Gianluigi Gugliermetto and I have been writing back-to-back DMs about sensual spirituality. There is much more to be said, and here I invoke Rabbi Heschel and Julian of Norwich. Rabbi Heschel is the author of the classic volume, The Prophets, and a scholar who descended from an ivory tower of academic privilege to take part in the march at Selma.
He answered his ten-year-old daughter’s question of what it was like marching at Selma by saying, “I felt my feet were praying.” His daughter, now a theologian in her own right, for years has been telling Jewish groups that if they have the picture of Heschel and MLK Jr. marching side by side at Selma on their wall, they should take it down.
Why? Because some of Heschel’s fiercest criticism came from many of the Jewish community who at that time did not want to stand up to racial injustice because they felt anti-semitism was already so prevalent.
The prophet Isaiah exclaims: How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’ (Is 52.7)
Those who marched in Minneapolis against ICE day after day, month after month, to stand up for their neighbors and for common human decency and for our Constitution also were praying with their feet. And are praying. As were Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, who were martyred, one on his feet and the second in her car.
Sister Dorothy Stang was praying with her feet when she, year after year, helped build schools and educate the children of the poor peasant farmers of the Amazon. She prayed with her feet when she walked to police headquarters to confront their treatment of the poor, demanding that they be released from jail. And when she stood up to corporate titans trying to dominate the Amazon and tear down the rainforest.
She paid the ultimate price for doing so while walking alone down a dusty trail in the rainforest one day, 21 years ago.
In his acclaimed book on The Prophets, Heschel underscores this point: Asceticism was not the ideal of the biblical person. The source of evil is not in passion, in the throbbing heart, but rather in hardness of heart, in callousness and insensitivity ….We are stirred by their (the prophets’) passion and enlivened imagination….It is to the imagination and the passions that the prophets speak, rather than aiming at the cold approbation of the mind.*
Another teacher who championed the marriage of spirituality and sensuality was the 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich, the first woman to write a book in English (though it was not published for 300 years!).
Julian teaches:
God is in our sensuality.
A beautiful oneing was made by God between the body and the soul.
God is the means whereby our Substance and our Sensuality are kept together so as to never be apart.
God has forged a glorious union between the soul and the body.
God willed that we have a twofold nature: sensual and spiritual.
The goodness of God permeates us even in our humblest needs.
She gives the example of going to the bathroom, which she calls the work of God who serves us even in our humblest needs.
God does not despise creation.
God wants to be thought of as our lover.
One reason that psychologists Naranjo and Ornstein call art as meditation “the way of the prophets” is that it is bodily and sensual and incarnational, born of a caring and “throbbing heart” offering “passion and enlivened imagination.”
*Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, (Harper & Row, 1962), p. 258.
Banner Image: Putting her body on the line for Gaza: Greta Thunberg speaks at the launching of the Global Sumud Flotilla delivering aid to Gaza from Barcelona, Spain on August 31, 2025. The 22-year-old international activist and other flotilla members were captured, detained, and mistreated by Israeli forces before being deported to Türkiye. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Heschel that “the source of evil is not in passion, in the throbbing heart, but rather in hardness of heart, in callousness and insensitivity?” And with Julian that “God is in our sensuality?” What follows from that?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic—and Beyond, pp. 104f., 71-87
WHEE! We, wee All the Way Home: A Guide to Sensual, Prophetic Spirituality
M.D. Chenu, “Body and Body Politic in the Creation Spirituality of Thomas Aquinas,” in Matthew Fox, ed., Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes, pp. 193-214
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society
Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation
Matthew Fox, Skylar Wilson and Jen Listug: Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action
1 thought on “The Sensual, the Spiritual & the Prophetic: Heschel & Julian of Norwich”
When Dante applied fire and heat-related punishment to only three of the nine circles of Hell while depicting the Prince of Evil stuck in a frozen lake at the bottom of the pit, he broke free from the fiery traditional imagery of his time and, like Herschel in today’s quote, he portrayed evil as not rooted in healthy passion and healthy sensuality, but rather in hardness of heart, callousness and insensitivity. In that respect, ICE is not a benign acronym but a bone-chilling reflection of hardness of heart, callousness and insensitivity —i.e. evil— in high places. No wonder climate change skepticism is rampant in such frozen circles.