Marvelous, Medieval Margery
I wandered into Medieval England this Spring and tarried much longer than expected at the anchor hold window of Dame Julian of Norwich. I was captivated by her unique voice; for she, more than any saint I have ever known, interpreted for me the language my soul longed to hear from God; a language that sings of tenderness, of intimate mercies, and loving solicitude in our sorrows. I did not want to leave Julian’s window, nor bid farewell to this calm and lovely space where I felt, in no small measure, the romance that is God wooing a soul.
I am not an anchoress; that bright lover and her Beloved walled round in the silent air of Heaven, though part of me knows that desire. I intuitively understand its language, though I do not live within its walls. I am only a wife, a mother, a problem solver of daily dilemmas. My days are filled with the noise that is the world. But I cannot for the life of me keep away from that mysterious place where mystics tryst with their Beloved. It has always been so. I am some sort of odd hybrid living in the world but unable to leave Julian’s window. I often find myself wandering lonely roads in my mind, as a lost lover wanders, seeking Him whom my heart desires – all the while distracted by my pots and pans. ‘What am I to do?’ I ask Julian aloud as I read the last page of her Revelations and reluctantly turn from her window. She seems to gently catch my sleeve and whisper: “All will be well. I have a friend. You will like Margery Kempe, I think.” I had heard that name before. It was rumored that Margery was the woman entrusted with Julian’s own copy of her Revelations of Divine Love; Julian did not give them to a priest, to a nun, to another anchoress: she gave them to a busy wife and mother who also inexplicably found herself tarrying long at the mystic’s window like myself. What answer was she seeking there? I caught sight of Margery on my road out of Norwich, and I followed her home. As a matter of fact, I followed Margery right out of Julian’s book into the pages of her own, entitled most practically: The Book of Margery Kempe. Our journey ended at a most ordinary place; the busy and bustling Medieval town of Lynn. And there I entered the delightful orbit of Margery’s world.
She is a young girl, when her story opens, born into a prosperous family; her father a successful merchant and the mayor of the town. She is proud that she is of ‘society’. She likes to be thought well of and admired. She considers herself quite the trend setter. She revels in clothes, adores large, ornate hats and has a penchant for slit sleeved dresses that daringly show colored silk underneath. Apparently, these are all the rage among her bevy of friends, but frowned upon by the stuffy matriarchs of the town for whose opinion she cares not a fig. She loves parties, is a lively dancer and a consummate flirt. She is perhaps spoiled by an indulgent father and is used to having her own way. I was admittedly enjoying this interesting little world of Margery Kempe, but also wondering what Julian was about sending me to this quintessentially Bourgeois woman flitting about town in her slit sleeved dresses, when I had asked for a mystic. Then I got my answer.
At the age of 20 Margery finds herself married to John Kempe, a man slightly beneath her in status. John is a simple, loving man by all accounts, who has no idea what he has gotten himself into by marrying the likes of strong-willed Margery. She soon becomes pregnant with their first child and finds herself face to face with that most ordinary but formidable nemesis of motherhood: morning sickness. Margery is overwhelmed by it. She is so ill and weak that she thinks she is going to die. She begins to feel a new and frightening sensation: emotional fragility. In this broken state, she begins to think on her life and to be distressed by how shallow she has become. Her petty little sins and her larger, buried ones begin to stir anxiously within her. She feels a fear of hell for the first time in her life; and an urgency to confess her sins. She does so, but she holds one sin back. She never says which one. She diligently does penance for it hoping vainly that this will help, but she cannot bring herself to the humiliation of saying it out loud in confession. The devil, of course, takes full advantage. All through her pregnancy she struggles with her sinfulness and guilt. When the baby is born, she is so exhausted that she “goes out of her mind and is oppressed by demons”. She descends into a deep depression and helplessly wanders in a state of unreality and sadness which she cannot by any will of her own, resurface from. In short, Margery completely loses her self- sufficiency. All seems lost to her in this prolonged, profound darkness. She despondently begins to call herself ‘the creature’ and weeps that her suffering will have no end.
Then comes a voice. A sweet and tender voice heard for the first time as Margery lays tossing restlessly on her bed one evening:
….our Lord Christ Jesus- ever to be trusted, worshiped be His name, never forsaking his servant in time of need - appeared to his creature who had forsaken him, in the likeness of a man, the most seemly, most beauteous, and most amiable that ever might be seen with man's eye, clad in a mantle of purple silk, sitting upon her bedside, looking upon her with so blessed a countenance that she was strengthened in all her spirits, and he said to her these words: "Daughter, why have you forsaken me, and I never forsook you?
That is all He said, but it was enough. Her heart weeps at this tender chiding, but she feels calm descend and her wits return. This truly was a mystic vision. But it was not at all like Julian’s visions. This was a beautiful, gentle-voiced Man, clothed in a way that Margery would admire and remember, in a purple silk tunic. He did not stand far apart from her but sat most familiarly on her bed while holding her trembling hands in His. This was God taking on the ways of men, with all the old familiar ways unmarred. He came to Margery in the way Margery most needed and desired. And He said something quite astonishing in its import: that He had always been there even if she had not, and He had waited anxiously for her return. These are the unmistakable words of a wounded lover. I expected the next sentence to reveal that Margery would soon take the veil of a nun or wall herself up in an anchor hold seeking to find Him only there and to hear His voice again. But she did no such thing. Somehow she knew that this lover was to be sought and found right where she lived. It was so gentle and familiar a voice that it wove right into the fabric of her Bourgeois life as a golden thread to be loved and remembered with trust and contentment. Margery was certain, now, that Jesus dwelled among her pots and pans. He loved her there, and in that place, and made it holy. She determined not to forsake Him again.
It does not say if she heard His voice again throughout the next twenty years. They were busy years, for Margery had thirteen other children in that time. And like us, the cares of the world and her growing family slowly drowned out the memory of her Lover’s voice. The lure of honors, of being esteemed, of being the best dressed at events, her stirring envy toward her neighbors for things they had that she could not afford. She still liked being the one all the women looked up to and wanted to imitate. Above all, she knew that to maintain this persona she needed money, and she was determined to make it so. She put her practical, determined self to work while her husband looked on in wonder. She gung-ho entered the brewing business and it was going so well that she was looked up to in the town as her dream come true: a wealthy, prosperous, Medieval dame who dressed with panache.
But true lovers are not so easily dissuaded by foolish beloveds. Jesus did not give up on this ambitious Bourgeois woman whom He had chosen as his own. He caught her attention through a rather severe mercy. Her brewery business mysteriously failed and left her penniless. And just like that, all her fair-weather friends turned on her in her failures. She was devastated, embarrassed, and depressed that all her mighty efforts were for naught and all her friendships so shallow. This was a veritable deathblow to her highest aspirations: popularity, security, and the admiration of her peers. But here is where Margery begins to shine. This time she DID resolve to change her life for good. A memory stirs within her that it was her suffering so long ago that brought Jesus to her door with His tender voice. Perhaps it would again. She began to fast, to pray, to remember what Jesus looked like when he had appeared to her the first time in so familiar and loving of ways. She resolved to show Him the same love that He had shown her and told Him so in no plain words.
An excerpt from the Book of Margery
Then came a gift, a token that He had heard her. He gave her the gift of tears. This is called a gift, but it was really a cross for her to bear. She would cry uncontrollably in the middle of Mass, or while praying in Church, or whenever she thought on His passion. Not just tears but sobbing, wailing, a crying that she could not control or stop no matter how hard she tried. The kind of thing that would get a small Medieval town’s tongues wagging on street corners. This was the cross that was to crucify her love of being thought well of and admired. It nearly killed her when people would shake their heads and gossip that her tears were from the devil, or that she was a terrible woman. They all turned on her and she who had loved the esteem of others was left desolate. She was abandoned and mocked in the town. She was despised, penniless and weeping into her slit silk sleeves.
Then, as if on cue, the intimate conversations started. Jesus appeared to her once again, sometimes like a friend and other times like a son or brother. He told her the most tender, homey things. He sat on her bed, patted her face, sent her a little robin to sing the sweet music of Heaven in her ears. He spoke softly. Not in any way was His appearance overbearing or frightening. He came in a way as ordinary as hers. He filled her over-anxious heart with assurances that He would always be there when no one else would, and he often so patiently encouraged her to persevere. He even thanked her graciously for the sufferings she offered, because He knew how hard they were for her to give. She was alone, mocked, shunned, even when her presence brought her companions great graces. It must have been awful for her as an ordinary, bourgeois woman who defined herself by her place in society. That was Margery’s hardest suffering - the thing that hurt the most. And she gave it to God over and over each day. He never left her again. He would ask for many more difficult things in the years to come, and she would generously give them.
It was perhaps after this second conversion that she found Julian’s anchor hold window and was entrusted with Julian’s writings. No doubt in them she was to discover the secret catalyst to this intimacy. It is through our sufferings that the Lover comes, no matter where we are. He cannot resist its siren song. It draws Him to our hearts like a lodestone. This is the way of lovers who grow to be like each other. They talk about the same things. They love the same things. Margery could not hear Jesus’s voice until she learned to sing her suffering as He did. Suffering became the anchor hold of her heart, the trysting place where He would always find her, even in a small Medieval town surrounded by fourteen children, or on the road as she made her many pilgrimages. I knew now what Julian was about in showing Margery to me.
Margery is my saint. The saint of a woman who finds herself seeking God as Lover in a world of distraction, who is determined to learn the secret of singing to Jesus in suffering, because she simply longs to hear His voice. Margery urges me to say yes to whatever it is that hurts me most. And it can be small to others - no matter - if it is large to me. And right there in that offering Jesus will know me as His own. I may not have visions or the gift of tears, but Margery assures me He will always be there at the trysting place. And He will whisper the most intimate, beautiful things in the silence of my soul’s anchor hold. I had to travel the roads of Medieval England to find this way to Jesus in my own life. That I was not wrong to seek Him so intimately in this busy world where He waits for me. He listens for my song each and every day with the baited breath of a lover. How then, can I keep from singing?
