The Hazelnut
“And in this (sight) he shewed a little thing the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of 
my hand as it seemed to me, and it was as round as any ball. I looked therein with the eye of my understanding and thought: ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus: “It is all that is made.” I marveled how it might last, fo it seemed to me it might suddenly have fallen into nought for its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding. “It lasteth and ever shall, because God loveth it. And so hath all things being by the love of God.”
(Julian of Norwich 5:7-13.139)
Julian’s mind moves to cooking (as metaphor),an activity that has occupied her whole life. She is suddenly shown, through an imaginative vision, a perfectly round hazelnut lying in the palm of her hand. How many times she had held, cracked, and eaten raw or roasted hazelnuts, ground them with a mortar and pestle to make a paste or sauce…followed a recipe calling for a quantity pf lard “the size of a hazelnut,” or saved one half of the nut covering to use as a makeshift measuring spoon for salt and spices. The hazelnut was so utterly ordinary, that Julian did not understand what the import of its imaginary presence in her palm could possible mean. She asks “why?” and receives a response of
“It is all that is made.”
The moment is stunning in its simplicity and grandeur. Julian realizes in a flash how precious the little nut is, simply because it exists… What power allows such a tiny thing to exist at all and cares enough to sustain it in wexistence? Again she is answered.
“It lasteth, and ever shall, because God loveth it.”
It is loved equally with suns and moons and stars, all the wonders of nature, and the uniqueness of human beings.
(excerpted from Julian’s Gospel by Veronica Mary Roth)