The Greening Force
Almost 1,000 years ago, Hildegard of Bingen documented her visions in obedience and humility. It’s a rich demonstration of the limits of language in the face of the ineffable. And still, we try.
When Hildegard of Bingen was 42 years and 7 months—yes, she was that precise—this 12th-century mystic and abbess started documenting visions that we still return to almost 1,000 years later.
I recently read an email from the Center for Wild Spirituality that reminded me of a word Hildegard took from the Latin: viriditas, which can be translated to: freshness, vitality, fertility, fruitfulness, growth. (It’s very Spring-like.) Here’s one translation of the text where we see her attempt to express the numinous quality of viriditas:
“O most honored Greening Force, You who roots in the Sun; You who lights up, in shining serenity, within a wheel that earthly excellence fails to comprehend. You are enfolded in the weaving of divine mysteries. You redden like the dawn and you burn: flame of the Sun.” — in Causae et Curae
[English translation: Hildegard of Bingen: On Natural Philosophy and Medicine: Selections from Cause et Cure, translated by Margret Berger, D.S. Brewer, 1999. ISBN: 9780859915441.]
Hildegard frames her awe of the natural world, teeming with life that blooms in the warmth of the sun, in such a way that praises her God—the Greening Force—the source from which viriditas pours over the green life of emerging Spring. She is witnessing the Creator redeeming nature from the temporary death of Winter.
As the email from the Center for Wild Spirituality goes on to say:
“The greening of the world was God’s own aliveness moving through creation.”
The earth is saturated with the sacred.
Panentheism / Pantheism
In Hildegard’s panentheistic worldview, the divine manifests in every leaf and blade of grass, but no living thing is Divine in and of itself. A good analogy is how a sunbeam is in and from the sun without being the Sun. The creation and Creator remain distinct.
In contrast, a pantheistic worldview would say that God is All of nature, that they are One.
Either way, our experience of the sacred in All That Is around us and within us remains a sublime one, one that we struggle to keep alive and extend beyond immediate experience.
Through Language We Try
It has its limits and it can often fail us, but language is our primary tool of expression, our bridge between us and the world, our only way to render the numinous (“In the beginning was the Word”).
Hildegard’s culture and language framed how she could make her attempt at building that bridge. Her gift to us now, almost 1,000 years later, is how she shows us that we can and should do the same in our time and place. It’s less about getting it ‘right’ and more about the attempt. It’s a kind of prayer.
