6 minute read
Literal Actions
emry sunderland
For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I will help you.—Isaiah 41:13
though it’s unclear if she was living in seclusion at this time, or if it is what prompted her decision, we do know that she wrote about it and that it laid the foundation for her steadfast faith.
Imagine stepping into a room not much bigger than a closet. Three tall walls without any windows. It’s stuffy and claustrophobic. You say goodbye to friends or family. A few hugs and tears are shed before the fourth and final wall is ceremonially bricked up, sealing you in. Forever. Row by row, as the mortar sets, you prepare inwardly for your new life. There’s only a tiny window where food is passed through. Should someone fail to come weekly or monthly, or your funds—or the funds raised by the devoted townspeople— should run out, you’ll go without. You could very well die in this ready-made tomb, but then, it was your choice. No one coerced you.
The last brick is in place. It’s done. Now what?
The life of Sister Julian Norwich, the famous Christian anchoress used to scare me. I learned about her from a class I took in college on late-medieval women. One of the few female voices of this period in the Western tradition, her memoir, Revelations of Divine Love, describes her decision to leave behind her everyday life for one in permanent seclusion and solely dedicated to God. A child when the Black Death was raging through Europe, Julian1 would’ve lived a life where uncertainty about the future was prevalent. Though there is little known about her upbringing, history shows that around the age of thirty, she fell ill and became very close to death. During this time, she had many visions about Christ’s life, and I’ve ruminated Julian’s moment of no return—the moment that she essentially left her friends,
family, society, technology, and more, to live in a very small, confined space at the St. Julian Church, Conisford, a sub-borough of Norwich. I’ve contemplating the amount of conviction it must’ve taken, on her part, to commit to this literal action. A literal action is any time we find ourselves living our faith through literal interpretation. It is usually a heightened vow or impetus to live with greater faith that propels us to live our faith in a deeper way. In Julian’s case, she committed to a prison-like life to experience Christ’s suffering as deeply as she could. If I stay thinking about the “what-ifs” that she’d faced, it makes me freeze into a state of inertia and fear, a great shutting-down internally, the very definition of suffering. But I wanted to know her type of faith, her leaping off and surrendering to uncertainty.
To understand her choice, I took my own literal action through a sacred four-day fasting in a shelter not much bigger than Sister Julian’s. It took some planning, to scout a location that would be away from society, noise, people, and more. And then there was the matter of who to share what I was planning… Those within my sacred community were supportive, but others, like coworkers were concerned, worried, fearful even, and voiced that they thought it was a bad idea. In fact, I learned a lot about my faith in these talks, how we’re prone to fear when anything new is presented, or our everyday life challenged. The more they showed their fear, the easier it was for me to exercise my faith to be unwavering in my vow to fast. Without knowing it, I’d suspended fear for anticipation and a willingness to serve God through my devotion. It was like planning for a really amazing vacation and the only entertainment was going to be my prayer, my love, my walk, and my faith; no amusement park needed! It surprised me, in fact, that more people I knew weren’t doing it. But then, many hadn’t heard about Sister Julian, or ruminated on her discipline and willingness to surrender to the material world in utter unfolding of faith.
Regardless of the concerns, I didn’t waiver, and I did take time to research any health risks and consult a doctor to appease a loved one. A few days leading up to the official day that my fast would begin, I made a small shelter from mostly things found in the woods, and then began to offer prayers to prepare my mind for what was to come. Once there, alone, I had four days ahead with no food, water, technology, no personal items, no chairs or books or fancy gadgets—no regal bathroom and toilet paper or showers, no conversation, no rain coat! (I did have a blanket but no pillow). Nor did I have any lights to turn on when it got dark. For four days, I had only my commitment to God, myself, and the support of my community, and every moment was spent walking to the point of exhaustion in constant prayer. “A literal action is any time we find ourselves living our faith through literal interpretation. It is usually a heightened vow or impetus to live with greater faith that propels us to live our faith in a deeper way.”
As soon as I was ”closed in,” my connection to Sister Julian grew immediately. It’s like I knew and understood I had work to do. There was no time to be worrisome or fearful. I came with hundreds of prayers to offer on behalf of my family, community, town, the world, and made a small path around my shelter to walk and pray, only taking small rests, and then back to walking and praying. Most people might assume that I experienced difficulty not eating or drinking. Food no, but thirst, yes, but it kept me moving, kept me praying and recommitting to my prayer. Lack of modern conveniences, the darkness, they became my freedom. By day two, I understood Julian wasn’t living walled-up in a state of fear; I saw that she had her commitment to God and nothing else mattered. It becomes your focus; the world, just like she explains in her testament, falls away.
You learn a lot about yourself when you leave everything behind. Even for a short period of four days. Time slows. Your prayer changes, as it gets more honest, less on the surface, less about things you thought mattered, but were just holding space under the banner of worry. In fact, you start to peel your perceptions away, revealing your own pure state, allowing you to hear with a deeper presence and wholeness.
Only when I made a commitment to a literal action did I realize the depth of Sister Julian experience. We may, from a modern mindset, see her choice to be walled in as somewhere between extraordinary or extreme, but it is a great freedom. The moment you make the commitment, is the moment you actually relinquish suffering and surrender to a greater faith. That’s Sister Julian’s secret.
In the trial, your literal action teaches you to deepen your faith through a continual giving-up of fear, worry, and doubt, through prayer. Of course, we don’t need a walled tomb or a four-day fast to discover opportunities to practice, but rather, we can recognize each moment is available to reclaim our conviction and commit to the Lord’s promise that we’re always cared for.
