The entire middle ages ought to be committed

[highlyeccentric]

I also heard a story about Gertrude of Helfta, a fifteenth century nun who had a vision that she was in a deep valley of despair, and Christ hovered above her; he then lowered down a long, thin golden tube, "like a drinking straw," down which he issued "many pleasant things" to her. Then, eventually, he sucked her up through the straw into heaven. She wrote (or at least, I think it was her - my notes are a little vague on this) that she wished that she could be disassembled for god; that her veins be woven into a little dress for the Christ child, and her blood drained to be his bathwater. Oh my god, the middle ages, THERAPY.

In context, Toft is a committed student of the middle ages

Comments

[laughingrat]

Aw, I've always been intrigued by the weird combination of body-consciousness/body-abnegation, plus sentimentality, that goes with some of these visions. <3