There Have Always Been Women Like Us

"Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars.Gaze at the beauty of the earth's greenings. Now, Think." Hildegard von Bingen

I happened upon a movie about her life today.  I wanted to watch it, but before I did, I wanted to know more about this woman who had captivated me. I wanted to better understand the character before I watched a filmmaker’s depiction of her life.  As I read and discovered her, my emotions stirred intensely, and I felt an instant deep connection to who she was.  I felt a sisterhood with her.

Hildegard grew up in Germany in the early 1100's.  No one is quite sure exactly when she was born.  She was a sickly child. She first began to see visions at the age of three where she said she knew she had a direct connection to God.  She said she saw all things Light of God.  When she was just ten years old her parents gave her to the Catholic Church as an oblate, a person whose life would be chosen to be in service to God.

There is no written record of the twenty four years she grew up in the monastery. After her dear friend passed, Hildegard went through great lengths, including illness, to convince the Archbishop that she should be able to move her nuns to a monastery where they would do work among impoverished people.  It was there, where she had freedom, that she wrote books, music, visions and poetry.

She wrote of mysticism and human connection to source Light and its representation in nature. She believed that all things were put on this Earth with meaning and purpose for humans.  She had the gift of understanding healing properties of plants, animals and stones.  She believed that mankind's connection to God Source was the key to highest health.

When I read deeply into her words I understood that even though she was forced to live a life inside the confounds of the ritual and constraint of Catholicism, Hildegard had found a way to pass on the message of how connected we are to each other and to the Earth. I saw how many women throughout history, who were forced to live in the ideal of having a lesser place, because of religion, fought in their own way to insure that they could still pass on their Mystic Gifts.

I plan to read Her writings in Secrets of God. I am re-affirmed and empowered in my own mission and purpose here on this Planet at this very time. I have a richer understanding of why I have journeyed the places I have and how that journey correlates with where I am going.

*I Oh children of humanity, why have you corrupted tender Love, who gazes far into my depths and flows forth in works abounding? Because She flows within me, from Her in turn flow the living waters. She resembles a budding branch, for, as a virgin's embraces are most tender because of her integrity, even so Love's embraces are more tender than those of any other. But now She mourns, because audacious men tear her to pieces with their evil grumbling. Hence, She flees from them to that height whence She came, and weeps because Her children, whom She suckled at Her fertile breasts, fall sick and will not be cleansed from the corruption of their flighty minds.

O wretched humanity! Why do they take on themselves the misery of alienation and exile, tearing themselves away... She is always ready... Yet they separate themselves from the Bride, whence they are darkened and shadowed by clouds as if they had ruptured heaven.* St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)