When I saw young girls playing together under the shade of a tree, I wished I could be among them, whole and clean again. 

Victoria MacKenzie, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain

been reading the book of margery kempe bc her feast day is my birthday and something about how wonderfully ordinary and mundane and flawed she is really gets me. like just the simplicity and beauty of it all. "Daughter, why have you forsaken me, and I never forsook you?"

I keep coming across novels & poetry collections inspired by Margery Kempe. There is the classic New Narrative novel by Robert Glück that I intend to read at some point. There is a bad-sounding novel published last year. Another published two years ago (I blame Lauren Groff). This recent poetry collection, by a poet I have to read for class next week. Another poetry collection. What's next.

I recently read the book of Margery Kempe for a class and I found myself reflected in her wayyyy too much. The idea of the female mystic in medieval Europe and just the concept of experiencing god through a feminine lens in a deeply patriarchal society is fascinating.

For folk saints: can I nominate Margery Kempe?

I'm actually going to put this up to a general debate - Margery Kempe isn't considered a saint in the Catholic tradition, but she is in the Anglican tradition.

So, team - what should it be? yay or nay on including Margery Kempe?

from Margery Kempe by Robert Gluck

was anyone gonna tell me kempe had a vision she offered the virgin mary a cuppa after jesus died or was i just supposed to find that out for myself on ao3

most british response to a bereavement ever

Margery Kempe, The Mirror of Love: "I heard a noise like wind blowing in my ears and knew it for the Sound of the Holy Spirit which became like the voice of a dove. When the Lord spoke to me I lost all sense of time. I did not know if he was with me five or six hours or only one. It was so holy and full of grace that I felt as if I had been in heaven."

How on earth was everyone in England apparently able to recognize Margery Kempe on sight

i am absolutely dying over this review of the book of margery kempe

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie

In the year of 1413, two women meet for the first time in the city of Norwich.

Margery has left her fourteen children and husband behind to make her journey. Her visions of Christ – which have long alienated her from her family and neighbours, and incurred her husband's abuse – have placed her in danger with the men of the Church, who have begun to hound her as a heretic. Julian, an anchoress, has not left Norwich, nor the cell to which she has been confined, for twenty-­three years. She has told no one of her own visions – and knows that time is running out for her to do so. The two women have stories to tell one another. Stories about girlhood, motherhood, sickness, loss, doubt and belief; revelations more the powerful than the world is ready to hear. Their meeting will change everything.

Book page: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/for-thy-great-pain-have-mercy-on-my-little-pain-9781526647894/

My Review: There's a lot of books about historical witches and  their persecution, there's not a lot of fiction books about mystics even if their life wasn't alwasy easy and they were often persecuted. Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich lived  in the same time, they were both mystycs but their life is very different. Julian, the anchoress who wrote a very important book like Revelations of Divine Love that is very different from the average Middle Age theology. An anchoress who lived in a small cell with a cat and a woman to help her Margery the mother of 14 children, the histrionic preacher who was arrested and tried by the Inquisition more than once an travelled to Jerusalem and all over Europe. A women who wrote the first autobiography in English This book is about them and I found it riveting and poignant. The voices of these women sound "real", similar to their voice in their books. It's not a long book but it's one that cause book-hangover as I wanted more, I didn't want to say good bye to these women and their incredible spiritual life. Two women who were able to chose a different life, women with a rich spiritual life and that strange gift call mystycism that mae them able to see what other couldn't see. It's an excellent debut and I strongly recommend it. Many thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing Plc (UK & ANZ) for this arc, all opinions are mine

The Author: Victoria MacKenzie is a fiction writer and poet. She is the winner of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award and the inaugural Emerging Writer Award from Moniack Mhor. She was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, as well as being awarded prestigious writing residencies in Scotland, Finland and Australia. She teaches creative writing for the Open College of the Arts. She lives in Scotland. victoriamackenzie.net @forthygreatpain

Social Links: https://linktr.ee/victoriamackenzie

This is the first page of The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery Kempe was an English mystic who lived from around 1373 to sometime after 1438. During her lifetime she was famous for being a mystic, a borderline heretic, and really, really annoying. (Margery was infamous for her nonstop sobbing.)

The Book of Margery Kempe is widely considered the first English autobiography. Her autobiography was written in Middle English, so even if you don’t know Middle English fluently, a modern English speaker can still recognize some words. Which words can you pick out?

(To make things easier, the character “ſ” as seen in the first word on the second line is an “s.”) The first page of The Book of Margery Kempe

Add MS 61823 f.1r 

Source: The British Library

MARGERY KEMPE // MYSTIC

“She was an English Christian mystic, known for writing through dictation The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. Her book chronicles her domestic tribulations, her extensive pilgrimages to holy sites in Europe and the Holy Land, as well as her mystical conversations with God. She is honoured in the Anglican Communion, but has not been canonised as a Catholic saint.”

“she thought she might wish to be killed for god’s love, but feared the point of death, and therefore she imagined for herself the softest death,”

— the book of margery kempe (trans. anthony bale)

The dog tried to keep up, panting and thrusting her neck forwards as though she were pulling a cart. For her Jesus slowed down - exasperating. Margery was thirteen years older than Jesus and she had just given birth.