In the Footsteps of Julian of Norwich: Marie Laure

In her recent book, Return from Exile: Revelations from an Anchoress in St. Augustine, our guest Marie Laure tells us about a multi-year attempt to visit the home of the mystical writer, Julian of Norwich, and the serendipitous pilgrimage there and back again.

Laure wants to understand why Julian of Norwich lived from age fifty in a cell, an anchorage, attached to a church during the Black Death plague. Her own so-called anchorage is a river porch attached to a Florida townhouse. How had she ended up in quasi-exile?

Alone in Julian’s anchorage, Marie confronts words etched in stone: “Thou art enough for me.” The words nag at her. Truth is, she could not say those words. Why had she come? Her handwritten words, “For my heart to heal,” speak across time when read aloud in the anchorage by a priest.

Upon returning home, a global pandemic shutters the world, throwing everyone into exile, creating distance and longing for reunion.

Marie Laure leads spiritual autobiography seminars and retreats. She is the author of Chances Are . . . (2016), the first book in her Serendipity Series. She coauthored Tuscan Retreat (2013), with Lance Carden. She holds master's degrees in theology from Episcopal Divinity School and Boston University School of Theology.