In reverence to Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen lived in 12th century Germany as a visionary, prophetess, poet, herbalist, angelic musician, Benedictine abbess, and mystic whose teachings, musical compositions, scientific discoveries, healing methods, and art remains relevant and revolutionary today. 

In Matthew Fox's Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times, he writes:

"Who is this woman who [in the 1200s] built her theology on Lady Wisdom, Sophia, the Divine Feminine, who declared that Mary is 'the ground of all being,' just like the goddesses of old?

Who is this German woman who includes Hopi corn mothers in her paintings?

Who is this woman who wrote popes telling them that they 'silently tolerated corrupt men,' and thus threw 'the whole world in confusion' 900 years before the truth came out about Pope John Paul II allowing sexual predators to occupy and oversee religious orders while abusing seminarians?

Who is this woman who heard angels singing and put the sounds to music?

Who is this woman who puts justice as the deciding ethical norm in ecclesial and cultural life, instead of blind obedience and christofascism?

Who is this woman who celebrated eros and proposed that Adam's fall was a failure of eros - a failure to take delight in the beauty and grace of creation, and that we can fall in the same way?"

These are just a few of the ten pages(!) Fox writes about the myriad of revolutionary ways of being Hildegard embodied throughout her lifetime. She was a true prophetess and renaissance woman whose timeless teachings pierce through the veil of forgetfulness.

I also feel it is important to name how rare it was that a woman’s voice from this time was preserved at all. Across centuries, countless women carried visions, healing knowledge, songs, and wisdom traditions that were never written down or allowed to endure. Through Hildegard, we are offered a rare glimpse into that often unseen path ~ a woman whose voice was not extinguished by history, but continues to sing across centuries.