Rev. Debra McKnight's Reflection
September 13, 2020
I have lived near Hildegard…well, near Bingen, and I have read her and I want to love her. I feel like we should be spiritual buddies even through we were born about 1000 years apart. I have seen the Rhine river and spaces connected with her and perhaps even a relic of her, which probably amounted to a display case of bejeweled, golden containers and signs that say, “This is Hildegard’s index finger, Charlemagne’s forearm and St. So-and-so’s clavicle.” I have wanted to feel connected but, to be honest, it is hard. I read her writing and when I to draw the visions she details, I end up looking at a mountain of eyeballs looking up at a glowing orb, a human figure at the base, and flames coming out from the sky. And all of it means something: the eyes looking up are about humility and the flames are virtues and I just start to say, “Hildegard, you are too much!”
Of course she is too much. You would be too if you were gifted to the monastic community as a child. She was the 10th child, so her parents give her as a tithe to the church. At the age of eight, she leaves home for the monastery, living under the care and supervision of Jutta. Just to give you perspective she was a year older than Lila and if you are thinking about how you can support the Abbey, this is it. The world in which she dwells is almost incomprehensible to me and perhaps to you. She joins the monastic community at 8, takes vows at 15 and when her mentor dies, she will take her place in leadership of the Sisters. This path might be why it’s a challenge for me to follow her writing.
I much prefer a secondary source like Matthew Fox or Jan Richardson. They are like sunscreen that makes it safe to bask in Hildegard’s brilliance. I appreciate the historians and the experts; they are like tour guides and can help us navigate the landscape. They know the pitfalls and the best views, they know the Rhine was Celtic before the Germanic tribes, they know the politics of the many little Germanys that would have shaped Hildegard’s world and they know the theologies that she pushes back against. I love having the help of wise guides and if anything, I think Hildegard would totally affirm this. She believed our “regal intellect” was a gift to be used and she told that to the fundamentalist and anti-intellectuals of her day. She would likely be appalled by the state of modern American Christianity.
She loves science saying, “all science is a gift from God” and finds creation to be alive. She loves nature and writes books on medicine. She imagined the universe with the metaphor of an egg and believed we were co-creators with God. Born in 1098, she lived in a world hostile to the feminine voice and yet she would not be silent. She wrote 300 letters to Kings and Abbots, Popes and Princes and she told them exactly what she thought. She delighted in creation, talked about being “moist” (that’s right, moist) in love of God and creation and the great sin of the church was drying up. She told them to get “wet and green and moist and juicy” and if you are hearing that as a little erotic, well you are hearing her right. She said, “the sin of the Church is silence and tolerance of corrupt men” and “You, O Rome, are like one in the throes of death, you will be so shaken for you don’t love the Kings daughter, Justice.” She lives most of the 12th century and won’t be silenced until she is 80 and I don’t know if you have met a lot of 80 year old church ladies, but they will not be silenced.
She invites folks to explore Christ through music and medicine, science and opera, poetry and art and theology and something a kin to medieval European yoga. She sees creation as delightful and delighted. She will name Mary as the seed of all being and see divinity (God’s presence) not as a ladder to above us, but as a wheel - a circle that embraces and encompasses us all. She does not buy into the dualism of Greek Philosophy that so influence voices like Augustine and so she does something different than the standard original sin narrative that makes us so broken we are just lucky God would look at us. She preaches original Wisdom and a vision of Love at the start of creation.
Hildegard says, “I heard a voice speaking to me: The young woman whom you see is Love. She has her tent in eternity…It was love which was the source of this creation in the beginning God said, “Let it be!” And it was. As though in the blink of an eye the whole creation was formed through Love. The young woman is radiant in such a clear, lightning-like brilliance of countenance that you can’t fully look at her…She holds the sun and moon in her right hand and embraces them tenderly…The whole of creation calls this maiden Lady. For it was from her that all of creation proceeded, since Love was the first. She made everything…Love was in eternity and brought forth, in the beginning of all holiness, all creatures without any mixture of evil. Adam and Eve, as well were produced by love from the pure nature of the Earth.”
We are formed in love, all of creation is formed in love, “gifted with all needed” and “a symphony of joy and jubilation.” Adam’s sin is failing to love and rather than a fall and redemption that requires a violent crucifixion to be at one with God, she invites a different path. Redemption is about incarnation not crucifixion, the very notion of God within us and around us and through us, God is already there. Matthew Fox names Hildegard’s salvation theology as Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transforma. All of creation begins in joy and abundance. Creation isn’t to be used, but celebrated. Adam’s sin is not loving creation and like Adam, we journey in this negative space. The mystery and darkness, the fire balanced with stillness, the presence of silence and suffering are a part of life, honored and named. Hildegard will have her own moments of this with sickness and struggle and when she does, she longs for the goodness and remembers the goodness. “O Mother, where are you? I would suffer pain more lightly if I had not felt the deep pleasure of your presence earlier.” As she longs and struggles, she sees the crucifixion as a place of being awakened, a grounding place of restart. And that journey towards transformation takes one through creativity (Via Creativa).
Hildegard embodies the creative path. She spends 10 years writing and directing illustrations of her visions for her first book and then just adds an opera on the end of it. Her music is incredibly challenging and requires a musician to go through their full potential. Her musical compositions anticipate Mozart by 500 years. She wrote books on theology and claimed her visions. She wrote letters to leaders navigating the challenging political landscape, crafted a text on Medicine and she preached up and down the Rhine, the Saar, the Moselle and the Danube. She took her sisters, left the men’s monastic building and built her own. She not only raised the money for it and lead the community, but she designed the building and it had running water and toilets before most of Europe could imagine such engineering. Creativity leads to transformation. This is the journey toward connectivity with God and the presence of the spirit. Transformation leads to tending the “King’s daughter, Justice.” She call us to struggle against evil. “Resist strongly…become a tree.” Trees are rooted and strong and she compares the sap to the soul. Her view of creation as a circle and God embodied in all means violation of the earth and humanity is a sin.
All of this is perfect. Except she is not perfect. She is imperfect and we expect folks we name “Saints” to be perfect. But the truth is as far as she might have come theologically, there was room to grow. To understand other faiths and folks who practice them is in the circle, too. To open the doors of her community to sisters who didn’t come from nobility would have challenged the norms of her day, but that is one challenge she didn’t follow. And while her very presence and voice challenges gender norms of the 12th century and pretty much every century after it, she doesn’t bring other women along…at least not very well. Of women she says, “for they are an infirm and weak habitation, appointed to bear children and diligently nurture them.” Reading this breaks my heart. I don’t know if she is comparable to Phyllis Schlafly, but I know I am disappointed. Why can’t she be perfectly liberating? Why did she do so well and not do everything well…or the way I would want her to?
The truth is she teaches folks to love their “regal intellect” and gives us the reminder to think critically and so we must, even about her very teachings. We can learn what gives life and leave what does not behind. We can take her message and move a step further than she could at the time. And most important, we can think deeply about our own blind spots and mistakes. Her world was a mess, it was violent and oppressive, hunger and sickness made life hard at every turn and yet God works through her and with her. She leaves home at eight as a gift to the church and the strange miracle is she actually thrives and becomes a holy, imperfect gift to the church and the world around her. Our world has its share of violence and oppression and the mess around us can feel anything but holy. Perhaps Hildegard asks us to look deep at what we can make of this world around us, how can we love it wildly and fully? What might we need to carry a step further to draw closer to God’s love? May we have the courage to journey with Hildegard through it all. May it be so. Amen.
P.S. Interested in reading more? Consider Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint For Our Times by Matthew Fox, his love of her carries through in every word. Interested in a great devotional that grapples with how hard it can be to dance with Hildegard? Consider Jan L. Richardson’s In The Sanctuary of Women. If you are seeking her writings, we have them at the Abbey.
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