Of Greenness

What does it mean to really be alive? St. Hildegard has thoughts.

Dear Friend,

This dispatch began as a Part Two to “Of Elders and Of Olders,” which I have been working on for a little while (good things take time). But I quickly found that I wished to make a point that rested between what I had said in that piece, and what I was wishing to say. As a result, I have separated it out for us to consider today.

That point is fairly simple, but worthy of its own development. The question that I seek to answer by making it is this: “what does it mean to really be alive?” Toward what vision of health or wholeness should a human soul tend? One of connected, whole, and “greening” life—and for that we’ll turn to some thoughts from an old spiritual friend of mine and one of the great and brilliant oddballs of history in just a moment.

This is important because the keeping of wisdom is, in many senses, intimately related to the keeping and cultivation of life. Not in terms of mere survival (though much of wisdom is absolutely about how, you know, not to die), but in something like the words of Christ in John 10:10: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” This is a life of both body and spirit, of the union of a whole soul. It offers us a vision of what we might be working towards.

Read on.

-Paul

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In my previous dispatch on Elders (which you should read here if you have not yet), we observed that we live “in a time that seems to be experiencing a notable deficit of wisdom.” We related this to the idea that while people are still (obviously) getting older, our society seems to be unable to systematically produce true “elders,” who have passed certain vital crises in the human lifecycle and emerged with an established sense of self, the ability to communicate their experience to others, and a sense of gift and “keeping” what is good.

We observed that human cultures, like the tides, seem to ebb and flow. But because of the importance and goodness that Wisdom and her keepers play in the flourishing of human life, it is also worth us asking what might be done, even if as an imperfect start, to encourage the return of elderhood, particularly in the West, whose wisdom tradition, while rich, is largely ignored by its heirs.

In all this, I recognize that I am not speaking as an Elder myself (maybe someday—a guy can dream). But as it is said that the old druids could read the patterns of lives in the veins of leaves, nature takes certain shapes. She rhymes with herself. The shape of the fern in the summer forest is the shape of the frost on the winter glass. The pattern of the vast river’s delta recalls the oak’s branching canopy. With a humble and attentive eye, even a younger-ish fool like me can trace something worth seeing, and that something worth seeing is the shape of wild life.

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That life is what St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098 to 1179) brilliantly described as viriditas, or “greenness.” A German Benedictine abbess, mystic, composer, poet, polymath, and healer, Hildegard was the sort of delightful person who would alternately communicate her ecstatic visions of Divine Fire and aggressively share recipes for her healthy spiced spelt cookies (really, she loved those dang cookies). She composed the lyrics and melodies to remarkable choral music (believing that singing and hearing sacred tones could heal and elevate the mind), produced a comprehensive medieval Physica, and was renowned for her life of holiness and a vibrant, down-to-earth manner of life. She could alternate between transcribing the music of the angels and heckling you on your gallbladder.

For Hildegard, life, especially creative or procreative life, was something that freshened and “greened” one. The image is somewhat loose. This is its strength. A good gardener can tell at a glance the health of a plant much like we can tell at a glance if a stalk of celery drawn from the crisper in the fridge is good or … floppy. Life is, in the end, a simple thing and almost immediately recognized.

“The soul is the greening life force of the flesh,” she wrote, “for the body grows and prospers through her, just as the earth becomes fruitful when it is moistened. The soul humidifies the body so it does not dry out, just like the rain which soaks into the earth.”

Viriditas is a quality of the soul. As you’ll know if you’ve followed my work for any length of time, my definition of the soul is (in keeping with the understanding of biblical literature and the Christian tradition) as a union of body and spirit. This is a “very good” union. Both are holy. Both need each other. And both share one life.