Abbey of the Arts

Transformative Living through Contemplative & Expressive Arts

  • Welcome
    • Prayer Cycle
    • About the Abbey
    • About Christine Valters Paintner
    • About John Valters Paintner
    • About the Wisdom Council
    • Monk Manifesto
    • Join the Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks
    • Subscribe to Our Love Notes
    • Website privacy notice
  • Books
    • Breath Prayer:
      An Ancient Practice for the Everyday Sacred
    • Sacred Time:
      Embracing an Intentional Way of Life
    • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: Poems
    • Earth, Our Original Monastery:
      Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude through Intimacy with Nature
    • Dreaming of Stones: Poems
    • The Soul's Slow Ripening:
      12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred
    • The Wisdom of the Body:
      A Contemplative Journey to Wholeness for Women
    • Illuminating the Way:
      Embracing the Wisdom of Monks and Mystics
    • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
      Eight Practices for the Journey Within
    • Eyes of the Heart:
      Photography as a Christian Contemplative Practice
    • The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom
    • Desert Mothers and Fathers: Early Christian Wisdom Sayings Annotated & Explained
    • Lectio Divina–The Sacred Art: Transforming Words and Images into Heart-Centered Prayer
    • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire: The Christian Practice of Praying with the Elements
    • Awakening the Creative Spirit:
      Bringing the Arts to Spiritual Direction
    • Lectio Divina: Contemplative Awakening & Awareness
  • Poetry | Art | Music
    • Music + DVD
    • Poetry by Christine Valters Paintner
    • Poetry Videos
    • Dancing Monk Icons
    • Other Art Collaborations
      • Monk in the World art series by Kristin Noelle
      • Saints & Animals art series by David Hollington
      • Sacred Time art series by Alexi Francis
      • Mary block print art series by Kreg Yingst
  • Programs
    • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color Book Club
    • Community Online Retreats
      • Harriet Tubman and Howard Thurman-on Being Free
      • Writing Into Bloom
        with Christine Valters Paintner
      • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
      • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: A Weekend Retreat Online
      • The Spiral Way:
        Celtic Spirituality and the Creative Imagination
      • Sacred Balance:
        Aligning Body and Spirit Through
        Yoga and the Benedictine Way
    • Self-Study Online Spiritual Retreats
      • Creative Flourishing in the Heart of the Desert:
        An Online Retreat with St. Hildegard of Bingen
      • Dreaming of the Sea:
        A women’s discernment journey through the story of the Selkie
      • Earth, Our Original Monastery
        A Companion Retreat to the Book (SELF-STUDY)
      • Exile and Coming Home:
        An Archetypal Journey through the Scriptures
      • Eyes of the Heart:
        Photography as Contemplative Practice
        (Companion retreat to the book)
      • Journey with the Desert Mothers and Fathers
        (SELF-STUDY)
      • Honoring Saints and Ancestors:
        Online Retreat for the Season of Remembrance
      • Lectio Divina:
        The Sacred Art of Reading the World
      • A Midwinter God:
        Making a Conscious Underworld Journey (SELF-STUDY)
      • Sacred Rhythms of Sky, Sun, Sea & Stone:
        A Creative Retreat with the Elements (SELF-STUDY)
      • Sacred Seasons:
        A Yearlong Journey through the Celtic Wheel of the Year
      • The Soul of a Pilgrim:
        Eight Practices for the Journey Within
        (a companion retreat to the book)
      • The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seekers of the Sacred (a companion retreat to the book)
      • Water, Wind, Earth & Fire
      • Watershed Moments
        in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
      • Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist:
        A 12-Week Companion Retreat to The Artist's Rule
      • The Wisdom of the Body:
        A 10-Week Online Companion Retreat to the Book
      • The Wisdom of Mary and the Sacred Feminine
    • Live Programs: Pilgrimage & Retreats
      • Writing on the Wild Edges (Ireland)
      • Hildegard of Bingen (Germany)
      • Awakening the Creative Spirit: Experiential Education for Spiritual Directors in the Expressive Arts (Northwest)
  • Calendar
  • Reflections
  • Contact

Abbess love notes, Hildegard of Bingen, Online Retreats

Celebrate the Feast of St. Hildegard! ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess

Dearest monks and artists,

September 17th will be the Feast of Holy Hildegard, one of the patron saints of our work here in Abbey because of her roots as a Benedictine monk and Abbess, and her incredible commitment to creative expression and nurturing aliveness. She is featured in our upcoming online retreat for women Coming Home to Your Body. I offer you this brief excerpt:

St HildegardI am the living breath in a human being placed in a tabernacle of marrow, veins, bones, and flesh, giving it vitality and supporting its every movement.

—St. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias I 4:4

Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th century Benedictine Abbess, who was also a theologian, visionary, musical composer, spiritual director, preacher, and healer. For centuries monasteries have been centers of healing and herbal medicine. Monks would grow the herbs and learn their applications, so that people would come for both spiritual and physical healing.

We have lost this connection, with medicine taking place in the efficient and sterile halls of hospitals. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am profoundly grateful for the gifts of modern medicine, and rely on it to some degree to maintain my own quality of life.  And yet, we have lost so much in this shift from the model of slow medicine and healing to the pursuit of quick cures. In the process we have come to compartmentalize ourselves, seeking the fix for the headache or the stomach trouble, without considering the whole of our bodies and our lives. We become impatient when illness descends, rather than yielding to body’s needs and desires.

We rarely have a relationship with our doctors, spending only minutes with them each visit, whereas Hildegard, and other monastics like her, would have come to know her patients. She would have seen the profound connection between body and soul. She would have practiced slow medicine.

One of the fundamental principles of Hildegard’s worldview is viriditas, which means the “greening power of God.” But even more than that, it refers to a lushness and fecundity in the world, a greening life force we can witness in forests and gardens and farmland. Hildegard, who lived in the valley around the river Rhine in Germany, was profoundly impacted by her witness to the profusion of greenness and how this green life energy was a sign of abundance and life. It is what sustains and animates us.

Greenness became not just a physical reality, but a spiritual one as well. Hildegard believed that viriditas was something to be cultivated in both body and soul. Her language is filled with metaphors for seeking out the moistness and fruitfulness of the soul. The sign of our aliveness is this participation in the life force of the Creator. Anything that blocks this flow through us contributes both to physical disease as well as spiritual unrest.

For Hildegard, viriditas was always experienced in tension with ariditas, which is the opposite experience of dryness, barrenness, shriveling up. She would keep asking how to bring the flow of greening life energy back in fullness to a person.

Victoria Sweet, a medical doctor in San Francisco and researcher in medieval history, wrote a wonderful book called God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine in which she explored Hildegard’s principles of greening in her own medical practice. Dr. Sweet worked in a long-term care facility and began to ask the question of what was blocking a patient’s access to this life-giving greening energy and shifting her perspective enabled her to find healing paths that were previously unseen. She also discovered that simply being in relationship with her patients over time allowed her to see patterns and behaviors which revealed far more into their care than a quick visit could ever do.

There is a story from the desert fathers where an Abba says to a seeker, “Do not feed your heart what does not nourish it.” This can be easier said than done, since we are inclined to so many “comforts” which only serve to numb and distract us from life.  How often do we try to satisfy ourselves with that which depletes us?

What if your fundamental commitment was to only offer your body and soul that which is nourishing and to listen to what depletes you and say no to those things.

I invite you to hold this question in all things: Does this nourish me or does this deplete me? 

To read my poem about Hildegard of Bingen and find more links at the Abbey about her click this link

Would you like to nourish your body with God’s greening in a community of kindred souls? Join me this fall for the journey home again: Coming Home to Your Body: A Woman’s Contemplative Journey to Wholeness My apologies to the amazing men monks in our community. You will be warmly invited to join us for the Advent online retreat.

With great and growing love,

Christine

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, REACE

Photo: © Icon of Hildegard of Bingen by Marcy Hall Order prints here>>

«
»

Leave a Comment September 13, 2015

Upcoming Programs

  • Writing Into Bloom with Christine Valters Paintner
    • May 1, 2021
  • Revelations: The Mysticism of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
    • May 13, 2021
  • The Wisdom of Wild Grace: A Weekend Retreat Online
    • May 15, 2021 - May 16, 2021
  • View All Upcoming Programs

Recent Reflections

  • St. Kevin Holds Open His Hand and Radical Hospitality ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Monk in the World Guest Post: Greta Kopec
  • Monk in the World Podcast + Harriet Tubman Mysticism ~ A Love Note from Your Online Abbess
  • Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color – April Video Discussion and Book Group Materials Now Available
  • Hildy Tails 12: Is ait an mac an saol ~ by John Valters Paintner

Connect with the Abbey

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
JOIN THE HOLY DISORDER OF DANCING MONKS
SIGN UP FOR UPDATES
DONATE TO SUPPORT OUR MINISTRY

Copyright © 2021 BY ABBEY OF THE ARTS · WEBSITE PRIVACY NOTICE

Copyright © 2021 · Flourish Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in