Thursday, October 13, 2016

Pilgrimage to Norwich: Finding A Little Room with Julian of Norwich


"He shewed a littil thing 
the quantitye of an hesil nutt...
What may this be? 
And it was generally answered thus: 
It is all that is made."

The Showings of Julian of Norwich
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Shortly after moving to Maine, I was taking the kids for a walk and exploring our new town while the Reverend got some time alone in our new house. While going along the street towards the local businesses, a member of the church (one I had not yet met) slowed down and hailed us. Our conversation was brief but amounted to them interrogating me about where I was taking the kids. I said that we were just going for a walk. They looked me up and down. Okay, they said and drove away. Further down the road, another car stopped. This time it was a police car. They too also wanted to know what I was doing with the kids. I said we were going for a walk. Then they asked me who I was. I explained my relation to them and to the Reverend. The police officer took the kids aside and asked the same thing. Out stories matched (no surprise) but they still asked to speak with the Reverend. We called her and she confirmed that I was her partner and these were our kids. Although I did not get the full story, the officer apologized and explained that a member of the community had called and said a strange person was possibly kidnapping the new Pastor's children. When the officer felt sufficiently that I was indeed one of the children's parents and not a pervert after the children of this quiet Maine town, he let us go. The Reverend called me right away after the cop left and came to pick us up. At home, we got the kids settled. They were shaken but blissfully oblivious to most of what had gone down and why. Then I proceeded up to our bedroom. Not feeling comfortable even there, I went into our large closet and sat down. I began to cry. The Rev stood there for a while but did not ask me to come out or calm down. Instead, she slide into the closet next to me. We sat together for fifteen twenty minutes. Then she went downstairs to start dinner. A little while later I came out as well but during our time in Maine, we never quite left that closet.

The thing about closets that many don't understand: what makes them shameful for transgender and queer persons is not that they are so terrible in and of themselves but that the outside world is that much worse. As an introvert, and a hobbit, I have been drawn to small, soft, enclosed spaces for as long as I can remember. I need to go to my inner room (even if it is only in my mind) to recharge, even after time with pleasant company. As a transgender woman, my need for spaces where I can feel safe and comfortable is even greater. The event of my second week in Maine is just one example of conflict that I have to navigate on a daily basis. Most of these alienating experiences are small but a day out can contain a countless number of them. While most people who know me as a scholar, writing, activist, pastor's wife, or mother treat me with some basic currency of respect, most people don't know me. To 99.99% of folks I encounter on the street, I am a stranger who might be any number of things. Among the images of myself that strangers have indicated to me in one way or another are sex worker (why else am I walking home from the train in the evening, conveniently after work/school gets out?), pedophile (why else would I be sitting at a park bench watching two young children with the watchful eye of a parent?), and drag queen (although this usually comes with ideas on how I might improve my act by wearing more outrageous heels, make-up, and wigs - never mind that I don't wear wigs). People stare, take pictures, bring their children away from or around me in arcs that make it clear to me and others that I am perceived as a threat, or come up to me asking questions from "what are you?" to "how much?" I usually tell them, "a medieval studies professor and about $3,000 per credit hour." This is all to say: there are days in which I don't feel like dealing with that 99.99% of people. Even the library can be a bit much. So I work from home. In my home, I usually have a cozy office, an inner room, a cell, or closet in which I can let my defenses and witty retorts down and focus on other things like raising kids or writing an article. Even now, I am writing from my office/closet.

Finding room was a real concern - for myself as well as my partner and mother - when we were setting off on our pilgrimage. Our week long journey concluded with a trip from Lynn (the home of Margery Kempe) to the little cell which was the home of Julian of Norwich. By this time, visitings over half a dozen cities and half a dozen other sites, we were all a bit tired of the many people who shared space with us there and along the way. Indeed, our trip began in London and threw us into the deep end of dense crowds. As I left the  last New Chaucer Society event to meet my recently arrived travel companions, I had to wade through a marathon of runners cutting across every major direction I needed to pass to get to them. At one point, we had to wait as police officers signaled to my group as we one by one raced across and around runners trying not to collide with any of them. On both sides of the street were dense layers of onlookers watching the marathon or trying - like me - to figure out how to get across the river of humanity. Later on, my mother declared that the beginning of our pilgrimage, London, and the end, Norwich, could not have been more different in regards to crowdedness. "I almost wish we could have just spent the whole week here," she said after our first hour in Norwich. Life proceeded with less urgent and dense intensity in Julian's hometown. Our walk from our car to the Cathedral brought us along the river where our speed slowed and our hearts began first to settle. Agitated from the drive there, we decided at the river to stop for food at the little cafe by the bridge. There my mother ordered oatmeal, while the Reverend and I split a yummy salmon, egg, and wild green salad. The best part of the meal was that until a few minutes prior to leaving, we had the whole cafe to ourselves. Periods of our meal proceeded in silence as we chewed and just enjoyed the quiet. No worry about people staring or cars crashing.

The intensity of the trip had been such and Norwich was such a relief that at our arrival at the Cathedral, where stood a statue with the words of Julian, "All Shall Be Well," the Reverend stopped with a start and began weeping. For some time we stood there. No one asked anyone to move on or to calm down. My fiancee was locked into a private cell of her own heart where these words came to her like the first fingers of dawn. When she began to step back out, she turned to me and then my mother. Her tears turned to laughter. We took each other's hands and turned to go into the Cathedral. Unlike other Cathedrals that followed the more tradition cross shape, the Norwich Cathedral retains and extensively uses additional buildings off to one side which create an encirclement around a grove. Entering the grove requires an almost spiral motion through the exterior buildings, along the Cathedral proper, and back out again. Once in the grotto, one feels as though you are entering into an enclosed sacred space. At the center of the grass is a labrinth that continues the spiral motion towards its middle. Caught in its gravity, the Reverend and I followed the labrinth towards it epicenter. In a way, this path inward reflected the concluding motion of the pilgrimage as a whole. We were around people on all sides but drawn into the steps of the winding way were existed in our own solitary worlds. The labrinth ends at its center, a circle of rest and reflection. At this moment, we were ready to withdraw from the world and into ourselves. Standing there, at the center of my own journey and universe, I slowly began to scan around and see others still on their own journeys. Even my mother who sat on the outside of the grove found rounded indentations in the wall that formed tiny little chapels where she could hide away. Standing there, I could feel a mystery at the heart of Julian of Norwich's ministry and perhaps all pilgrimage as well: we all made this journey together and yet we all made this journey within the solitary cell of our own complexities, tiny labrinths within tiny cathedrals within our hearts all bundled together like a hazelnut. 


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Julian of Norwich is an expert on the little things. In her Showings, or Revelations of Divine Love, Julian describes visions given to her by God. Over a series of showings, Julian sees the value of the little things in the light of the eternal. These visions are life changing for Julian, who later entered into a cell where she lived the remainder of her days, conversing through windows and contemplating God's wisdoms. Her visions were life changing for many others who point to her book as reframing the world and the divine, the changing and the everlasting, into scales that are able to be grasped. Time and space, existence and nothingness, value and grace are all rearranged in her mystic visions of all that is. Julian who lived in a small cell showed others how they might see and affect the great things within the little. Even time for Julian seems a small affair. A lifetime to her is nearly nothing. In chapter three, she writes of being near death at the tender age of thirty, "methought all the time that I had lived here so little and so short, in reward of that endlesse blisse, I thought, nothing" (Julian III.81-82). For a text chiefly concerned with suffering, to call the long duration of pain a "little" and "short" reframes the experience from the groaning expanse of the flesh to the closed affair of mortality in the eternity. Trauma theory has asserted the difference between pain as a thing physically sensed in the body and suffering as a thing understood in the mind. By changing the frame of reference, Julian reduces the body from a world of pleasure and pain into a mere cell in which a child might play at the victories and losses that really take place on a divine scale. In one sense, this is a relief. In another sense, it is too much of a relief. Julian's mindset in the early part of her life is as one who desires more life so that she might suffer more for the sake of God. Time feels almost too small. Compared to the divine temporality, she is but a child playing and worrying of childish things. She longs to be a woman just at an age and a moment when she fears that she may never live long enough to be a woman. 

The most famous little thing of Julian's Showings is her vision of everything. "He shewed a littil thing the quantitye of an hesil nutt in the palme of my hand," writes Julian (IV.144-154). The metaphor of hazelnut anchors her vision in something readers may have experience is life. Readers cannot have touched all that exists but may have touched a nut such as this. Following the metaphor symmetrically, this is a universe the size of a hazelnut, as it is also a hazelnut that contains the whole universe. In other words, by framing everything within the context of a small thing, she raises the honor of smallness. Considering her devotion to God through a life sealed within a cell of a church through the lens of hazelnut, it may be a mystery that she could see the whole universe from within the small room but a magnification of her lived reality to say that her little home contained the mysteries of the universe. Indeed, the universe does not look the same to Julian from the point of view of her flesh as it does from the scale of God. While remaining the same, the world seems of a different character. The known becomes the unknown again. In this way, by becoming small the world becomes more interesting. It begs questioning. "I lokid there upon with eye of my understondyng and thowte, What may this be? And it was generally answered thus: It is all that is made" (IV.144-154). A hazelnut for its size may seem simple yet it may contain mysteries and the thoughts it inspires that last a lifetime. So too if the universe could fit into one's hand, it would contain more than enough for many lifetimes of consideration because of the question it begs. Likewise, the shortness of life that Julian perceives does not make it any less full of suffering or love, truth or mystery. Nor does it assure that a long life comes any closer to truth nor arrives at a justification for the love and pain on receives. And all this might as well be contemplated in a small cell as well or better than in the largeness of the wider world. Small things demand focus. Looking into the depths of things can contain such an eternity as one may find in the vastness of space.

The precariousness of Julian's life at the time of the visions, quaking from the proximity to a near death experience, readers can better understand her anxiety at the vulnerable smallness of the world. She writes, "I mervellid how it might lesten, for methowte it might suddenly have fallen to nowte for littil" (IV.144-154). Traditional assumptions of scale places the largest things in association with everything and the smallest things in association with nothingness. As a small - or at least young - thing herself, Julian may feel that with closeness of death her existence may also be snuffed out. What is a hazelnut in the palm of a comparably large hand? What is she in relation to everything or to eternity? Yet the metaphor of the hazelnut gives some resistance against presumptions about size. The nut is able to be crushed by a larger force but is hard and persistent. In the palm of the hand, as Julian sees the universe, one cannot break a hazelnut merely by squeezing or pinching. The is strength and even power in such a small thing. Although Julian and every other created thing may be precarious in relation to the eternal absolutes, yet within the smallest things exist a seed of eternity, a part of God's being that is as fixed as the whole. "And I was answered in my understondyng," continues Julian, "It lesteth and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so all thing hath the being be the love of God" (IN.144-154). The glory of a thing is not its size or power, nor that it is loving or lovable. Rather, a thing is glorified because of the love given to it. The hazelnut is a small thing but contains the mystery of the universe. Any or all created things may be nothing in contrast to God but are glorified because God loves them. A cell may be a small thing but contains all the world of a saint, therefore turning the little room in a sacred site. A life may be short but is worthy because of the life it contains. 

While bigness serves to put littleness into perspective but as Julian frames it, this does not mean that the small thing is any less honorable. Offering herself as an example, Julian reflects on the effect of God's revelations on her, "This gretenes and this noblyth of the beholdyng of God fulfilled her of reverend drede, and with this she saw hirselfe so litil and so low, so simple and so pore" (VII.237-241). In an egotistical society, we might feel threatened by such remarks. We should want to be large, not small. We should want to be raised on high, not low. We should want to be rich, not wanting. But Julian inverts these values. We are but small things and our suffering is not so large as cannot be overcome. We are not at the top and other truths and authorities may yet intervene. We have less, so we have less over which to worry. Again and again, Julian drives home from the big open spaces with the message that it is in our small places that God comes to us. Julian writes of herself, "thus by this grounde she was fulfillid of grace and of al manner vertues and overpassyth all creatures" (VII.237-241). Not only do the little things not hold the troubles of the big but there are virtues present and concentrated in the small that are lost or diluted in the large. There is a grace that might not be sensed or touched if we do not attend to the small things. We might miss our own value if we gaze only on the big things and do not regard ourselves. Our suffering may be less but is not less valuable. Our suffering is only less when we take on suffering that is not for us to bear alone. At that moment our pain becomes ego. The little ones may be hurt by big pains but should consider them in their particularity. One cannot kill death although one may fight against a deadly disease. One cannot fix mutability although one can wade through change. By knowing the limits of our strength and virtues, we are better able to use them. This may mean that we must stand before the largeness of the world or else focus ourselves within the littleness of a cell or office. This does not ignore or surrender our connection to everything else but it locates us within the small links in the chain of causation. We have much to do and it will be done each little thing.


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Compared to the rest of the pilgrimage, Norwich was a little place that contained precious gifts. Probably the most peaceful place in our whole pilgrimage was sitting in the Julian Center in Norwich. The building is formed around the little church and cell that was Julians home. Finding it drew us away from the granduer of the Cathedral with its shops, tours, and cafeteria. Journeying down a little cobblestone road, we had to search for parking amidst the pockets between trees, gardens, mail boxes, and street lights. This was an unassuming section of Norwich that seemed more like a regular residential block more than a sacred site for pilgrimage. The welcome sign was likewise dainty and bright. Stepping inside it felt like we were entering into our great aunt's parlor, rather than a museum or church. A young woman jumped up when she heard the creaking of our feet on the old floorboards. "Welcome!" she chirped as we began to look around at a wall of bobbles framing a large sitting space with tables and chairs. "Would you like some tea?" Um, was all we could get at out at first. Then uncertainly and some several moments later we added, sure. I began to finger through the books on display while my mother went to the far end of the room where light came streaming into the space. "A garden!" she exclaimed. Putting down a new printing of Julian's "Showings" I joined her before a large wooden door standing open upon a little grove of flowers. This green space was much smaller than the Cathedrals but less intimidating. Also, this time it really was just us. We stood for a while looking and breathing in the fragrant air until we were alerted by a clanking sound behind us. The young woman had returned with a tea set full of cups, saucers, biscuits, milk, sugar, tea bags, and steaming water. She invited us to sit down and enjoy as she took her seat back at the register. No sooner had we all taken our seats, however, than she began to excitedly question us about who we are and why of all the places we might have found ourselves on this morning we were here.

What made our tea time at the Julian Center so delightful was the sense of hospitality and being home in a strange place. Like the tea were were sipping and dipping biscuits into, this peace was steeped by the genuine care our host showed us. A student of a nearby University, she had once had other plans for her study until she traveled to Norwich and fell in love. Her attention on us carried with it that same enjoyment of new things and the curiosity of a student. She made no pretense of what she may have known about Julian, rather she was more interested in what we knew and could teach her about the mystic. She pushed for more information when the Reverend came in from parking the car (it had been tricky finding a place) then we both bought an icon of Julian and Margery Kempe for our offices. We told her about the two women, both mystics, but radically difference in sensibilities. Julian the quite and stationary introvert and Margery the loud and passionate extrovert. Their meeting, described in Kempe's Book, is a scene that could have inspired a medieval version of the odd couple. She wondered about my work in medieval studies. She wondered about the Reverend's work in ministry. She doted on my mother like she was her own. At no point was there a remark or stare about myself or my taking the Reverend's hand that would have suggested that a trans lesbian couple was anything but commonplace here in Norwich. More than our own hotel rooms, which had that comfortable yet professional sterility of a place for those just passing through, the Julian center felt like home. The conversation eased our tensions as the tea brought our enthusiasm back to life. My mother's remark that we should have started at Norwich and stayed there for the whole trip was a sign that we felt renewed, more like we were closer to the start than at the end of our pilgrimage. Compared to the roughness of our arrival in London, we felt more relaxed now than when we began.

The decision to leave the center and enter the place we had come so far to see happened so organically it felt as though the transition happened in silence without a word of interruption. We thanked our host as best we could, then wandered out the front door and down the hill to the chapel entrance. A large basin of holy water greeted us. Dipping my fingers in and dabbing myself in the sign of the cross, I enacted an age old tradition of washing away the dirt of the world in preparation for entrance into an other kind of space. Like the center where we had tea, the church was small and intimate. A few pews, each likely able to see a half dozen at most, lined the aisles. The door to Julian's cell was on the far end, meaning the three of us had to walk down the short length of the Church to get there. While brief, there was a sense of being received. We were entering into something held private and removed from the world. Coming to the door, I felt almost like I was back home at my little closet-office. Yet this is where Julian spent much of her life, receiving visitors from one window facing the garden and receiving mass from the other window (now the door where we stood) facing the chapel. Just off from the center of the room was a stone altar covered over by a white cloth, stationed in front of a hanging crucifix. This is where Julian sat and contemplated Christ's suffering and love. Now it is where visitors sit and contemplate with her. The cell was set up for about a dozen or so sitters. A wooden bench built into the wall ran along three of the four walls. On the wall without the bench, where the door now stood, also was installed a sculpture built into the wall featuring another cruciform and the inscription: Here Dwelt Mother Julian. In front of the sculpture was arrayed a number of blue, red, and purple candles. Interspaced around the candles in a random patten was hazelnuts, signifying Julian's vision of the universe. Like many who came before us down to Julian herself, we sat here for some time, holding and considering the hazelnuts.

This cell marked the end of our formal pilgrimage. Everything after this would be steps taking us back to London and eventually back to the United States. Pilgrimages are funny things. They combine the desire to see the bigness of the world and the desire to become intimate with them. Arriving at the end, we found ourselves in a little cell within a little church within a (relatively) little city and thinking on things as little and as common as hazelnuts. Yet in the spirit of Julian, I cannot minimize our conclusion by saying that it was more about the journey than the destination. Without a place like Norwich, there would have been no journal. There would be no big things without the little things. This little thing made us do a big thing in coming here. We had to leave our homes and our closets, push through crowds (which despite what one might hope was not much less transphobic and ableist than our home in the States) and unfamiliar territories in order to get to this home which is itself little more than a closet. Over the course of that journey, we let go of a lot of pain and anxiety. More pain and anxiety would doubtless come but it would be altered by our journey. Yet we were not eager to move on from this spot. Like we did when we reached the center of the labyrinth, we stayed a while in this spot not wanting to unwind the knot we tied in getting here. As like we did in the grove, we looked around at our fellow travelers. My mother who left family and pets, a job and a garden in Chicago to pack up with her daughter and daughter-in-law on a funny trip. My fiancee who dropped off our children in Chicago with their father (while I flew ahead to NCS), took a leave from work, and packed up her struggles with health in order to blaze ahead on an uncertain path around England. And myself, giving up my cell for the chance to sit in another's. What did this ending mean for each of us? Work, illness, and prejudice awaited us each at home. In ways, it never left our side. Yet we were each a little different. And what's more, our world was a little different. At very least, on a rainy day in July, a trans woman medievalist, her fiancee and queer pastor, and her mother (and soon to be god mother of at least one of her children) occupied the cell of Julian of Norwich. On this day, the history of the medieval mystic and us were bound together as it had become bound with Margery Kempe, the mad mystic from Lynn centuries before. This may be a little thing in comparison to the big events on the timeline but it is immensely valuable.


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Follow us on our journey:

Pilgrimage to Oxford
Pilgrimage to the Kilns
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Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Pilgrimage to Lynn: Finding Fellowship with Margery Kempe


"Every evyn and morwyn 
Richard wyth the broke bak 
cam and comfortyd hir"

The Book of Margery Kempe
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The Pilgrimage of Tears

It began in the bathroom of an queer bar in Iceland. I was in a stall, bent over crying in fits of mild panic. A few hours earlier, I had entered the club with a gaggle of LGBT medievalists here for the biannual New Chaucer Society meeting. It had become a tradition that each NCS would host some night of fun and community for its queer scholars. The club was an easy choice and easy to pick out among the buildings of Reykjavik. Covering every foot of the bar's exterior were the colors of the rainbow in their neon glory. At first, most of us stood around talking sipping drinks. I had a diet coke because of a mild alcohol allergy I had passed on to me from my Polish ancestors. As the night went on, the club filled with more locals. The room got crowded, the music loud, and the room hot. Many of us who remained shed out of our coats and piled them by the window, behind a curtain. Although I was down to a clingy black and white dress, I kept my cell and purse close to me; either in my hand or tucked into my bra. From my years in Washington DC, I knew to be careful of pick-pockets. Yet anyone who has spent time with things stashed in their bra will know, things can get very sweaty very quickly. When the digital clocks on the phone (blurry with perspiration) passed eleven, a few of us decided to shed a few articles and hand-held devices, including my phone. We stashed them in our deftly hidden clump of coats. Within the hour, we had all gotten so tired that we were ready to head back to our hotels and hostels. Putting on my jacket, the pockets felt light. I patted them. Flat. Nothing in them. I checked under the pile but even after everyone had claimed their clothing, there was nothing left. I searched the floor between the moving legs. Nothing. As the others offered their condolences or hopes that it would be found and left, I asked the bar and the DJ. They hadn't been given any lost items and warned me of what I already knew to be true. The phone was gone. Taken. In this community of queers, who I had mistakenly felt enough fellowship to drop my standard safe guards, I had been pick-pocketed. I felt betrayed by the community. I felt like a foreigner, alone in a foreign land, unable to call home for help. Left to myself, I found my way to the bathroom to cry before I hit the road. Now, as ever, I felt a kinship with Margery Kempe, a medieval woman on whom I had just given a talk earlier in the day. She too knew about feeling alone and betrayed when traveling abroad. Despite our differences, our tears brought us closer.

I was not thinking of Margery Kempe as I walked home in the cold through the streets of this Icelandic city. Clinging my coat closer to me, for comfort more than warmth, I felt vulnerable. While my phone had limited capacities in another country, it gave a sense of security while I was far from home. In a pinch I could call my partner or family, who I desperately wished to have with me now. I could distract myself by searching the internet for things to do when you lose your phone in a foreign country, except I had no phone. This sense of being cut-off from safety nets compounded the feelings of violation at having someone enter uninvited into my bubble of self, touch my things, and take something away. All this was stressful but perhaps would have felt more manageable if I didn't already have an ingrained sense of exposure and vulnerability as a transgender woman walking the streets alone at night in unfamiliar area. Similar walks at night down sidewalks close to home have gone worse, even with a way to call for help. The revealing dress I was wearing under my other things didn't feel cute anything. I felt like a walking target waiting for someone to take a shot. My coat pulled close, I walked quicker than usual across the cobblestone road back to the hostel where I was staying. Once I got in, I pulled a big sweater over my body, cocooning myself as much as I could then took my computer into the lobby. Booting up Skype and online messengers, I tried my partner. Even with the time difference, it took me a while to get her on the line. Eventually, she calmed me down but only after unleashing some rage at the situation. I vicariously got something from her anger. She left me with an assurance that I would be safe and that she couldn't wait until I got home. I talked to my mother next (who remains one of my best friends and confidants) and she gave similar sentiments. By the end of that night, however, I had come to the conclusion that next time I traveled abroad, I did not want to travel alone. I concluded much the same thing that Margery did when she felt betrayed and on her own in Jerusalem: as much freedom as one experiences striking out on your own, traveling greatly benefits from fellowship.

By the time I was invited back to NCS, next time in London, I had made my decision to find whatever means necessary to bring my fiancee alone with me. I compiled a set of plans on how it could be done, taking into account our finances and family (the kids would be staying with their father around the same time) and presented it all to her. To my relief and joy, she said yes. Then another thought occurred to us. What if we invite my mother to join us? Her and the Reverend (my fiancee) had become much closer by frequent texts, calls, and visits. We had long been discussing asking her to move in with us once we found a place big enough. When the Reverend said it was a good idea, I couldn't wait to give my mum a call. And again, I was delighted, after some back and forth on her end, when she said she would love to join us. We had a team. Three of us would take on England. Over the next two years, we planned the trip that would begin after I finished at NCS and would take us to various sites. Over the week we would visit the places authors and religious figures lived out their lives. Among those added to the list, almost last minute, was a trip to visit King's Lynn/Bishop's Lynn, the home and parish of Margery Kempe. It seemed as though everything was working in our favor, until suddenly it wasn't. A few months prior to the trip, the Reverend began to experience health trouble. It started as a complication of an existing condition but soon escalated. By a few weeks before the trip, she was in constant pain and her mobility was radically decreased. Getting out of bed or chairs, lifting, and walking were all limited greatly by how much pain she could endure. On a couple nights, we just sat together wordlessly crying. The doctors were stumped at first about what was going on or what to do. Eventually, with the advocacy of my nurse mother, we got some treatments that would give some minor relief in the long term. All figured, however, the trip seemed more and more like a plan that was quickly seeming like a fading fantasy. Yet, somehow, even when it seemed like it would be sheer torture, the Reverend showed the characteristic that time and again makes me draw on comparisons to bears and amazon warriors: she wouldn't back down in the face of pain that would stop others in their tracks. This wasn't my decision, or my mothers, or even the doctors. We all offered our help whatever the decision that was made but in the end it was my fiancee's decision to go.

And so, in a fellowship much resembling the pilgrimage of Margery Kempe and her bent back companion Richard, we set off on our pilgrimage. I arrived a week ahead of the rest, so I could attend NCS and give a talk. When the Reverend and my mother arrived, they were both exhausted and perplexed. No sooner than they had arrived, the challenge of the trip affirmed that it was not just an irresponsible worry. Rachel's medications (none of which were for pain) were lost on the plane. As I traveled to find them in the hotel we would be sharing, they were occupied with finding an urgent care that would give us a refill. This is to say that once we got settled, we had to cancel some plans just to give everyone some time to care for ourselves and each other. The whole of the trip lay ahead of us and more or less in tact but come Saturday, while my mother swam and the Reverend rested I was sent off to complete at least one of the objectives set for the day. The destination was largely symbolic but would frame the ethos of the whole trip. I was to visit a museum currently showing two treasures that had inspired the whole map of the latter part of the trip. Getting off the Tube underground rail nearby the museum, I exited onto Gower Street. Seeing the favorite medieval poet's name gave me some sense that whatever the challenges, we would see ourselves through them like the pilgrims of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Turning off of Gower Street, I entered the museum and found the exhibit hall. Navigating through a maze of video, audio, and tactile installations I arrived at my target: the lone manuscript of the Book of Margery Kempe, resting beside a manuscript of the Showings of Julian of Norwich. These women formed an unlikely coupling centuries ago when Margery set off on her own pilgrimage through England. Together, they found comfort in a world not built for them and often antagonistic. They navigated challenges of the body, society, and country through the comfort and strength their unlikely fellowships offered. Their homes and places of worship would close out our trip and their books, displayed in front of me, had in part inspired the trip. They were the reason I had gone to Iceland and why the three of us were together in England. I said a silent prayer of thanks to these extraordinary women who would offer us a model of pilgrimage on our journey.


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The Pilgrimage of Margery Kempe

While pain and abandonment can force us apart, by making ourselves vulnerable our struggles can be points of connection with others who like us crave fellowship. When abandoned on pilgrimage in Jerusalem, Margery Kempe prays to God for assistance. God responds by turning Kempe from normate society to the disabled on the margins. “Than anon, as sche lokyd on the on syde, sche sey a powyr man sittyng whech had a gret cowche on hys bakke,” records the Book, “He seyd hys name was Richard and he was of Erlond” (30.1769-87). The bent man, “brokyn in a sekenes,” is alienated from society for his body as Kempe is for her mind. Deeming them unproductive, the forces that put Kempe and Richard on the side of the road did not expect them to leave their place. The placement of non-normate bodies on the margins of public space, “on the on syde,” gives a shared experience of disability not as something innate to their lives but impose when a social environment does not regard them as not central to its cultural production. One may not regard fellowship with Kempe or Richard without making a mad turn into the margins and making community there. The partnering of Kempe and Richard is a mad-thought and mad-made relation that defies the social meanings and positions assigned to them. The creature tells him, “ledith me to Rome” (30.1778). "Nay," he responds (30.1779). Richard is aware of the dangers of the road, especially for a mad-thought woman and a man mad-made disabled by social dangers and erasures imposed on him due to his a bent back. “I drede me that myn enmys schul robbyn me and peraventur takyn the awey fro me and defowlyn thy body,” he admits (30.1782-3).  In addition to being mad-made physically and socially vulnerable, they fight an internalized belief of disabled peoples’ unproductivity. By grace, Kempe moves him to her side. Beyond material gifts, the social support they share is critical. The Book of Margery Kempe records, “every evyn and morwyn Richard wyth the broke bak cam and comfortyd hir as he had promysed” (30.1795). This coming together and comforting of one another is integral to the work of mad-making associations and fellowship in the Book that empower mutual a liberation from the margins. 

The pilgrimage with Richard to Rome marks a turn in the Book, especially the narratives following Kempe’s travels, where she moves from fellowship with ablebodied companies to making partnerships with the disabled and marginalized. Richard and Kempe were primed to replace the previous fellowship not only by sharing a similar language, English, but also similar cultural experience. By the time that Kempe uses the word fellowship in the Book, there already existed a sense of sharing similar conflicts, from the Middle English of fellow, “felaȝe-,” meaning “ One who shares with another in a possession, official dignity, or in the performance of any work, ” and -ship, meaning “the state or condition,” “office, position, dignity, or rank,” as well as “skill” or “power.” Together the word means, “[p]articipation, sharing (in an action, condition, etc.); ‘something in common’, community of interest, sentiment, nature.” While Richard and Kempe are distinct people, their experiences are of the same kind and facilitate fellowship making between them. This fellowship also alters their condition, quality, and power once formed. The word’s Old Norse origins develop this sense of collective merging and bargaining of abilities, from “feoh-”, meaning “property, money,” and “–lęcgan”, meaning “lay,” together meaning, “one who lays down money in a joint undertaking with others.” While Richard fears he is unable to protect Kempe, or himself, by laying their capacities together they are able to do more than they can individually. This is another way that fellowship making is really a kind of creation: something exists that did not exist before with powers greater than the sum of its parts. This fellowship has qualities all of its own that has the ability to strengthen and change those of its members. Part of this collectivity is to use the traits that those in the fellowship share to function as catalysts for the communication of capacities that are distinct to one member and not another.

Margery and Richard are bound together by the struggles they share but move forward because they can offer one another abilities that the other does not or would not possess. Beyond the supernatural element of their union being foretold, the convenience of Richard’s country of origin, “Erlond” (30.1769-87) was a miracle for a woman who often has trouble understanding and being understood by others. Richard understands Kempe’s language and can give her a comfort that other travelers cannot. Literacy and language ability is a running theme throughout the Book as it plays with the significance of Kempe’s madness. Being set apart by her disability, normate society can have trouble understanding her. There is a certain fluency and comfort that another person with a disability, also excluded from society, can give. Mad-thought and a broken back are not identical yet are mad-made neighbors in a shared social position and discourse much like how Ireland and England have importance differences and conflicts, yet find themselves connected by experiences and narratives. While Kempe demonstrates the abilities her madness gives her to overcome these challenges, she enjoys a certain co-dependence with Richard that allows them both to move from the margins and across borders. Because of Richard’s ability to be like Kempe in some ways but not in others, he is able to translate and advocate for her in social situations. When the two are traveling to Rome, the encounter a wealthy woman traveling with a company of knights who might as well passed by the mad woman and broke back man on their way. Yet by making a relationship with Richard, Kempe is able to make relations with this group, “the brokebakkyd man, went to hir, preyng hir that this creatur mygth gon wyth hir to Rome and himself also for to be kept fro perel of thevys” (31.1846-48). Fear of assaulters and thieves was one of the great anxieties that Richard names before Kempe and him set off. Although Richard fears he could not defend them against such threats physically, he as an ability to reason with others in order to get them protection in another way.

Fellowships can the ability to reshape how we live and how others engage with us. We come to defy the expectations of society, expectations that we may come to believe. In the end, the accomplishments of a fellowship may not be ours alone but by allowing for our own vulnerabilities and dependencies, the equation of power changes. We become more by rejecting demands that we be all. By making a mad relation with a broke-back man, Kempe is able to recreate a fellowship and a mode of travel that she had lost among a more able bodied company. This point and counterpoint is made explicit when Richard and Kempe arrive in Rome. “Whan the forseyd creatur was comyn into Rome,” records the Book, “and thei that weryn hir felaws beforntyme and put hir owt of her cumpany weryn in Rome also and herd tellyn of swech a woman was come thedyr, thei had gret wondir how sche cam ther in safté” (31.1849-52). This passage is a moment of vindication for a disabled woman before an ableist community that thought her madness was an impediment to their travels. Evidently, ableism likewise led the old party to believe that a mad woman could not have made it to Rome at all. By encountering them, without words Kempe is able to demonstrate the alternative forms of community and power the mad and disabled can muster through the making of mad relations. From chapter thirty to thirty three, the various things that are describes as mad in the Book all work to turn the normate towards the disabled, form new relations, in order to derive more love, comfort, and understanding. While Kempe and Richard’s pilgrimage from Jerusalem to Rome occurs many chapters in the Book before the creature’s mission to the Lazars, this bent narrative demonstrates the recursive nature of madness making more madness. Far from being a rational close circle, Kempe’s mad recursion brings more and more people into her network and through her into God’s network of Creation. Encountering the Imago Dei in her visions and prayers, Kempe is being made by what she sees and through imitation becomes an Image of God that fashions new things by turning them away from their rational course, draws them to cross boundaries of embodiment and even time period (as we will see), to go to the margins, and bring people back into relationship.

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The Pilgrimage of Fellowship

The journey had taken another unexpected turn. We were pulling out of Marylebone Station on a train north. Months ago, the three of us debated how we would get around once we got out of London. Trains had won out because of their relative simplicity. My mother stacked up the luggage around her making a kind of fort. The Reverend gingerly sat across from her and started to sleep. Soon our peace was unsettled. As we were halfway to our next stop, the conductor came by announcing that the line would be ending and we would have to travel by a series of buses for the remainder of the trip. Besides having to wake up and prematurely take apart my mother's fort, as we lugged ourselves onto the bus we discovered that it did not have any sort of fan or air conditioning. England was experiencing an unusual heat wave, turning the bus into a giant oven and us into roasts. Worst off, the heat was triggering the Reverend's condition and increasing the pain she was already managing. By the time we piled out at our next destination, a few hours south of King's Lynn, we had all come to the conclusion that there would be no more buses and as few trains as we could manage. At the hotel, we consulted our contingency plan. Renting a car had been proposed some time ago but had been over-ridden. Now it was back on the table. Unfortunately, because we hadn't explored the option further, we had neglected to account for the fact that all the available rental cars were manual transmissions. On the phone, my face went pale. Driving on the other side of the road was odd enough but I had clue how to begin to work an non-automatic. All of us didn't want to get back on a bus, however, and least of all put the Reverend back in one. After I announced the situation to the others, my fiancee looked around at my mother's and my down-trodden faces with nonchalance. So? She asked. I know how to drive manual transmissions! And with that, suddenly, the road north was back on the table.

I can confidently admit that the rest of the trip could not have been completed without the Reverend's unexpected abilities. Now, when we squeezed into the little blue car and fought to find room for the luggage, I was sufficiently nervous. Already the more nervous rider, my fiancee put me in charge of making sure she did not turn into the other lane at intersections and roundabouts. I would remind her of this request when I would call out "left side! left side!" with modulated anxiety. Eventually the roundabouts were more of an annoyance than a worry. We had invested in a GPS that would take us the rest of the way to King's Lynn and onward but with roundabouts every few miles the electronic voice repeated the instruction to "turn into the roundabout," "exit the roundabout," and "continue for 2 KM until the next roundabout," with a frequent rhythm. To drown out this necessary but grating voice, we engaged in other traditional pilgrim activities: talking, storytelling, and song. The storytelling was a bit different than the sort Chaucer's pilgrims would have known, as audible played the "Angels and Demons" audiobook from my two-year old cell phone; although playing out tension between the Church and science, would have been understood. Likewise, the musical "Hamilton" is not likely to be sung by the Prioress but we did chant along as a group as those in Chaucer's company most likely would have. More than anyone, perhaps, the plot if not the form of our journey would have been readily understood by Margery Kempe. In her pilgrimage with Richard, she knew the value of a diverse fellowship. When a dramatic turn set things off course or one of the members ran up against a personal limitation, the various gifts of a diverse community rise to the surface. Without the research I had done, without my mother's even temper and nurse's care, and without the Reverend's perseverance and driving acumen we may not have made it all the way to King's Lynn. What's more, without the comfort and fun we made together, the pilgrimage would have been a lot less enjoyable. Against some tricky challenges, just as we arrived at the coastal town and saw a blanket of rain come rolling towards us, we pulled into our destination.

Walking up to St. Margaret's Church, the very place Margery Kempe attended services, we were weary yet relieved. Coming out of the small car, all of us felt achey and some more than others. We were hungry, a little dehydrated, and needing to use the bathroom but once we saw the Church looming over the surrounding buildings we didn't want to stop. Once again, we fumbled over cobblestones and turned the corner to see the courtyard and cemetery in front of the church. Before we could enter, however, we were stopped by something we hadn't planned. A group of about three police officers were surrounding a man in drab clothing, slumped against the gate into the courtyard. As we maneuvered around them, we heard a bit of the conversation. The police were asking the man about his health. How was he feeling? Could he walk? Compared to some of the antagonistic conversations I have overheard between cops and the homeless in the States, this dialog seemed a lot more subdued. As we passed them, we heard the man say that he felt fine but could go for some food. Going into the church, we did not hear any more of the conversation for some time. On the way out, the four of them were still standing around the man but now the man slumped against the gate was enjoying a sandwich. A lot could be said about this exchange but within the context of our travels, this felt like a fitting welcome to Margery's home parish. This was the home who struggled to accept and affirm a woman who wailed and cried, who preached and practiced various failed businesses, who had a house full of her children and wore the garb of a virgin, and who walked across lands as a pilgrim, seeming mad and homeless to many. The word pilgrim comes from the Roman word for foreigner and signified the poor or disenfranchised; those who lacked local support networks. Police bringing a man a sandwich is hardly a solution to the problems of economic divides or  the public erasure of the most vulnerable. Most likely the man would be removed, like Margery, when he presented an unwelcome presence at the church. But in this moment, for a few minutes, there was compassion and care. As we learned throughout our journey, before we can solve systemic problems (or not) we often need to attend to the immediate needs and dignity of one another.

The immediate effect of entering the massive church was the feeling of smallness that reminded us how diminished our struggles and accomplishments seem in the grand scheme of the world or even one community. In a word, we were humbled. One can imagine how a woman in the fifteenth century could break down crying in front of everyone from an overwhelming awareness or relief. There was an experience of history here, that your life was not such an isolated thing but an interwoven thread in traditions spanning many lifetimes.  We were small but a part of something big. Our pain and anxiety was being received and shared by those who came before and those who will come after. Beginning to wander, the Reverend found the local priest who spoke to her about the current life of the church. After asking who we are and where we are from, he confessed that he found it strange that most of those who find their way to King's Lynn in search of Margery Kempe hail from the United States. While my fiancee and the priest shared their experiences as pastors, I proceeded to the choir seats near the alter. I sat for some time until my mother came over and asked if I wanted a picture. Kneeling down I performed an imitation of Margery's weeping. Getting up, I told some of the story of her life and ministry. She asked me what about her called me to come here. I didn't really have a canned answer for that. Like my encounter with her book back in London, I just stood there, looking, and feeling more than thinking. My mother accepted that and sat down next to me. A little while later, the Reverend joined us and stood next to us for a minute. Here we were. A woman who prayed, journeyed, and wrote centuries ago had brought the three of us together and all the way to King's Lynn. I rose and my fiancee took my hand, kissing me on the cheek. Pulling away, her lips were slightly damp as so was my face. Of a different sort from the mock show I enacted earlier or the anxious weeping of Iceland, these tears had a significance all there own. Even now, I don't have their full meaning. But whatever their meaning, it is one I share with my partner, my mother, and Margery Kempe.


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Coming soon:

Pilgrimage to Norwich
Pilgrimage to Oxford
Pilgrimage to the Kilns
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Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Transliterature Partners with the UCC Mental Health Network


“Every person has value and worth 
and deserves love, dignity and respect"

The UCC Mental Health Network
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After extensive conversations, Transliterature is partnering with the United Church of Christ Mental Health Network. As part of this, I have officially been invited and confirmed as board member. The organization consults and advises the national church and local parishes on mental health issues. The Mental Health Network (formerly the Mental Illness Network) was founded in 1992 with a grant from the American Missionary Association of the United Church of Christ. The goal of this partnership is to continue the work of the Mental Health Network in building and improving systems for parishes to enact a greater degree of value, worth, love, dignity, and respect for persons with diverse mental conditions, health needs, and experiences of illness. Likewise, the Network will build on and extend Transliterature's project of facilitating movements toward understanding and justice into non-academic communities where new research and activism can have create day to day improvements.

While serving on the board, Transliterature will continue to offer a ranger of resources for schools, workplaces, and churches regarding gender, sexuality, disability, mental health and a range of communities and embodiments. The time commitment will be minimal and the work is Pro Bono. As a result, academic and consulting work will continues press on. Indeed, the great value of the partnership is the mutual benefits both organizations will offer on a shared mission to generate livable environments and justice in the world. Stay tuned to www.ThingsTransform.com and mhn-ucc.blogspot.com for more information as well as more ways to get involved.

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Talks with the UCC Mental Health Network began in 2015, when Bychowski co-hosted a workshop at the Widening the Welcome conference in Hartford, CT. Extending from Transform Talk principles, the workshop took a look at how mental diversity and challenges exist on the personal, institutional, and systemic level. People shared stories, asked questions, and offered ideas on how to better engage a range of mentalities and embodiments from depression, schizophrenia, autism, dysphoria, and more. Participants were open with personal stories and collective struggles against systems of exclusion and shame. Tears were shed and afterwards, the group left with ideas and resources that would be brought back to local communities and national organizations. Few problems are fixable in one workshop, but just as the Widening the Welcome conference built on the Mental Health Sunday of 2013, continuing the conversation and making incremental improvements can have massive systemic effects.

The origin of the workshop came from the work of the Reverend Dr. Sarah Lund. In 2014, Lunch published Blessed Are the Crazy: Breaking the Silence About Mental Illness, Family, and Church. She continues to be a champion for access, justice, and pride for peoples with mental illnesses, especially in Churches. In our early discussions, Lund was passionate in developing practical steps for improving the day to day life of people in parishes that often fear or segregate them because of mental illness. Combining her workshops and Transliterature's Transform Talks seemed like a natural and effective way to approach the dual needs for critical challenges to ableist culture and building lasting practices that would ensure a more livable lives for members of communities. I was proud to work with the Reverend Dr. Lund at the workshop as I will be as part of the Mental Health Board in years to come.

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The UCC Mental Health Network offers a variety of tools and best practices. Currently, the Network offers a range of Congregational Toolkits: Becoming a WISE Congegation for Mental HealthDementiaIntroduction to Mental IllnessPost-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)Mental Health Ministry with Children and Families, and the Substance Abuse Toolkit. Beyond these offerings, the Network also serves as a hub to connect different communities with organizations with further specializations.

Transliterature is proud to develop these programs alongside the center's current offerings. In the past few years, additions have been made to the Resources for Teachers archive, offering advice and models with which classrooms can be more accessible to a wide range of embodiments, disabilities, and mental health needs. In particular, students as well as teachers have been getting use out of the terminology recommendations for discussing disability. No list of words are exhaustive and all language should be reviewed for effect as well as changes in culture. For this reason, the central focus of Transliterature remains the publication of articles, notes, and lesson plans that tackle specific issues in the spectrum and intersection of disability, gender, and sexuality. Following in the tradition of digital humanities public scholarship, www.ThingsTransform.com is at its best when networks build on networks, bridging the divide between public and private, universities and churches, classrooms and communities, high and low theory. Solidarity and coalition building remains central to the work #TransformSchools #TransformChurches.

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