"Truth sees God;
wisdom gazes on God.
And these two produce a third,
a holy, wondering delight in God,
which is love."
Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, Penguin, 1976, 130.
Few writers manage to combine commonsense conclusion and speculative reflection as successfully as Julian. (A second thought: after writing that I realise it could easily be written, "commonsense reflection and speculative conclusion", which would be equally true.)
Some of her sentences, like the above, read like a theological prose-poem celebrating those experiences of God that sharpen, deepen and extend our grasp of the Love that grasps us – and my use of three different terms is deliberate.
Loving God can never be one dimensional – it is the response of our being to God. It begins with understanding truth, grows to contemplative wisdom, and flowers into worship – which in the end is that deep, transformative response of our being to the Being of God.
Leave a Reply