The Gradual Greening

Today’s post is by Savannah Kate Coffee

Each year I look forward to nature’s transformation in March. I imagine the earth as a reluctant lover, having been cold and withdrawn in the winter months. Now slowly, ever so slowly, she warms again to the sun’s touch, showing her pleasure in the tender shoots of daffodils and crocus, budding dogwoods, and the slightest hint of a southerly breeze.

I wonder if earth’s gradual greening might have inspired St. Hildegard, the 12^th century German abbess, mystic, and healer. Hildegard was a keen observer of natural processes and she took a gardener’s approach to healing and to the body. She was primarily concerned with something she called viriditas. Viriditas literally means “greenness,” but for Hildegard it was the broader ability of plants to put forth leaves, flowers, and fruits; and by analogy, for human beings to grow, give birth, and to heal. Hildegard noticed that plants and trees grow into the fullness of their nature according to the capacity they were given. A seed grows into the only plant it can. She believed that healing is really the power of your own nature to be itself—the freedom of the true self to live in unity with the life force that has been given to it.

We might think of viriditas as the unity between the self and God, the soul’s response to the warm touch of the Beloved. Healing rises from our identity rooted in the wholeness of God and the essential oneness at the heart of reality. Shalem’s founder, Tilden Edwards, writes in Living in the Presence that we are often captive to the symptoms of our brokenness and that healing may not be what our ego self-image imagines. There is much we cannot control and sometimes our desire for a certain outcome runs amok. There are moments when I feel bound in the dark clay of my being, longing to bloom again, to know the sun’s light in my deepest parts, and yet I am unable to enact my own resurrection. This too is part of the journey: Holy Saturday’s waiting, Jonah in the great fish, Joseph in prison, Dorothy asleep among the poppies, even Robin Hood in the dungeon. The greening itself, the resurrection, the healing is God’s work, it seems. And yet I can long for it. I can anticipate the reunion with my truest nature and the bright star burning within, knowing that whatever form my healing takes will be as it should be, beautiful according to its own nature.

As we watch the slow greening of nature around us, may we allow ourselves to be touched anew and to feel the deep veriditas rising within. Our watching is not passive. No. For as we wait, we long, we anticipate, and we ask for the reconciling, greening, aliveness of God at every level of our being and in our world. May the greening of our lives be made fruitful for the peace and wholeness of all people and all creation.

“Would any seed take root if it had not believed

the promise, when God said:

‘Dears, I will rain. I will help you. I will turn into

warmth and effulgence,

I will be the Mother that I am

and let you draw from

My body

and rise, and

rise.’”

~Thomas Aquinas

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Savannah Kate Coffey is a graduate of Columbia Theological Seminary and Shalem’s Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups and Retreats Program for which she now serves as adjunct staff. She lives and writes in South Carolina.

Contemplation of Nature’s Offerings

Today’s post is by Bryan Berghoef.

A quiet space, a walk in the fields.
Sounds muted, muffled.
A bird calls in the distance. Another responds.
Butterflies conspire quietly
between the greenery.
Contemplation of nature’s offerings.

Contemplation doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s incredibly simple. When I tell myself I’m entering into a contemplative space, it’s as if everything else sort of blurs around me, and the center focuses more sharply.

My physical surroundings become secondary to my inner state of mind and heart. Beatrice Bruteau confirms that “what interferes with our living a contemplative life is not the busy, noisy, confused, demanding, harassing world in which we must earn our living and care for our families. We like to blame this environment, but that is not really the source of the disquiet. Even if we could go to the country, have nothing much to do and no threats to our comfort, we would take our own noisiness with us.”

That said, our physical surroundings do matter. My family and I recently relocated from a busy urban neighborhood in Washington, DC, to a rural farm in Holland, Michigan. The differences in our physical surroundings are plenty–yet as Bruteau notes, peace requires more than a change in scenery.

There was much to love about the city and the neighborhood we left behind. Yet undeniably my wife and I have both felt and experienced a kind of inner calming since arriving in our peaceful location, situated on the edge of my in-law’s spacious flower farm.

The sheer expanse of sky that one experiences in wide open spaces tends to nurture an inner expansiveness through a sort of spiritual osmosis. Simply walking beneath this wide blue sky does its own sort of inner work on one’s soul. In this soft, subtle space, I find myself renewed and refreshed.

It has been a delight to see the way our four children have eagerly embraced our new setting, despite the sadness of leaving good friends behind and facing the uncertainty of a new school this fall. All of that fades momentarily as they race along the fields of yellow sunflowers, sprouting gladiolas, and colorful zinnias–chasing kittens, chasing each other, chasing summer.

Simply sitting in our backyard provides plenty for contemplative nourishment, as the kids run about, the fields lay open and the woods beyond beckon. Gerald May also noted the effect that simply being outside can have when seeking connection with the Spirit: “I find it best to be outdoors, away from the habits of household and civilization. Familiar surroundings always seem to demand certain activities from me. I sit a certain way in a chair, act a certain way in a room, think along particular lines in a particular place. Outdoors, especially in a fairly wild place, I’m much fresher, more immediately available for whatever inspiration might come.”

If you’re longing for a contemplative re-connection to nature and to the earth–wherever you are– perhaps you might consider next weekend’s online retreat with Shalem’s Ann Dean. She is leading a Contemplative Earth Awareness Retreat Day, available to be experienced next Friday, Sat or Sunday, July 18-20. (Also being offered in November 2014).  For more information, or to register, click here.

Wherever we are, Bruteau reminds us: “we can be peaceful, even in the midst of contemporary life, because what is really pressuring us is the insistence of our own demands. Once we are convinced that these demands can be let go, everything will begin to look very different.” So whether you find yourself in the city, in the suburbs, out on the prairie, in the woods, or even at the office, may you experience the inner calming that comes with tuning your mind and heart to the ever present Spirit.

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Bryan Berghoef is a pastor and writer who helps curate Shalem’s social media content and provides technical support for Shalem’s online courses. You can see more of his writing at pubtheologian.com. Photo by Christy Berghoef.