Against Speed
by Jonathan Greene

To be anywhere
you have to speed down
and walk slowly

to know intimately
just your small plot
of earth

that was given to you
by luck and
divine Chance.

•

Driving by—
so many racing
beyond the speed limit—

you learned nothing
except life has
passed you by.

“Against Speed” by Jonathan Greene from Afloat. Broadstone Books © 2018. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It's the birthday of novelist and travel writer Bruce Chatwin, (books by this author) born Sheffield, England (1940). He worked as a porter for Sotheby's auction house, and he developed a refined eye for art, especially the Impressionists, and ended up as director of Sotheby's.

He began to suffer eye problems. His doctor told him to take time off work, and the doctor mentioned that he had recently started a clinic in East Africa, so Chatwin visited the Sudan, where he lived with nomadic tribes.

He came back to England, studied archaeology, and then worked as a writer for the London Sunday Times Magazine. He interviewed prominent people, and one of them was a 93-year-old architect who had painted a map of Patagonia on her wall. He said, "I've always wanted to go there." She replied, "So have I. Go there for me."

So he headed to South America, and traveled around Patagonia, taking notes in his trademark black notebooks. And from that experience he wrote a book, In Patagonia (1977). It quickly became a classic in the field of travel writing, although some residents of Patagonia disputed Chatwin's version of certain events.

So he went on to classify many of his travel books as novels, including his best-selling book The Songlines (1987). It's about a protagonist named Bruce who writes in black notebooks and travels around the Australian outback studying nomadic peoples and the songs they sing.

Chatwin contracted HIV around 1980. But he hid the virus with various stories: that he had gotten sick from a bat bite, or that he had a rare Chinese disease. He and his wife moved to south of France, and he died as a result of AIDS at the age of 48. Some of his other books include On The Black Hill (1982), What Am I Doing Here? (1989), and Anatomy of Restlessness (1996).

It was on this day in 1373 that the mystic Julian of Norwich (books by this author) received the last of her divine visions. Julian is not technically a saint, and no one even knows her given name. She was called "Julian" because she was an anchoress in a cell adjoining the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, England. An anchoress renounces society for solitary religious practice (similar to a hermit) instead of living in a community as a nun.

Julian was born in England, probably in 1342, just before the worst outbreak of the Black Death in Europe. During that time, the Late Middle Ages, England was fighting the Hundred Years’ War with France, the Black Death killed at least a third of England’s population, there had been widespread famine and crop failures, and peasants were in revolt. In addition to all that, the Catholic Church was falling apart. The Church was leading up to a major schism — the pope had defected to Avignon in France since the early 14th century, which didn’t sit well with Rome. In 1351, Pope Clement VI himself railed against his own highest-ranking clergy: "What can you preach to the people? If on humility, you yourselves are the proudest of the world, puffed up, pompous and sumptuous in luxuries. If on poverty, you are so covetous that all the benefices in the world are not enough for you. If on chastity — but we will be silent on this, for God knoweth what each man does and how many of you satisfy your lusts."

This was the context in which Julian of Norwich, whoever she might have been, decided to withdraw from society for a life of religious solitude. She spent her days in contemplative prayer, and when she was 30 years old she became seriously ill. She was so near death that the priest was called to administer the last rites, when suddenly she began experiencing visions. She had 16 visions of God, and was healed. She wrote: "All this blessed teaching of our Lord was shown to me in three parts, that is by bodily vision and by words formed in my understanding and by spiritual vision." Shortly after her visions occurred, she wrote them down into a work she called Short Text, which was 25 chapters long. And although she described herself as a "simple creature unlettered," she kept thinking about the visions and revising her account of them, and 20 years later she completed all 86 chapters of her Long Text. Eventually, these became Revelations of Divine Love, one of the first books written by a woman in English.

Julian of Norwich wrote: "So I understood our sensuality is founded in nature, in mercy and in grace, and this foundation enables us to receive gifts which lead us to endless life. For I saw very surely that our substance is in God, and I also saw that God is in our sensuality, for in the same instant and place in which our soul is made sensual, in that same instant and place exists the city of God, ordained from him without beginning. He comes into this city and will never depart from it, for God is never out of the soul, in which he will dwell blessedly without end."

It was on this day in 1940 that Winston Churchill gave his first speech as prime minister to the House of Commons. He had taken over the job three days earlier. The speech Churchill gave is considered one of his greatest. He said: "I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.’ We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realized; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’"

Churchill was a good writer as well as a good speaker. He wrote more than 40 books — histories, biographies, memoirs, and even a novel. He is the only British prime minister who has received the Nobel Prize in literature.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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