The World in a Hazelnut

Meditations with Julian of Norwich

 The past two weeks at my Sunday school (that we've now officially named "YASS!", for "Young Adult Sunday School"), one of our members has been teaching us about Julian of Norwich, and guiding us through some meditations based on this 14th-century anchoress's theological teachings. Last week, our leader passed around a little tub of hazelnuts and asked us each to pick one, and then we were given five minutes to sit (or walk or stand) with the hazelnut in hand and contemplate what it could teach us about God and the universe. 

This was based on a vision Julian of Norwich had: "…[God] showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, 'What may this be?' And it was answered generally thus, 'It is all that is made.' I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God. In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it."

I wandered away from the group and sat cross-legged on the floor, linoleum tile with shuffleboard goals painted on it. Under the dusty florescent lighting, I stared at the small nut in my hand. It was so light that I couldn't even feel it if I closed my eyes and kept my hand still. I had to move my palm to feel its insubstantial presence. I had to touch it to my lips to feel the tiny contours of its surface. I imagined the universe as this hazelnut.

Huge open spaces sometimes freak me out. I distinctly remember camping with our rainfly off for the first time in the desert— the night sky was so vast, and I felt fragile and alone. To see the hazelnut and imagine all the universe fitting into it, I was struck by how fragile it was too, how easily crushed.

It also came to mind that this hazelnut was the size of a human embryo at about eight weeks. 

Like all embryos, a seed like this hazel wants to grow. 

Like all embryos, it doesn't always. 

In an instant, there on the tile beneath the harsh lights, I cupped the hazelnut between both palms and wished I could hold it always, protect it from anything that would hurt it, and before I knew it, I was silently crying, the tears running down my cheeks.

A bell chimed to let us know the meditation was over, and we gathered around and talked about our thoughts. The words "fragile" and "vulnerable" came up a lot. Hazelnuts, and the universe, are so small.

I put the hazelnut in my pocket, and when I got home from church, I fully intended to set it on my desk so I could look at it every day. But as I held it in my hand and told Zach about the meditation, I got a strong desire to eat it instead. To take it into myself, so that what I had meditated would filter into the very cells of my body. 

To destroy it on purpose, with the realization that nothing can ever truly be destroyed. 

A germinating seed looks like destruction, too.

It felt like a kind of sacrament, eating the hazelnut, and the whole experience has been haunting me ever since. It's very vulnerable to go good-faith into a meditation like that, to allow yourself to be sincere enough to get anything out of it. But the rewards are great. Like all seeds, I want to grow.

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