Growing up in New York City, my favorite place was The Cloisters (a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with art from medieval European monasteries). I had fallen in love with the aesthetic dimension of monastic tradition long before I understood what that way of life really meant. The art, architecture, music, and illuminated manuscripts all made me swoon.  It wasn’t until graduate school that I really did begin to understand and fall further in love.  Hildegard of Bingen was my entrypoint.  Always having had a love of art and spirituality, I wanted to know more about this incredible woman who

To find the previous entries on lectio divina with scripture, poetry, and icons, just click on the “lectio divina” tab under the title. To the Trinity be praise! God is music, God is life that nurtures every creature in its kind. Our God is the song of the angel throng and the splendor of the secret ways hid from all humankind, But God our life is the life of all. -Hildegard of Bingen, Antiphon for the Trinity Hildegard believed that music was an essential part of her community’s formation. In fact, at the end of her life she was in

“For the invisible things of God since the creation of the world are made visible through images.”                      (John of Damascus, On Holy Images) The beautiful icon above is by iconographer Heather Williams Durka who lives in Olympia.  You can find her website here.  Heather offers icon workshops and has affordable reproductions of her wonderful images available for purchase.  She also has some great reflections on the role of icons in Orthodox tradition. There are many wonderful books available on praying with icons. The tradition of gazing upon icons as a window to God is an ancient one.  Lectio divina