SOURCE: "Contemplative and Radical: Julian Meets John Ball" in Julian: Woman of Our Day, edited by Robert Llewelyn, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985, pp. 89-101.

In the following essay Leech speculates on Julian's attitude toward the social upheaval of her day. He imagines her as the sympathetic supporter of peasants protesting the conditions of their lives.

In 1973 a group of people gathered in Norwich, England, to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Julian's Revelations and to consider her relevance to the spiritual needs of the twentieth century. At one point in the discussions, a devout evangelical psychiatrist was reflecting on the pastoral value of the contemplative character. How wonderful it would be, he suggested, if the gifts and qualities of the great contemplatives could be brought out of the enclosure and put at the service of those ministering to deeply troubled persons. Suddenly, the room shook as an Anglo-Catholic theologian...