Hildegard of Bingen, a German abbess who was born in 1098 and died in 1179, earned a well deserved reputation as a beautiful and talented woman. She was an artist, a poet, a singer, a composer, a teacher, a mystic, an abbess, a saint. All in all, a wonderful gift from God.

She said many insightful things about living as Christians. I find most helpful her observation that we keep ourselves “green in the Spirit.” By that, she meant we should keep our spirit fresh and alive, the way spring is alive with new life and growth. Hildegard offered three ways of doing that.

1) Know your tradition and study your scriptures.
Stay close to your stories, she said, whether written or oral. This includes the rituals and rites we use to celebrate our stories and to pass them on.

I think I can say I have tried to do that and it has helped me to keep “green.” Take the beautiful images of the creation stories in Genesis. They contain so much beauty and delight. God creates us from clay. What a wonderful image for making us one with the earth. It really makes the earth our mother. God breathes life into us. Somehow God’s life, breath, spirit become our life, breath, spirit.

2) Be in touch with creation.
Hildegard said we become poverty-stricken if we don’t have a love affair with creation. She had in mind not just the trees and plants and the flowers, but the stars and the moon and sun - everything. Touch creation, connect with it, she said. If you touch creation, you relate to it. If you relate to creation, you will not dominate it the way so many of us do these days, saying, in effect, “I’ll take what I want and use it the way I want. Someone else can come along and clean up my mess.”

This relational approach to creation is very Franciscan. St. Francis of Assisi -- born, by the way, not far from where Hildegard died -- said things like, “My brother, the sun, who leads the day into glory, my sister, the moon, who keeps the earth lit at night.” These words reflect a relationship with creation. In contrast, we boss the earth, and bossing does not lead to good relationships. How many of us can say, “ My Mother, the earth; my Father, the sky,” and really mean it? No wonder our spirituality lacks “green.”

3) Reflect on your own experiences.
Hildegard advised connecting our experience to everything else, in particular to our tradition and scripture, and to creation. Each of us has a story, each of us is a story. We must tell these stories not only to each other, but to ourselves. In fact, I believe that before we can tell our stories to others, we must tell them to ourselves. That shows why reflecting on our own experience becomes so important.