Waking in the early morning hours and unable to return to sleep, I toasted whole wheat bread and brewed chamomile tea: comfort food. I read a little, but eventually focused on the lovely, golden liquid in a favorite mug. I cradled the cup in my hands, the heat relieving aching joints in my fingers. Every sip warming my body.
I thought of Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval mystic, who counted among her long list of creative accomplishments authoring a book, Physica, that outlined the healing properties of natural elements, including plants.
While drinking my tea, I imagined Hildegard in her monastery’s garden harvesting herbs and making an infusion to ease someone’s pain. “Did she drink chamomile tea?” I wondered. Likely. If not, something similar.
Hildegard has been on my mind. For the past couple of weeks, thanks to a small book club, I’ve been immersed in her music and writings, reading both some of her original work and books written about her. She was a medieval Benedictine nun and mystic, canonized a saint and named a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church in 2012 (one of only four women recognized with that title). The list of her accomplishments would be amazing for a modern woman but is staggering considering the times in which she lived: visionary, prophet, poet, theologian, author, artist, composer, dramatist, preacher, healer, and an inexhaustible correspondent.
Her feast day is September 17 on both the Roman and Anglican calendars. To celebrate, I listened to a recording of clear voices singing songs she composed over 800 years ago and baked Hildegard’s “cookies of joy,” filling the kitchen with the aromas of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. Hildegard provides a recipe of sorts and writes in Physica that these cookies, made with spelt flour, the spices above, and water, should be eaten often to lift the spirit and soothe the mind.
My kind of saint. She also liked beer and had recipes using wine infused with herbs to treat various maladies.
Eat them often. It will calm all bitterness of the heart and mind, open your heart and impaired senses, and make your mind cheerful. It purifies your senses and diminishes all harmful humors in you. It gives good liquid to your blood and makes you strong.
Hildegard of Bingen in Physica
But food isn’t what’s drawing me to her. It’s her experience of God in all things and all things in God. She had many names for God including Wisdom, Sapientia, the Word, the Holy Spirit. God’s life, viriditas, greenness flowing through everything that is. Like all mystics, she saw the wholeness of creation.
In The Windows of Faith: Prayers of Holy Hildegard, editor Walburga Storch, O.S.B. writes that for Hildegard, “The Spirit is the ‘life of life.’ For Hildegard life has a comprehensive meaning. Concretely and first of all it is creation. ‘Through you the clouds waft and the breezes blow, stones drip and brooks burst forth from their springs, making green things sprout from the earth.’ All creation in every one of its processes has to do with the life-giving Spirit of God. Wherever we encounter life we can experience the Spirit’s power and we are moved by God. ‘Life of the life of all created things, … you give life to every form” (17).
I have pulled Hildegard books off my office shelves to read her insights into the connectedness of all things – with one another and with God. Human beings are co-creators with God, she writes, and have responsibility to reverence and take care of the earth. Modern-day scientists reveal concrete evidence of nature’s interdependence. For example, Suzanne Simard, professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, has shown through her research that trees communicate with each other and that the forest is not a collection of plants but rather a whole, a single organism. This is much like the wisdom and science of Aboriginal peoples-and mystics. (Her book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, was released earlier this year. You can listen to her interview with Krista Tippett on “On Being.”)
Photo: Mary van Balen
Photo: Mary van Balen
Not only scientists, but also poets, religious and world leaders, and concerned citizens are pleading for responsible care for creation. But, in addition to people speaking out and working for meaningful responses to the climate crisis, there are others working to slow down or stop efforts to address climate change and unsustainable lifestyles. Some have ties to the fossil fuel industries (mining companies, lobbyists, corporations, politicians, etc.) and stand to profit personally from continued extraction and use of destructive energy sources.
On Hildegard’s feast, I am spending time with her music and writings. Pondering what I can do to live more responsibly. I’ll share dinner and my Hildegard cookies with friends and celebrate the Love that gives life and connects us all.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Quotes from Hildegard’s work that speak to the gift of creation, the challenges, and the opportunities of our times:
“All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance, emerging from God like the rays of the sun.”
“Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of Divinity.”
“We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.
“Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.”
“Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”
“Praise of Wisdom
O power of Wisdom / you drew your circles, / encompassed the universe / on the one road / that leads to life. // You have three powers / like three wings: / The one carries you to the heights; / the second lifts itself from the earth; / but the third beats everywhere. // O Wisdom, to you all praise is due!”
Links to Hildegard’s Cookie recipes: