At age twenty-one, the pain of losing her mother to cancer sent Laurel Mathewson--with a naturally skeptical and questioning outlook--on a years-long existential journey. After an unexpected, overwhelming experience of God's love, Laurel felt God say to her, "Turn to Teresa. She will guide you." She understood that "Teresa" was the sixteenth-century saint Teresa of Avila, but she knew very little about her. Even after becoming an Episcopal priest, she had never read more than a few pages of Teresa's writings. Laurel began to read The Interior Castle, Teresa's book about the "dwellings" within

The fourteenth-century anchorite known as Julian of Norwich offered fervent prayers for a deeper understanding of Christ's passion. The holy woman's petitions were answered with a series of divine revelations that she called "shewings." Her mystic visions revealed Christ's sufferings with extreme intensity, but they also confirmed God's constant love for humanity and infinite capacity for forgiveness.Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love have had a lasting influence on Christian thought. Written in immediate, compelling terms, her experiences remain among the most original and accessi