Quote of the Day (Julian of Norwich, on Spiritual Rest)

“This is the reason why we do not feel complete ease in our hearts and souls: we look here for satisfaction in things which are so trivial, where there is no rest to be found, and do not know our God who is almighty, all wise, all good; he is rest itself.  God wishes to be known, and is pleased that we should rest in him; for all that is below him doses nothing to satisfy us; and this is why, until all that is made seems as nothing, no soul can be at rest.  When a soul sets all at nothing for love, to have him who is everything, then he is able to receive spiritual rest.”—English anchoress and Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, from Revelations of Divine Love (1393), excerpted in The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, edited by Bernard McGinn (2006)

Quote of the Day (Julian of Norwich, on ‘Seeing Motherhood in God’)

“I understood three ways of seeing motherhood in God: the first is that he is the ground of our natural creation, the second is the taking on of our nature (and there the motherhood of grace begins), the third is the motherhood of works, and in this there is, by the same grace, an enlargement of length and breadth and of height and of deepness without end, and all is his own love.”—English anchoress and Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, from Revelations of Divine Love (1393), excerpted in The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, edited by Bernard McGinn (2006)

(Statue of Julian of Norwich at Norwich Cathedral, by David Holgate)