WHAT PRICE SECURITY? WHERE ARE THE THREATS COMING FROM?

 OpenDemocracy provides some useful detail, asks the right questions - and comes up with the obvious answer:

GLOBAL WARMING 

Expanding the UK military won’t tackle the biggest threat to security   by Paul Rogers       We are reaching a period of near-global militarisation. Military spending worldwide soared by 9% to a record high of $2.2tn last year and is likely to grow further in 2024, aided by Russia’s war in Ukraineand Israel’s assault on Gaza. Against this backdrop, Rob Bauer, the chair of the NATO military committee and an admiral in the Dutch Navy, last month said that countries must increase their capacity to produce weapons and consider plans for mobilisation, increasing the size of reserve forces and even conscription. This spending and messaging mean the world’s military-industrial complexes are looking forward to boom times in the coming years – and senior British politicians and military are as keen as any to help bring it on. Defence secretary Grant Shapps last month warned that we are moving from “a post-war to a pre-war world” and must respond accordingly, while the head of the British Army, General Patrick Sanders, said the UK should take “preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing”, such a change being

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY - JULIAN OF NORWICH - Part Two

 I am publishing this second post on Julian of Norwich Revelations of Divine Love a day after the first post in order to give more detail about the contents of this extraordinary work. I find it breathtaking to record that this medieval book of Christian mysticism containing 87 chapters of devotions is the earliest surviving example of a book in the English language known to have been written by a woman. 

MDCLXX = 1670. This is the year of the first publication of the book. 

Julian's book is centred on the sixteen mystical visions or "shewings" she received in 1373 when she was thirty years old. She had become seriously ill, probably from a form of plague, and was not expected to survive. The visions appeared to her for several hours in one night, with a final revelation occurring the following night. Later, fully recovered, she wrote in her vernacular language, Middle English, an account of each vision, producing a manuscript now referred to as the Short Text. She then developed her ideas for decades whilst living as an anchoress in a cell attached to St Julian's Church in Norwich and completed an extended version of her writings, now known as the Long Text. 

Her work remained very largely unread for the best part of three centuries. The first publication of the

FRUITS OF THE MARAZION QUAKER LIBRARY - JULIAN OF NORWICH (FROM 1373) 'REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE' - Part 1

 I ordered two copies of the Penguin Classics edition (1966) of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love earlier this week in the light of the attention and interest at our Meeting House in Marazion. Referenced in vocal ministry this month, it is clear that Mother Julian's mystic insights have touched the lives of some Quakers in our community and there are others who want to know more. 

Detail from David Holgate's modern statue of Julian of Norwich, depicted holding a copy of Revelations of Divine Love. It was added to the west front of Norwich Cathedral in 2000.

My own copy of the Revelations has been with me for over forty years, even before I became a part-time post-graduate student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich between 1995 and 2003. The city of Norwich is dear both to my heart and Louise my wife who worked there as an Open University advisor; my doctoral thesis (2003) is titled: 'Drink in Victorian Norwich' and serves as a contribution to the history of the working-class and its connections with other social groups within Norwich; there would be occasions as I traversed the city as a researcher when I passed close by the site of Mother Julian's church to which her cell as an anchorite had been attached. Below is a piece written by Simon Knott in 2023 about this church. It tells you much about both St Julian church and Mother Julian - the video is a portal into her life if you imagine hard enough. In the second part of this blogpost I will expand more about her life and her spiritual insights as a mystic. 

St Julian Church, Norwich This crisp little church sits on one of the alleys that ran from Ber Street to King Street below. Its neighbours are mostly new apartments and houses, but for centuries this was Conesford, an industrial quarter and a port, with the tenements, inns and brothels you might expect. In the late Middle Ages, much of East Anglia's stained glass and memorial brasses were made in these narrow lanes. In the 18th and 19th Centuries this was an area of factories and warehouses, tanneries and slaughterhouses, along with the crowded slums of the workers. These days, King Street, the main road that ran through Conesford, is being gentrified, but still the urban decay of centuries clings to some of the old buildings. St Julian's dedication is an interesting one.... he resolved to pay penance by establishing a riverside inn for travellers, and a hospital for the poor. So, he was an entirely appropriate choice of patron for the medieval priory established here in the medieval suburb of Conesford on the banks of the Wensum. It seems likely therefore that he was also the St Julian to whom this little church is dedicated. The Priory has long gone. But although this church is a small and rebuilt building, tucked away in what is still the anonymous and relatively run down inner city, St Julian is one of the