and ever shall, for God loveth it."--Yet again the soul breaks away
to its own, with the natural flight of a bird from its Autumn nest at
the call of an unseen Spring to the far-off land that is nearer still
than its nest, because it is in its heart. "But what is to _me_ sothly
[in verity] the Maker, the Keper and the Lover,--I cannot tell, for
till I am Substantially oned [deeply united] to Him, I may never have
full rest ne very blisse; that is to sey, that I be so festined to
Him, that there is right nowte that is made betwix my God and me" (v.,
viii.). This "fastening" is all that in Julian's book represents that
needful process wherein the truth of asceticism has a part. It is not
essentially a process of detaching the thought from created things of
time--still less one of detaching the heart from created beings of
eternity--but a process of more and more allowing and presenting the
man to be fastened closely to God by means of the original longing
of the soul, the influence of the Holy Ghost, and the discipline of
life with its natural tribulations, which by their purifying serve to
strengthen the affections that remaining pass through them. "_But only
in Thee I have all._" On the way this discovery of the soul at peace
must needs be sometimes a word for exclusion, in parting and pressing
onward from things that are made: in the end it is the welcome,
all-inclusive. And Julian, notwithstanding her enclosure as a recluse,
is one of those that, happy in nature and not too much hindered by
conditions of life, possess for large use _by the way_ the mystical
peace of fulfilled possession through virtue of freedom from bondage
to self. For it is by means of the tyranny of the "self," regarding
chiefly itself in its claims and enjoyments, that creature things can
be intruded between the soul and God; and always, in some way, the meek
inherit the earth. "All things are yours; and ye are Christ's."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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