garden living

he had lied

taken the one piece

with no money family or school

she had sacrificed to hold,

her honor and time

he inherited himself

everyday beyond the past

in the future's house,

a good memory

and lambs warning

of leachcraft and law

And then our Lord opened my spiritual eye and shewed me my soul in midst of my heart.

I saw the Soul so large as it were an endless world, and as it were a blissful kingdom.

And He shewed the satisfying that He hath of the making of Man's Soul. For as well as the Father might make a creature, that Man's Soul were made.

And at this point the Son began first to shew His might:

for He went into Hell, and when He was there He raised up the great Root out of the deep deepness which was knit in high Heaven.

"The dear worthy blood of our Lord Jesus Christ as verily as it is most precious, so verily it is most plenteous" in seeming of  the Scourging, as thus:

The fair skin was broken full deep into the tender flesh with sharp smiting all about the sweet body.

So plenteously the hot blood ran out that there was neither seen skin nor wound, but as it were all blood.

And when it came where it should have fallen down, then it vanished. Notwithstanding, the bleeding continued awhile: till it might be seen and considered.  And this was so plenteous, that methought if it had been so in kind and in substance at that time, it should have made the bed all one blood, and have passed over about.

And then came to my mind that God hath made waters plenteous in earth to our service and to our bodily ease for tender love that He hath to us.

Behold and see!  

The precious plenty of His dear worthy blood descended down into Hell and burst her bands and delivered all that were there which belonged to the Court of Heaven. The precious plenty of His dear worthy blood overfloweth all Earth, and is ready to wash all creatures of sin.

The precious plenty of His dear worthy blood ascended up into Heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there is in Him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father.

And evermore it floweth in all Heavens enjoying the salvation of all mankind.

I saw the plenteous bleeding of the Head.

The great drops of blood fell down from under the Garland like pellots, seeming as it had come out of the veins; and in the coming out they were brown-red, for the blood was full thick;

and in the spreading-abroad they were bright-red; and when they came to the brows, then they vanished; notwithstanding, the bleeding continued till many things were seen and understood.

The plenteousness is like to the drops of water that fall off the eaves after a great shower of rain, that fall so thick that no man may number them with bodily wit; and for the roundness, they were like to the scale of herring, in the spreading on the forehead.

These three came to my mind in the time:

pellots for roundness,

in the coming out of the blood, the scale of herring,

in the spreading in the forehead, for roundness;

the drops off eaves, for the plenteousness innumerable.

For the blessed flesh and bones was left all alone without blood and moisture.

The blessed body dried alone long time with wringing of the nails and weight of the body.

For I understood that for tenderness of the sweet hands and of the sweet feet, by the greatness, hardness, and grievousness of the nails the wounds waxed wide and the body sagged, for weight by long time hanging.

And therewith was piercing and pressing of the head,

and binding of the Crown all baked with dry blood, with the sweet hair clinging,

and the dry flesh, to the thorns, and the thorns to the flesh drying;

and in the beginning while the flesh was fresh and bleeding, the continual sitting of the thorns made the wounds wide.

And furthermore I saw that the sweet skin and the tender flesh, with the hair and the blood,

was all raised and loosed about from the bone, with the thorns wherethrough it were rent in many pieces, as a cloth that were sagging, as if it would hastily have fallen off, for heaviness and looseness, while it had natural moisture.

The Garland of the Thorns was dyed with the blood, and that other garland of Blood and the head, all was one colour, as clotted blood when it is dry. The skin of the flesh that shewed of the face and of the body, was small-rimpled with a tanned colour, like a dry board when it is aged;

and the face more brown than the body.

The body was in the grave till Easter-morrow, and from that time He lay nevermore.

For then was rightfully ended the struggling and the writhing, the groaning and the moaning.

And our foul deadly flesh that God's Son took on Him, which was Adam's old kirtle, worn, bare, and short, was then by our Saviour made fair, new white and bright and of endless cleanness;

loose and long.

Juliana of Norwich  1373