Hildegard: Prophet of the Cosmic Christ

Renate Craine's Hildegard is inspiring and really, a work of art in itself. Recognizing that Hildegard's descriptions of her visions and their meaning are both historically and culturally conditioned in the depths of the 12th century, and that reading her texts straight-on can be strange and confusing, Renate's commentary is truly a masterful translation for the modern western ear and idiom. Renate has the rare gift of timeless empathy that seems to easily transcend the centuries, opening up Hildegard's complex symbolic language and making new connections to things that I care about. I am especially grateful for her exposition of one central concept in Hildegard's writings, the Latin word "viriditas" (fecundity or "greening power"). Renate, a wise psychologist and spiritual director, shows how this ever-present divine gift and power of viriditas bridges the deepest levels of our psyche with the whole of creation and the cosmos. Renate explains Hildegard's vision of the cosmic Christ in plain language that suddenly reveals important connections to the Jungian archetypal world, to traditional Christian symbols, and to current, critically important ecological concerns. After reading Renate's book, I can't say enough about the importance of Hildegard's vision of God who is working everything out through Love in an interdependent cosmos, one that, at the limits of our human understanding, is always appearing as healing, celebrating, and revealing itself in the midst of suffering, death, Nature, and the paradoxical, eternal play of Shadow and Light.