From the age of three, she saw visions. From the age of eight, she was confined to a convent. For decades, she kept silent about what she experienced, afraid to speak. Then, at forty-two, a voice commanded her: "Write what you see." And she became one of the most remarkable women of the medieval world.
Hildegard of Bingen was abbess, composer, herbalist, physician, theologian, and prophet. She corresponded with popes and emperors. She preached publicly at a time when women were forbidden to preach. She invented her own language. Her music is still performed today.
"I am a feather on the breath of God.
I do not know from whence I come or whither I go.
The wind carries me according to its will.
This is not my doing but the doing of the Living Light
That shines through me without my deserving."
Her visions were overwhelming. She saw the cosmos as a great egg, humanity as the centerpiece of creation, God as a living light that penetrated all things. "All of creation is a song," she wrote. "The cosmos makes music, and we are its notes."
Unlike many mystics, Hildegard did not flee the world. She saw matter as sacred, the body as holy, sexuality as divine gift. "Viriditas" — greenness, life-force — was her central concept. Everything that lives participates in God's creative energy.
"The Word is living, being, spirit.
All verdant greening, all creativity.
All word is ripening to the eternal harvest.
There is no creation that does not have radiance.
Be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty,
It could not be creation without it.
The soul is kissed by God in its innermost regions."
She lived to be eighty-one — an extraordinary age for her time. She never stopped creating: more music, more theology, more medical treatises. Near the end, the Church placed her convent under interdict for harboring a man they considered excommunicate. She fought the decision and won.
"I am a poor frail woman," she wrote, "but I see in the living Light what I must say."
Teaching 48
You are a feather on the breath of God. The cosmos makes music; you are a note in its song. All creation has radiance — there is no matter without spirit. Greenness, life-force, creativity: these are the signatures of the divine. Speak what you see, even if you are afraid.