The Greenness of Nature and God
We Conspire is a series from the Center for Action and Contemplation featuring wisdom and stories from the growing Christian contemplative movement. Sign up for the monthly email series and receive a free invitation to practice each month.
How does contemplation awaken us to the divine presence in nature? In April’s “We Conspire” series, we reflect on the vibrant legacy of Hildegard of Bingen—a 12th-century mystic, healer, and visionary—who revealed the deep connection between the soul, the natural world, and the divine.
Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th-century, ecological mystic. Born in 1098 in Böckelheim, Germany, she invites us to consider the interconnected reality of the soul, nature and God. Hildegard had many talents and accomplished diverse feats. She served as an abbess, composed music, preached sermons, wrote poetry, a play, and medical texts, and practiced natural healing. She understood deeply that the interconnectedness of nature revealed the divine presence.
Hildegard also experienced visions from a very young age, which provided her the courage and call to live her creative and bold life. She perceived things that others did not, and described her visions as surrounded by light. She called the divine presence from her visions “the living light.” Author and inter-spiritual teacher Mirabai Starr writes, “Hildegard was 43 years old when her visions finally became so insistent that she could no longer contain the secret she had harbored since early childhood: the Holy One, identifying itself as ‘the Living Light,’ spoke to her. It spoke to her regularly, its voice emerging from a swirl of spiraling light.” [1] Her visions gradually encouraged her to write publicly about what she had seen.
The Holy One, identifying itself as ‘the Living Light,’ spoke to her. It spoke to her regularly, its voice emerging from a swirl of spiraling light. —Mirabai Starr
A key concept in Hildegard’s work is “greenness.” From the Latin viriditas, Hildegard writes of greenness as a divine, ecological life force within the heart of reality. Plants, trees, fields, and nature are all “green” for Hildegard, but the greenness is also the energy of aliveness within the universe. God’s saving renewal of people and creation is green, transforming the “dryness” of sin.” [2] CAC affiliate faculty member Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher explains, “Hildegard teaches us “to see God’s vigor in the world around us. She called this vigor viriditas, the ‘green’ energy of agape love pulsing through the entire universe. Over and over in her writings, she chooses viriditas to express God’s vitality and the ways His goodness and love charge the whole world with life, beauty, and renewal—literally, with ‘greenness’…. Wherever Hildegard looked, she saw that this ‘green’ force animates every creature and plant on this planet with verdant divine love.” [3]
Plants, trees, fields, and nature are all “green” for Hildegard, but the greenness is also the energy of aliveness within the universe.
In 2015, CAC founder Richard Rohr gave a series of talks in the Rhine River region of Germany, near monasteries that Hildegard founded. He spoke of contemplation and Hildegard’s greenness, comparing it to photosynthesis. “Just as contemplation readies our hearts to receive the transformative light of Love,” Rohr said, “Hildegard saw a readiness in plants to receive the sun and transform its light and warmth into energy and life.” [4] Hildegard knew that the ecological world and the divine presence were intrinsically connected. Rohr calls this relatedness a “whole-making instinct,” which “translates into an inner voice calling us to ‘become who you are; become all that you are.’ We are each “whole” and yet part of a larger Whole, which many of us would call God. [5] For Hildegard, the green force of viriditas awakens our inner authority and gives voice to our own resonance within the larger Whole.
In one of Hildegard’s songs, she wrote, “O Holy Spirit … you are the mighty way in which everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness, is penetrated with relatedness.” [6] Perhaps Hildegard is inviting us to join in the great song of the cosmos with the song of our own being as we are enlivened by the “green” energy of love that pulses through each of us and all of the natural world.
References:
[1] Hildegard of Bingen; Starr, Mirabai (Editor). Hildegard of Bingen: Devotions, Prayers and Living Wisdom (Boulder: Sounds True, 2008), pp. 1–6.
[2] William Harmless, Mystics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 75.
[3] Hildegard of Bingen; Butcher, Carmen Acevedo (Translator). St. Hildegard of Bingen: A Spiritual Reader (Brewster: Paraclete Press, 2007), pp. 18-19.
[4] Richard Rohr, “Viriditas: The Greening of Things,” Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, August 3, 2020.
[5] Rohr, “Viriditas: The Greening of Things.”
[6] Hildegard of Bingen, “O Ignis Spiritus Paracliti (O Fire of the Spirit),” stanza 4. This translation is from Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen, ed. Gabriele Uhlein (Bear and Company: 1982), 41. This chanted sequence is included in many recordings of Hildegard’s musical works.
Reflect with Us
We invite you to reflect on how Hildegard of Bingen’s vision of viriditas—the greening life-force of divine love—resonates in your own journey. In what ways has contemplation deepened your connection to the natural world and awakened you to the interconnected sacredness of all life? Share your reflection with us.
We Conspire is a series from the Center for Action and Contemplation featuring wisdom and stories from the growing Christian contemplative movement. Sign up for the monthly email series and receive a free invitation to practice each month.