Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose. . .
~ James Taylor

I am a Northwesterner at heart. Born and raised in Seattle, I went to the university only 50 miles south. My first place of employment and my first home had views of 14,400 foot Mt. Rainier. So my familial, geographical, and spiritual home is the Pacific Northwest. To be more precise, I love the western part of Washington State, and although possessing its own unique beauty, I confess less of an affinity for the geography, climate, and colors of the eastern part of the state where my father grew up. Too dry. Too brown. Two seasons. I’m drawn to the rich blues and the range of greens that adorn the western part of the state where almost everywhere the eye is lavished by water or evergreen trees. The price one pays for the rainfall is the ubiquitous reward of the sensual extravagance of verdant lushness.

For me, it is these two colors — the blues and especially the deep greens — that signal most the divine in nature, suggest the aliveness of God, and convey the vitality of the spiritual life. In his book, Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton reminds us of this foundational but overlooked principle when he writes: “the spiritual life is first of all, a life.” Nowhere is this divine animation more apparent to me than in green places of nature or in barren winter places where there are tiny revolts of green just beginning to rise up at spring’s reveille. I remember in the springtime of 2008 hiking the Thompson Creek Trail that runs beneath and along the foothills in Claremont, California. There had been a serious forest fire in October 2007 flashing down toward the neighborhoods and burning several homes tucked into the hills. While walking something unusual caught my eye up in the hills – I stopped to look closer and I realized that all along the charred moonscape-like slope of the hills, blades of grass were beginning to break forth from the black earth and carpet the ground that had imprisoned them. Spring is nature’s insurrection against the arrogant forces of death. For Christians, such sacraments of spring symbolize the greening power of God we celebrate each Easter as Christ drops his garment at the empty tomb as a sign that “love is come again like wheat arising green.”

It is because of the moistness and the greenness of where I was born and raised that I resonate so strongly with the theological vision and creativity of Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century abbess, preacher, naturalist, scientist, doctor, composer, poet, artist, and mystic from the Rhineland valley. She who in her “illuminations” offers us the sapphire blue Christ at the center of creation revealing the compassion of God and in her theology offers us a new image for understanding the vivifying wet ways of the divine that animate all of creation. If we think the “green movement” is a recent environmental phenomenon only, we need to read Hildegard who was one of its earliest spokespersons, imaginative poets, and spiritual predecessors. Not only does she appreciate and support “thinking green” but she invites us to consider a deeper understanding, meaning, and rationale of the green movement, one with theological underpinnings and spiritual implications.

For Hildegard the green movement is the movement of God, the invisible power of springtime that comes from Creator Spirit, permeates creation and creatures both, and is most vividly evident in non-human and human alike as the blessing of fruitfulness and creativity. Hildegard coins the word veriditas to refer to the greening power of God that not only enlivens and vivifies the lush lands around her monastery but also the shriveled dried up souls of persons, communities, and cultures. For Hildegard, Jesus is Greenness Incarnate and Mary, the mother of Jesus, is “the greenest of the green branches, the most fruitful of us all.” To sin is to ignore, resist, or refuse the divine wetness or greening power of God’s grace that is given and intended for the blossoming and flourishing of the natural world, the blooming and thriving of human communities, and the creative flowering and benediction of each and all persons.

It is springtime. With Hildegard we hear God speaking:

I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am the rain coming from the dew
that causes the grasses to laugh
with the joy of life.

The divine presence is eastering in the ground beneath our feet, in the bud-studded branches in the park, in the once-bare bushes of our streets now giving way to green. The world waits in wonder and anticipation for signs of new life on the hills, along the boulevards, in backyards and back alleys, and in desert lands be they wilderness or human hearts. The world waits in wonder and anticipation for the manifestation of divine verdancy in acts of kindness and compassion, in works of mercy and peace, in deeds of justice and earth-care. The Spirit of the sapphire blue Christ is greening us, is eastering in us. Can you feel the Christ-presence in your body, in your bones, in your blood, in your brother and sister, in your neighborhood, in your war-weary world? You who are weary and humble of heart, you who still sting from the wintry ways of life and long for greenness, can you hear the alleluia ripening, reaching up in you, ready to burst forth? Listen. Can you hear it? Can you – dare to believe it? Perhaps we can help each other see it. Let’s.♦

May you be open to the greening of God within and about you,
Dan