Hildegard’s Feast Day This is a countdown Day 2. Care for the earth
Why speak of the earth?
because we are of it,
because we are destroying it,
because we have nowhere else.
Hildegard did not have the advantages of the 21st century, she did not know the earth from an astronauts view as we do, she did not have the science we have today, yet she knew how precious this luminous pearl adrift in a dark ocean is.
She speaks of oneness, unity . . . the microcosm of the tiniest unit, the macrocosm of the universe and how they are all one .
Here is a poem from my new book, Hildegard of Bingen: A poetic journey in praise of the earth.
Listening
Amid the local gardener’s chatter
about plants and herbs
their culinary and medicinal uses,
and laughter of the young sisters
bubbling live with the world,
Hildegard listens.
She leans against her spade and listens.
Birds twitter
pecking at the scattered soil.
Hildegard gazes towards the hills
soft curved as a mother’s breast.
Is it the hills singing she hears?
Is it her heart surging with love?
Like a mantra she hears the words,
The earth is mother,
mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
mother of all,
for contained in her
are the seeds of all.
Hildegard looks about her.
The sisters at work, all is the same,
yet she is full of song
of trees and plants and flowers,
of herbs and ferns and stones.
