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Last week, I reported on the visit to Canada by King Charles III. Tina enjoyed The Distance Between Us by Maggie O’Farrell.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, a rabbit hole inspired by Call the Midwife, led me to Julian of Norwich. I was looking at the current status of Anglican/Episcopal nuns when I discovered that there is a monastic house in Wisconsin called The Order of Julian of Norwich.

From their About Julian page, I learned this:

Dame Julian lived in Norwich, England in the 14th and early 15th century, and spent much of her life as an anchorite, a vowed religious living by herself in a small room, called an anchorhold, attached to the parish church of St Julian at Conisford in Norwich.

I was also aware of the most famous quote from the writing of Julian of Norwich:

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

That quote is a source of comfort to me, so I wanted to learn a little more about Julian of Norwich. I was in the mood for something longer than the About Julian page or the Wikipedia article. But I wasn’t engaged enough to read a biography or Julian’s writings, the earliest English language text known to be written by a woman, Revelations of Divine Love.

I ended up on Hoopla. I tend to forget about this library resource and, also, about the huge variety of material that Hoopla offers. In this case, I discovered a series of lectures about Julian of Norwich by Professor Christina M. Carlson published as an audiobook by Now You Know Media. That company is now called Learn25 to highlight that each lecture is 25 minutes long or less, making the format excellent for a daily learning practice. I had no idea that Hoopla offered courses! They also have streaming video, comic books, and music.

The first several lectures in A Mystics Work: Julian of Norwich, put Julian in the context of history, religion, and the English language. I found all of that fascinating.

I was a little more skeptical of the later chapters that covered Julian’s theology, but it turned out that I needn’t have worried.

I grew up as an earnest small-town Presbyterian.

Church didn’t suit me as well in college. I could never replicate that small-town experience of being surrounded by people who knew me my whole life. Also, even then, I found a judgmentalist streak in the church that didn’t match what I’d been taught about love and forgiveness and redemption.

After college, I made some attempt to reengage by reading the works of founders of religions, only to discover that they were the words of mean-spirited arrogant men.

Julian of Norwich is the opposite of that and her writings and theology reflect her humble approach to a god who is revealed to be love. I wonder if I might have had a completely different life in relation to church if I had encountered Julian of Norwich instead of John Calvin in my twenties.

I recommend A Mystics Work: Julian of Norwich for anyone who wants an introduction in an audio format that can be completed in under three and a half hours.

Do you use Hoopla? What are some of your interesting finds?