Jack and the medieval mystics Chapter 1

A chance encounter

I locked up my bike and then made for Starbucks. The glass was so darkly tinted that without going in, it was difficult to see whether the girl with the purple hair was there or not. I pushed open the door and sauntered past the line of waiting customers. One guy gave me a look but I took no notice.

She was not behind the counter, but maybe she was picking up dirty cups. I had a quick scout around but no, she wasn’t there. Bugger. But at least I’d saved myself a few quid. And with that queue, she wouldn’t have had time to talk much anyway.

No way was I going back to the house to work on my long essay– not with Freddie playing his music and spreading his mess all over the shit-pit we call a kitchen — so there was nothing for it but the library.

Then I remembered — I didn’t have the Seligman book on positive psychology with me, and I needed that for the introductory section. I was on course for a 2:1, maybe even a First, but only if I pulled my finger out. I swore under my breath, thinking about the bike ride back in the rain, but then had a better idea.

It was a long time since I’d been in the campus bookshop. I used to visit more in my first year, when I still thought the student loan was for buying books. It was quiet in there but still smelt the same as I remembered. A new book smell that I like.

I headed down the stairs to the psychology section. Luckily, they had the Seligman, and some newer stuff that looked hopeful. I scanned through the contents of one, looking for relevant material on the influence of culture on the brain. Easing the rucksack off my shoulder, I got out my phone and looked round. There were no store assistants down here. I could probably capture the whole chapter.

My eye was drawn to a paperback just along the shelf, looking thin and out of place among the weighty psychology textbooks. I teased it out, struck by the cover with its colourful reproduction of a medieval stained glass window. Someone must have shelved it in the wrong place. I opened it at random. The text on the page looked odd — capitals all over the place where they shouldn’t be. It was the start of a new chapter, and the title was unbelievable. ‘How, being lodged within the soul, God worketh alike upon the understanding, the affections and the will.’ What is this?

My eye moved to the top of the page: ‘Blessed Angela of Foligno.’ Some sort of religious thing, I suppose. Old. Italian, by the sound of it. And weird too. I turned the pages: ‘And very often did He say unto me: “Bride and daughter, sweet are thou unto Me, I love thee better than any other who is in the valley of Spoleto.”’ I smiled. Crazy how people used to think they could hear God speaking to them. And then what kind of God would check out all the women in Spoleto and choose just this one?

I looked at the cover again: Mystical Writing of the Middle Ages: A Collection. So it wasn’t only Blessed Angela. I opened the book further on and it said Julian of Norwich at the top of the page. Who in hell was he? I read down the page. ‘Just as we shall partake of God’s blessedness for ever, praising him and thanking him, so have we existed in God’s foreknowledge, loved and known in his eternal purpose, from all time. In his timeless love he made us, and in the same love keeps us, never allowing us to be hurt in such a way that our blessedness be lost.’

Incredible — that people were so ignorant. To go round believing you were ‘loved and known’ by something invisible that doesn’t exist. And what’s with this ‘blessed’ thing? ‘Blessed Angela’ and now this Julian going on about ‘our blessedness.’ I closed the book and tucked it back between Eysenck and Gross. Why not give some other unsuspecting student a laugh?

Back to reality. When I left the bookshop it was still raining but less heavily now. I pulled my hood up and made for the library, along the path beside the stream. When they designed the campus, someone had made sure you could walk right by the water, which I thought was good of them.

I started to run through the trajectory of the essay in my mind. Seligman and all the positive psychologists since him had argued that what you choose to think about determines your mood. Of course, what you think about is conditioned to some extent by the environment around you. I had been reading an article by a cultural psychologist, looking at the way your particular culture affects your brain. But surely not the structure of the brain itself: maybe just the neurochemical processes. I was trying to remember what Thomson had said in that lecture about brain plasticity.

Suddenly, that book came into my mind: Blessed Angela and the other guy, Julian. They talked about God in a similar way, even though Angela was Italian and Julian was English presumably, if he was from Norwich. But then in the Middle Ages everyone believed the same stuff, everyone in Europe, anyway, where the Church was the big deal. What would it do to your brain if that’s what you grew up believing, if that’s all you knew?

I felt the impact of something on the back of my leg and turned to see a bunch of guys over on the grass. I kicked the ball back to them and noticed that it was no longer raining. I pulled my hood down.

What was I thinking about? It was something interesting. Oh yeah — the medieval crazies. What must it have been like to live in a world where everyone believed in an all-powerful being? Had anyone done any research on that? What would it do to your mind if you went round feeling you were ‘loved and known’ by God? Obviously a few people still believe that, even now, but it’s just a minority sport. I thought about that girl I fancied in the first year, until she invited me to the Catholic Society.

The library building came into view between the trees: a 1960s concrete structure, though they’d recently done a complete refurb inside. I suppose they have to spend all those student fees on something.

Climbing up the slope, an idea hit me out of nowhere. I could do some research of my own. Not a proper experiment, obviously. And it might not work, because of course I don’t believe it. But if, for one day, I could pretend — deliberately fill my mind with the idea that I was loved and known by something — someone they would have said — who was all-powerful. What difference would it make? After all, Seligman et al and CBT is all about positive self-talk. It couldn’t do any harm, anyway.

It was quiet in the library so I managed to get a seat by the window. I plugged in my laptop, shared the chapter from my phone and got to work. Looking up after a while, I saw that the rain had started again and watched it trickling in rivulets down the window pane. I would really try that God experiment. Tomorrow. Make it a whole day. Maybe I should go back to the bookshop on the way home and take a picture of those pages from the book, to remind me.

Thank you for reading. You can find Chapter 2 here

Links to all chapters are here