Fairy Cake

In my browsing this morning I found out that it was the Anglican Feast Day for St. Julian of Norwich on Friday. It seems that she saw in her visions God in (something the size of) a hazel nut. The revelation that God is everywhere and in everything shouldn't be a surprise. "The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word." Heb 1:3.
Even the atheists recognise that the universe has something of itself in every part of it.

Total Perspective Vortex - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her.

And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a single piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

I have not read much about Julian or much of her work, though I do remember (something of) a long piece I read at Pleshey on my first Reader training retreat many many years ago. It had to do with God not being angry, or rather not being capable of being angry. The context I think was individual Christians. I found it very hard to believe that I could not make God angry, not that I was trying to, just that I was so inept that I couldn't see how he couldn't be angry. Likewise how could God not be angry when two 'Christian' nations are at war with each other (e.g. WWII). Is this the reason that western Europe is such a Godless place? - because God is angry?

I struggled with the concepts for a while and eventually left it alone, but every time I hear of her, it all comes straight back. Maybe I do her an injustice on such flimsy evidence - just maybe.