliberately, always in Middle English to savor the taste and texture of the words. This gentle falling of the word on the ear was very important. ₄

Sessions generally lasted “from 45 minutes to several hours,” and they might sometimes end when one said, “’I can’t do any more.’” And with a remarkable lack of fanfare for the breadth of their joint labor, they state: “This work began in 1988 and ended in 1995.” ₅

Regarding the manner of reading itself, they celebrate that without “deadlines,” “’outcomes,’” or “’deliverables,’” they were free “to read SLOWLY, often spending weeks of meetings and hours of reflection on a single chapter or passage.” ₆  And they stress that the uniqueness of Julian’s text invites and necessitates such a posture of encounter and that they used “a version of an ancient monastic form of dialogue with the text derived from lectio divina (divine reading) of Scripture.” ₇  Quoting the Benedictine scholar, Jean Leclercq, they explain that such a process involves “assimilating the content of a text by means of a kind of mastication which releases its full flavor.” ₈

Along these same lines, as if to prepare the reader for the process and the project that they introduce, the authors place the following quotation at the very beginning of their article:

If we simply listen without expectations, hearing the emptiness behind the sounds, we can become sensitive to its inner quality and the message it carries.

The source is a book entitled, Luminous Emptiness: Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead, by another British author, Francesca Fremantle. ₉ And Ms. Fremantle’s writing compliments well the gracious openness that Professor Gillespie and Ms. Ross are proposing and practicing with regard to Julian’s writings: “[T]he entire text (not to mention the method) is about un-grasping.” ₁₀ As if in affirming response, the Buddhist scholar explains that “grasping” involves “appropriation or taking to oneself, and it is symbolized by a figure picking fruit from a tree. Grasping is the opposite of giving and letting go.” ₁₁

Endnotes

1. The title of this meditation is taken from the Wycliff Bible (1382) translation of a portion of Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, Chapter 2, Verse 3. Here are the Vulgate and the Wycliff Bible translations the epistle’s first verses side by side:

1. (Endnote 1 continued) The New Revised Standard Version’s translation of these verses is: “1. If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, 2. make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. 4. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Maggie Ross’s real name is Martha Reeves, and if more information about her is desired, please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Reeves_(anchorite) And her blog, “Voice in the Wilderness,” can be accessed at: http://ravenwilderness.blogspot.com/ Professor Gillespie’s Oxford webpage is: https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-vincent-gillespie-0
2. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “’With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich.” Mystics Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 3/4, Penn State University Press, 2004, page 127. Maggie Ross also states, again quite modestly: “I had no university-level training in English as the English understand that …. At our first meeting I was absolutely terrified; I had no idea how this game was played. I imagined that there were arcane rules, known only to initiates. Vincent, however, was patient while I floundered about (though I suspect he must have thought me quite mad for a time). Slowly we began to trust each other” (Ibid.). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20716485
3. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich,” page 128. Professor Gillespie confides that this unique reading experience arrived at a very particular moment in his scholarly engagement of “Middle English lyrics and mystical texts”: “I had begun to argue that religious imagery always aspired to its own disappearance, whether it was used in the tradition of negative (or apophatic) theology, which explicitly distrusted the human imagination, or in the more positive (or cataphatic) tradition, that tolerated images as teaching and thinking aids. But I felt that I had reached something of a dead end; that I could not make further progress in exploring the distinctiveness of style, texture, and strategy that I felt in these works” (Ibid. pages 127-128). http://www.jstor.org/stable/20716485
4. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich,” page 128.
5. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich,” page 129.
6. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich,” page 129.
7. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich,” page 130.
8. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich,” page 130. The classic text to which the article’s authors are referring here is Jean Leclercq’s, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God. Translated by Catharine Misrahi. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974. First published in 1961, the book is “composed of a series of lectures given to young monks at the Institute of Monastic Studies at Sant’Anselmo in Rome during the winter of 1955-1956” (Ibid. vii). And online copy is available through Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/loveoflearningde0000lecl/page/n3/mode/2up TM and Father Leclercq were “regular correspondents,” and their exchanges would seem to have begun around the year 1950 with “the discovery of an unpublished text of St. Bernard of Clairvaux among the manuscripts at Gethsemani [abbey].” Thomas Merton, The School of Charity: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Renewal and Spiritual Direction. Selected and edited by Brother Patrick Hart. New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, page 19. Brother Patrick offers the following helpful context for TM’s research and study interests in this period, interests which overlapped a great deal with those of Father Leclercq: “A decade before Vatican II, Thomas Merton was already returning to the sources of monasticism with his [teaching] conferences on Benedict, Cassian, Pachomius, Evagrius, and other writers of the earliest tradition. He was also moving into the twelfth-century Cistercian ‘evangelists’: Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry, Guerric of Igny, and Aelred of Rievaulx.” Survival or Prophesy? The Letters of Thomas Merton and Jean Leclercq. Edited by Brother Patrick Hart, New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, page 6.
9. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich.” Mystics Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 3/4, Penn State University Press, 2004, page 126. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20716485. The quotation originates in Francesca Fremantle, Luminous Emptiness: Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2001, page 183. An online copy of this text is available via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/luminousemptines0000frem
10. Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, “With Mekeness Aske Perseverantly’: On Reading Julian of Norwich,” page 129.
11. Francesca Fremantle, Luminous Emptiness: Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2001, page 25. Without intending any disrespect to Ms. Ross or Professor Gillespie, their article seemingly – unless I missed it – does not cite Dr. Fremantle as the author of the quoted words or her book as the source. The quoted words of Dr. Fremantle come from the following paragraph: “Speech is creative power, the power of mantra. All languages are sacred, not just Sanskrit, and any word or sound can be perceived as mantra. If we simply listen without expectations, hearing the emptiness behind the sound, we can become sensitive to its inner quality and the message that it carries. It is the music of nonself and wakefulness. The [11/12^th century Tibetan] poet Milarepa is often portrayed with one hand cupped to his ear, listening intently to his own songs as they arise out of his emptiness and silence. All speech can become the poetry of the dharma when it flows from that sense of spaciousness.” (Ibid. page 25. Emphasis mine.) Dr. Fremantle “received her doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. She is a scholar and translator of Sanskrit and Tibetan works and was a student of Chögyam Trungpa for many years.” Source: https://www.shambhala.com/authors/a-f/francesca-fremantle.html TM met Chögyam Trungpa in Calcutta, early in his Asian pilgrimage. In a journal entry dated October 19^th, the Trappist writes: “Yesterday, quite by chance, I met Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche and his secretary, a nice young Englishman whose Tibetan name is Kunga. Today I had lunch with them and talked about going to Bhutan. But the important thing is that we are people who have been waiting to meet for a long time.” Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton. New York: New Directions Books, 1975, page 30.