Revelations

Summary: A novel about the English mystic Margery Kempe, the author of what is usually considered the first autobiography written in English.

I have been intentionally trying to read fiction every day and this has led to me reading a lot more fiction this year. Revelations is about Margery Kempe (c1373-1438?). This is a novel based on her life, roughly from her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe.

In that autobiography she details her many visions of Jesus or other members of the trinity as she went on various pilgrimages, including to the Holy Land. But that autobiography also details her many pregnancies and children and the abuse (and rape) from her husband. She suffered what we would now label postpartum depression and has the first of her visions of Jesus after the birth of her first child. And it is believed that she has 14-15 pregnancies with multiple children dying in infancy or still births.

She negotiated a "chaste marriage" and soon after left her husband (and children) when she was about 43. She meets Julian of Norwich and has extended conversations with her. Julian was also a mystic and author and the novel expands on that connection.

Obviously, while there is source material, much of the book is fictionalized. Unintentionally, this is another book on the Love of God that is a connection between Greg Boyle's Cherished Belonging and the novel Sensible Shoes and John Armstrong's The Transforming Fire of Divine Love: My Long, Slow Journey into the Love of God (which I am still reading.) This unintentional theme of God's love throughout my reading this spring has made me think more about how the mystical experience of God's love matters to the church and to those who never have a mystical experience of God's love.

There are, of course, people who disbelieve in or oppose mystical experiences. (One of the reviews of Sensible Shoes that I read opposed spiritual disciples which used imagination or contemplative prayer because that could lead to mystical experiences.) But I think in the history of Christianity, there is a level of mysticism that is assumed even if it is clear that not everyone has a mystical experience. I do not have an explanation for why some have mystical experiences and others do not. From my reading it is clear that some who have mystical experiences would prefer not to have them and that many who do not have mystical experiences desire them.

Margery is known both for her mystical visions and for her public displays of tears. She would regularly cry in public either while having a mystical experience or in remembering those experiences. Margery was not a nun or in a convent. She, as an individual, traveled on pilgrimages but also spoke regularly about the love of God to others. That was considered preaching, which was illegal for a woman to do, and she was tried for heresy multiple times, but never found guilty of being a heretic.

Historical fiction, even if fiction, is a helpful way to learn about the saints. In addition to Revelations, Mary Sharratt also wrote Illuminations, a novel about Hildegard von Bingen, which I read last year. I am often disappointed or frustrated with non-fiction writing about the mystics. And while, there are also limitations to fictional writing about the mystics, it fills a gap in a way that is hard to do with non-fiction writing. I still think my favorite novel about a mystic is Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin.

This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/revelations/