Viriditas Comes Home

 The seed was sown in Italian soil, in the Umbrian village of Assisi.  We had read about a bronze sculpture in the Upper Basilica of that storied village, and nearing the end of our visit to a neighboring village six miles away, we hastily arranged an exploratory expedition.  The sculpture depicts Saint Francis receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit – a common enough theme.  But unlike the usual depictions in which Francis’ hands are extended towards the heavens to receive the descending dove, this characterization positions Francis on his knees reaching downward to receive the Holy Spirit emerging from the soil.  That made sense to us in a way so compelling that our spiritual and agricultural imaginations kept returning to the idea.

And then we met Hildegard.  

Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th century German polymath – an Abbess, an herbalist, a physician, an artist and musician, a blunt critic of religious leaders who grew accustomed to her scorn when she deemed their actions contrary to the gospel, a preacher, writer and mystic.  She was, in a phrase, a spiritual force of nature.  

I rather think she would smile at the label.  

Central in her writings was a special attention to the presence and activity of the Spirit in the world/nature. The Latin word she frequently used to refer to a central element in her thinking and approach to life was “viriditas” - often translated as “greening”.  As one contemporary disciple of Hildegard noted, “Viriditas was a key concept that expressed and connected the bounty of God, the fertility of nature, and especially the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

And with that, the seed sown in Italy sprouted in Germany, and blossomed in Iowa.  A friend connected us with a Belgian artist living only a few miles from us – significantly named “Hilde” – who accepted the commission for an outdoor sculpture that would integrate these two inspirations.  Click here to see more of her amazing work.

Early in the process, we sent an email to her that shared our thoughts about this intriguing Latin word, “Viriditas:  Holiness, health, vitality, nature and fertility - all wrapped up into one lovely Latin word; all central to a European mystic whose name reminded us of you.  Delightful. It could name the piece.”

And so it has.  And Viriditas came home to assume its place today on the farmstead, framed by the garden, the chicken yard and the tall grass prairie.  She’s magnificent.  With wings inspired by oak leaves and a gentle spiral evoking upward movement, the corten steel piece subtly incorporates the taproot that names our farmstead, on a base that hints at the labyrinth that highlights our acreage’s western edge.  The color of the bare metal will evolve with the elements and time, much like the farmstead itself.  

And already we gather around it, or pause as we pass; acknowledging in fresh ways that we are accompanied here in our daily work by winds exhaled from lungs holier and more instrumental than our own; evocative breezes stirring life in freshly incarnational expressions, at once grounding and elevating, centering and expanding…

…into ever-new life.

I somehow think that Hildegard is smiling at Hilde's work - singing, even - while Francis kneels and reaches toward it to receive, yet again, the Spirit that is the very creative impulse of God.  

Here.  Now.  In this very place.

The Overturning, Enlivening Breath of the Wind

 

The wind has been a wearisome neighbor this week.

Gusting and blowing, first from the north and then turning to return from the south as if to retrieve something forgotten behind.  Like keys.  Or a wallet.  As I age I increasingly know this kind of problem.  The wind, however, has been neither embarrassed nor quiet about its comings and goings.  It has blown, with gust and gale; wearying, and withering.  

The trash dumpster, emptied by the road, relented in the face of the unrelenting and toppled over on its side.  

The greenhouse door tested its hinges as the handle wrenched from my hand.  

The deck chairs slid in a patternless ballet.  

The chickens huddled in the sheltering calm of the run.  

Trees swayed like concert fans in the mosh pit.   

The prairie grasses leaned into an italicized landscape.  

Everything feels it, responds to it, succumbs to it.  However reticent, however pliant and resilient, the wind has us all, and does with us what it wills.

And then stillness, as if pausing to take a breath that, in exhalation, becomes yet another force to be pressed against.  

I don’t have explanation for why the simple experience of wind is so exhausting - how simply standing in place while the force of it presses and insists can weary.  Perhaps it is that the act of simply being suddenly requires an effort not demanded in stillness.  Neither do I understand why the alternation of its absence can feel so relieving.  But there it is:  the compelling, propelling sweep of its presence, and the centering peace of its absence.  

Or so it seems.

It has always struck me as interesting that in scripture the words “breath” and “wind” and “spirit” are all translations of the same Hebrew word.  The animating breath that brought Adam and Eve to life; the wind that drove back the Red Sea waters allowing the Israelites to safely pass through; the forceful wind that stormed into and revitalized Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones; the mind of God that Isaiah saw lacking in the people; the Spirit that gives life in the Gospel of John’s Greek translation of the word - the Comforter that Jesus promised; the Spirit that the risen Christ “breathed” on his disciples; the transformational wind of Pentecost.  

Wind, Breath, Spirit.  The compelling, propelling movement of the Divine.

Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century German mystic, latched onto the Latin word “viriditas” to refer to this enlivening, animating force at work among and through us.  Typically translated as “greening”, the word signified for Hildegard that divine movement - force - that is the source of all flourishing and growth. 

 It’s easy to see this greening activity this time of year in coloring lawns and garden bed emergence.  And yes, that is viriditas.  

But emerging stems and greening grass could inure me to the truth that this inspirited movement is a force, pushing and rearranging, toppling over and breaking through.  

Like the wind.

This morning it was still when I stepped outside to perform the morning chores.  Righting the overturned glider in the yard, I lift my face to the quietude of the rising sun.  It is peaceful after the relentless bluster of recent days.  But I smile with the recollection of that old biblical word and Hildegard’s Latin equivalent, and wonder if this momentary calm is just Divine inhalation - the Creator pausing and gathering oxygen for the next billowing gust of transformational, generative, and quite possibly disrupting greening.

While Anything is Possible

The day began, crisp and sunny - sunny enough that the brightness upon the greenhouse was already blunting the crispness inside.  Stepping inside, into this wholly other world of moist and evocative fecundity, I stood for a moment once the door closed behind me to simply inhale the air of promise.  And to be encouraged by it.  Removing the lids protecting the trays we populated yesterday with seeds, I had to reassure myself that despite the naked appearances, just slightly beneath that surface of potting soil are, indeed, nestled the promissory notes of harvest - tiny packets of DNA and know-how already beginning to soften with the rainwater I sprinkle on; already stirring with the warmth and the dark; already aching to stretch upward into the light.

Just beneath the surface.

I can’t get too carried away.  I know from sobering experience that not every seed grows; not every promise is kept; not every potential grows to fruition.  Some simply smolder in their dormancy, and remain there beneath the soil -

-like words unspoken;

-notes unplayed;

-letters not mailed.

Perversely, it’s tempting to focus on them - the blank blocks in the tray - rather than those out of which a stem, tiny and fragile, is already protruding.   There is yet time.  It's still early.  Seeds, after all, exist in a time beyond my own - “kairos”, the Greek word for that intangible and inscrutable “right time”, rather than “chronos”, that metronomic click of “clock time.”  I can manage the externals - the water and warmth and light - but the internals are beyond my reach.  We might wince at the comparison, but like the gardeners who sow them, not every seed realizes its potential.  

Even then not all is lost.  The unsprouted seed simply dissolves into the soil where it becomes part of the nourishment for other seeds.  

Having tended, then, indiscriminately to both the stretching and the silent - unable at this stage to assess what is won and what is lost - I refill the water jugs for next time and latch the door behind me, stepping back into the sunny crispness of the morning.  Midway back toward the house I pause with a nagging provocation, and take another lingering look behind me and consider again the wonder of what is happening inside that nurturing space.  

Coaxing.

Nurturing.

Protecting.

Germinating.

And I ponder what all might be stirring in those other fertile spaces of these days...

...in the opportune conversations;

...on the blank pages;

...in the quiet moments;

...in the prayers of the day;

...in the seeds, just beneath the surface;

...in these moist and fecund days while anything is yet possible.