On Hildegard's Feast Day

9/17/23

My dear divine mother Hildegard of Bingen, what do I cherish most about you? And how shall I tell the world all the ways I love you on your feast day - this day that also marks a new year in the Jewish faith and 9 years of feet-on-sand in Northwest Florida - a place we landed on your feast day weekend, clueless as to how you would walk with me and so many more through healing from church trauma to build something far more exciting than where we have been.

Is it that you invented hopped beer? Broke the rules of music by soaring into the forbidden ranges of the scales, shattering cathedral glass ceilings with your ecstatic expressions and scandalizing communities, always aware there is no harm in joy? Is it that you broke *through* doors locked to women and chastised the patriarchy, always coming out on top? Perhaps that you actually studied women's sexuality and were the first to document the big O. That you wrote an Opera? Oh wait... no. That you wrote your own language. That you drank wine with lavender in it. Or maybe that you were a genius of sciences and a doctor of healing , an herbalist and wise about the earth, stones and all healing medicines.

Perhaps, that your art looks like it was painted in a time out of time. And your visions... well they were miraculous!! That you saw everything alive.

You had no choice. If you hadn't "belonged" to the church they would have destroyed you as a witch of some kind. It took them until 2012 to call you Saint, but you were Doctor much sooner because of your compelling body of scientific work and speech - something men can't unsee. They never knew what to do with you. They tried to lock you out. But you just didn't let them.

Oh but you were tender. You loved fiercely. You turned your early weirdness and isolation into wonder. You are the alchemist of suffering. You weave it into vocational gold.

Dear Hildegard, you are still at it today. Nothing stops you. 🌿🍃

Modern Saints: Hildegard of Bingen by Gracie Morbitzer