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Before I say anything I'd like to make something clear: I have very little experience with religion and religious things. When I was young, my parents and grandparents would bring me to church only on Christmas Eve. I never went every Sunday, I never read a religious text, I was never told to pray every night, or anything like that. I have a hard time thinking of anyone in my extended family who is religious enough for me to be able to tell just from their actions. So basically, when it comes to religion I am really uneducated. I'm even ashamed to admit that growing up, churches and religious things scared me and made me uncomfortable because I couldn't understand why people felt so strongly about these things. Even as a teenager, people simply talking about religion made me feel out of place. I never lashed out at anybody or said anything about it, I only kept it to myself, but I still felt bad that I couldn't fathom why they were so passionate. I guess I'm writing about this now because I don't want to accidentally offend anyone with my ignorance. And now that I'm older and (by my own opinion) more mature, I think I can approach the subject without feeling uneasy. Enough about boring old me though; onto the readings.

Julian of Norwich, just like Hildegard previously, shocked me in how powerful her faith was. As I read about what an anchorite is I tried to picture myself doing something like that. Surely, I told myself, I could shut myself away from the world, because I've done that before for a couple of months at a time. But to this extent? Probably not. I had video games and TV and books to keep myself occupied during those times and if I had been left to my thoughts and my lack of faith the experience would have been unbearable. If I had all of my means of entertainment taken away and was told, "Spend your time praying and listening to the services" I would be completely lost. I came to the conclusion that these people had to be either really strong or really devoted to what they believed in. I suspect it was a combination of both. Voluntarily becoming dead to the world and spending your life in a cell is something most people could not do, regardless of how much of a connection they felt with God.

The events that were occurring during Julian's life were some of the most horrific to have ever occurred in history. I would not be surprised to read that in times of hardship a lot of people throw their faith aside, saying that God should never have given them such torment. I WAS surprised to read about all of this horrible stuff followed simply by a statement that Julian "remained resilient." I think this shows a strong conviction that goes beyond religion and can just be considered awesome. She was, all else aside, a strong, determined, and absolutely dedicated woman. It is probably hard to find many more people in history that could have done this. Well, most of you could probably name a bunch of people that did stuff like this, but I have no idea myself. So from what I've read so far, I can't help but to be impressed by this woman (and Hildegard of course).

My reactions stayed pretty much the same throughout: I was simply impressed. I'm not very passionate about anything in particular, so to read about someone who was filled with so much passion, I was intrigued and I found myself wishing I could be more like that. I hope my ignorance didn't shine through too much. That's why I tried to keep this post on the shorter side, because I feel like I've already shared my feelings on the readings and I don't want to try over-analyzing them only to look silly. Stuff like this I need to read more than once for it to set in, so I'll probably be rereading these PDFs a few times this week. Though I don't expect myself to come up with anything profound or more interesting than anything that might be already posted on the blog, since my experience with this subject is so insignificant.