Corresponding

Letters to Julian, this is what I called Anchorhold in the years in which I was walking up the stairs daily to my little room to write to her. Dear Julian, those are the first words which I wrote on the page daily, They unblocked my mind and heart.

The letter writing helped me to stop trying to write a book and to turn my mind to talking to a teacher. I am far better at asking hard questions than I am at writing books. I have never been so content in a task, every morning I knew what I had to do and this was a great gift. But the greater gift was that every day I had no idea what it would do to me. Even when the first drafts of the letters were done, it still felt like a process of communication between her and I and God. It just grew into a communication between Julian, and my earlier self and my today self and God. Until the last day of submission, she was still talking to me, sending me one last note from some strange phrase I noticed afresh or some change that had happened within me that I hadn’t anticipated in an early resistance.

 In the end the title had to change, for what started as letters written by a woman to a text written by a woman seeking God had become a true correspondence between three. Writing letters had moved me towards Julian and towards God and thus towards myself.

The Latin roots for correspondence are cor- together and respondere- respond. Together, we were now responding to my life. And just so, I have come into a greater alignment, agreement, congruousness, consonance, accord.