Communio Calling
Communio Calling
Seeking Hildegard
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Special guest Dr Carmel Bendon, academic, author, and presenter, sits down with host Gabrielle Sinclair to discuss the life and legacy of 13th-century Benedictine abbess, Hildegard of Bingen.
Hildegard’s vast knowledge, mystical teachings, and body of works has made her an inspirational model of holy audacity, she is one of the four female ‘Doctors of the Church’. Carmel’s expertise and profound insights has made her a leading expert in Medieval Mystics. Wanting to provide a way into these amazing stories and lives has resulted in her latest book ‘The Mystics Who Came to Dinner’.
You can find Carmel’s works on her website:
You can also find Hildegard’s artworks and music in the links below:
https://www.wikiart.org/en/hildegard-of-bingen
https://www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/hildegard-von-bingen/
Welcome to Good Samaritan Education's podcast, Cominio Calling. My name is Gabrielle Sinclair, and I'll be your host. In this episode, we're talking to Carmel Benden. She is an expert in medieval literature, and particularly we're going to talk to her about the medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingham. She is a Benedictine abbess from the 13th century. And I'm really looking forward to digging into this conversation about her because her legacy is so vast. She is such an extraordinary woman as we're looking at models of holy audacity this year. And she not only is a beautiful model of the Benedictine way of life, she holds so much her vast knowledge and experience and the things that she shares and we have of her legacy now, but goes to so much depth in her experiences and her texts, in particular things of natural science, history, and music. And we have that legacy today. And we didn't know much about her until fairly recently. She is now a doctor of the church, and you'll hear more about her in conversation with Carmel. So Carmel will tell you a bit about her story and too, like Hildegard takes many twists and turns, and she has many skills up her sleeve, just like Hildegard. So welcome to this week's episode, and let's just dig in. Welcome, Carmel. It is a delight to have you here with us today. Thank you for inviting me. You're welcome. Well, our podcast, Communio Calling, is grounded very much in story as a way of honouring the fabric of our connection, our incarnational reality, and the expression of the diversity of who we are. So we often start with story. So I wonder, Carmel, if you would like to share with us some of your own story and the things that have shaped that journey to bring you here today.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, I've been around for a while, so I'll have to give you the short version here. But I was born in Sydney. I was the eldest of three children. And in many ways, it was just an ordinary Catholic suburban nuclear family, and it was a small family because my grandparents, with the exception of quite an outspoken but loving maternal grandmother, had all died before my birth. We had very little to no contact with any of my parents' siblings. But this twice married grandmother had come from a Jewish family, and no children from the first marriage, as far as we know, but her second husband, who was the father of my mother, died when he was only 34. And so my grandmother was left widowed with two small children, my mother and her brother, both under the age of five. So she decided that the children should be baptized and educated in the Catholic Church. It was more for expediency, I think, and for good education than for any religious conversion on her part. She never converted. But my mother tells a story that at the age of six, she had to walk with her five-year-old brother to the local Catholic Church for their baptisms. And that was very powerful for my mother. It was a real statement for a little child, I guess, to have to do that. So she was very dedicated to Catholicism.
SPEAKER_00So essentially they went on their own for their baptism, not this extended family that we often think of.
SPEAKER_01Yes, they did, as little kids did in, you know, what was it, about 1932, something like that. And so my mother shaped me in that way. She was staunch and a good giving person. My father was fun, but at the age of six, I had a near-death experience, and that had a profound effect on me, I think. It really shaped the perception of the world. I realized there was something else, even at that young age, something else beyond what I was readily participating in. And so I was already sort of a quiet and self-contained and observant child. But after that I became even more so. And when my mother became ill when I was 12 and with no relatives, I had to take on a lot of the household responsibility, which I was okay because I could be very independent and confident, I guess. So my main joys during all of that were studying at school. I loved school, learning, and my ballet classes. I was educated by the Mercy sisters and they were very good to me. That was primary and high school. I did well at school. I got a scholarship to uni, which they gave in the day, but I I didn't go for that. I worked instead for a year to decide what I might do. And after that, I studied occupational therapy. I happened to graduate top of the course for that. I worked in it for a couple of years. It wasn't quite me, and I gave up and when I was offered a place in a dance company. Wow. And so I did that for a while, and that was great fun. In the art, I fitted happily in there. And it was about the time that the Sydney Dance Company were emerging, and one night their critic didn't show up for one of their early shows. So they said, Oh, Carmel, you're good at writing. Can you do the crit? And I did. And then I got a job from that as an arts and dance critic with Yaffa Publications and Dance Australia magazine. I did that for a while. I got married, traveled, had three daughters, and then when the youngest was at kindergarten, I went back to uni, which was free then. And I happened into medieval literature lecture and I loved it. And I swapped my major to early English and Medieval Lit. And I went on to get a degree, undergrad degree in that, then a first class honours, and then a PhD, and then I went on to do an academic career. And I was a lecturer at Macquarie Uni for many years. And that's, you know, that's me, more or less.
SPEAKER_00Wow. What what a winding, diverse journey. It's kind of a great introduction to our context for today, talking about Hildegard because I was just thinking earlier that she has such a broad knowledge, but then goes deeply into lots of things as well. And that sounds like your journey as well. It's been a broad but taking lots of different journeys.
SPEAKER_01I think Hildegard was very exceptional and very much focused. And I think she knew or was put on her life's track very early. You know, she was a determined, fair-sided woman.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sounds like you were too, in some respects. Yeah. Well, I mean, before we jump into her story, this year Good Samaritan Education is looking very much at models of holy audacity who were shaped and walked in the Benedictine path. And obviously, we're very keen to talk about Hildegard today. But before we jump into her story, can you share a little bit about how you came to her from your studies and your research? What was it that drew you into her world?
SPEAKER_01Look, my honest degree was in early English, and I was reading anchoritic texts, texts about anchoreses from the 11th to 13th century. And they were very fascinating to me. I loved them. And after that, for my PhD, I really wanted to work with someone like Julian of Norwich, who's an anchores par excellence, and writing in English, medieval Middle English, as it's called. So I was fascinated to work with her and some of the others. And I did that, but of course, when you as you know, when you're working on a PhD, you read more widely. And Hildegard was always there. It was in the late 1990s. There was just the burgeoning really of the study of women's history, especially medieval women. And the study of medieval mystics was very new. It was an area that needed new people. And so I was very happy to hop into that. I didn't include Hildegard, she wasn't in my PhD, but I knew of her. But she wrote in Latin, my medieval Latin was not up to coping with Hildegard in the original. And there was very little of her work that was translated in that period in the 90s. But still she was there having a word in my ear. And I came across a book, a very small book, by an Australian academic Sabina Flanagan, who did the very first comprehensive overview of Hildegard. She wrote it in the 1990s. It was called A Visionary Life. And so she just gave me the hints of what I should be really looking for. And so after that, I just thought Hildegard, she just sounded so extraordinary. And her range of interests and expertise was so vast that I couldn't not be absolutely entranced by Hildegard. She was something really special. In an exotic field, she was the most exotic, I think.
SPEAKER_00I'm going to pause on Hildegard for a moment because just hearing you talk about Julian of Norwich 2, I'd love you to just tell our listeners a little bit about Julian as well before we dig into Hildegard because it laid the foundation of you going on to Hildegard. Many of our listeners might not know much about it. Could you just tell a little bit about her story?
SPEAKER_01Well, sure. Julian was an anchoress, and that's another whole story, but someone who had chosen at some point in her life to be enclosed in a little cell attached to a church. It wasn't for the faint-hearted, it was for someone who was really dedicated, wanting a life of contemplation, and yet also still engaged with the community because being enclosed in a church, if you were in the most central part of town, and they always had a window in their little cell, one into the church, another to that community. And so they could be a bit like counsellors. And it was a popular vocation, especially in England. Julian of Norwegian, she was born in 1342, and she was enclosed in a church at St. Julian's in Caro. So you actually don't know her name. She, like many anchoresses of the time, took the name of the church in which she was enclosed. We know nothing about her background other than that which she tells us in her writings. And her writings are called, well, in the Middle English, it's called showings, S-H-E-W-I-N-G. But she or often called revelations of divine love, which indeed they were. She does a sort of preface and says, at the age of 30 and a half, I became so ill that I thought I was going to die. And as she's receiving the last brights, the priest comes with a crucifix. And as he holds the crucifix up before her eyes, Christ on the cross becomes vivified. And that vivified Christ tells her, shares with her these extraordinary revelations of divine love.
SPEAKER_00So vivified is like animated. Alive. Right, yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And she can see nothing else in the room except Jesus on the cross. And so she survives. She doesn't die, obviously. And she writes down very soon after, returning to health of some sort, she writes down what she saw, 16 revelations, and she calls them they're called the short text because it's not very long. She meditates on those revelations. She tells us again for about 20 years. And then she writes what we call the long text, in which she explicates what she saw. And that is an amazing, amazing piece of work in which she says she saw or she was shown so many things by God, by the divine, by Jesus, in whatever person was through Jesus, anyway. But she comes to understand that God is all love and all mercy. She grapples with the question of if that's so, why does holy church teach us of sin? And she returns, she asks those questions of Jesus, and she gets the answer that look, we're in the world, and there is a sort of a civil, a worldly justice, but God sees from a very different perspective. And it's very beautiful, it's very encouraging. And at the very end, she says, she asks, Why was I shown this? And the answer is for love. And what was the summary of what I have been shown? Love and who showed it to me. Love. And so it's like a semantic coming back to that one concept. And just like John Lennon, love is all you need was after.
SPEAKER_00Indeed. Indeed. The greatest commandment. She was very literate, obviously, because we have her writings. And am I wrong in it's the first English text written in English?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes, thank you. The first English text written by a woman, or a first autobiography by a woman was by Marjorie Kemp. But Julian, she was before Marjorie, and it said she wrote the first spiritual autobiography in English. Right. Yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for sharing a bit of Julian for us. But let's move on to Hildegard, another very literate and capable, amazing woman. Can you help us unpack a part of her story? How did she become this woman that we now, a doctor of the church, that we really unpacking more and more today?
SPEAKER_01It's so interesting because she took such a long time to become a doctor of the church. She wasn't even canonized until 2012 by Pope Benedict, also a German, you know, that's interesting. But she was locally venerated. She was born in 1098. And that's a long way. And another reason that it took quite a long while for scholarship to, you know, to land on her and to really bring her into the light of the modern world. But 1098 in the Rhine Valley land was where she was born, Nibingen actually. And when she was about seven, it's said that she was born of noble parents and probably the tenth child. So she was actually given as a tithe to the church, as happened in that time and that place. And she was given to, as it happens, to the Anchores Utah, not quite the same brand of Anchores as Julian, but because Uta took in a few little noble girls at young age and she taught them their psalms, basic scripture, basic reading. And Hildegard was one of those little girls. But Uta was apparently a very good teacher, was under the auspices of Benedictines. And when Utah's little anchor hole, the house for anchoresses, got too crowded, the Benedictines moved Uta and the girls into a convent, still under their auspices. Jutta became the abbess, but when she died, oh well, I should say at age 15, Hildegard took the veil of a Benedictine nun. And when Uta died, some years later, a couple of decades later, Hildegard was about 32, she became the abbess. And so that was her early story. But from then on, she became quite a remarkable woman. She'd always said that she had visions from when she was a very young child. But at age 40 or 41, she was instructed by God to write down these visions and to share them. And because she was an abbess and she was kind of dealing with people in high places, Frederick Barbarossa, for example, Bernard of Clairvaux, she corresponded with him, and Bernard of Clairvaux certainly had the ear of the Pope. He took some of her written visions and showed them to Pope Eugenius III, who gave Hildegard his specific approval to write and disseminate these visions. So she had the stamp of approval for the visions, but that wasn't the only thing she wrote. She wrote other things without the particular approval of the church. She wrote natural science. But there's over nearly 400 of her letters extant today, a correspondence. She wrote a play, she wrote music, she invented a secret alphabet, she invented a secret language for her nuns.
SPEAKER_00That's fascinating. I'm trying to imagine why that was. Was it big an easier thing for literacy, or was it a secret because they were trying to hide communications?
SPEAKER_01We don't really know. Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? We don't really know. She somewhere said it was for easier communication with her nuns, but they could all speak German, I presume. No, I like to think she might have liked puzzles and things and just wanted to invent something, you know, something else, but just for fun. But we don't really know. But it was the hidden language and alphabet. And I don't think that she used that at all times with her nuns. I mean, I know she didn't when they were, of course, praying together.
SPEAKER_00Well, we've got all of those letters.
SPEAKER_01That all those letters, and the play that she wrote was certainly not in a hidden language, so it was a musical play too. Yes, it was said to be the first musical play. It's called Auto Virtutum. And it's not the kind of musical we would understand today. It was a play in which only women could take part, except well, there was one male who was her secretary Volmar, and he had to play the devil, but he didn't have a speaking part. He was only allowed to scream or stand mutally. But the women had the speaking parts, and they took on the roles of the kind of virtues, and so it was an idea of the virtues talking to each other and a teaching play almost. So that had a religious basis, really, but the music in it was written by Hildegard.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, tell us a bit about Vollmar, because he transcribed her visions. How did that come about? To have a male, well, in service of a female at that time is a bit kind of back to front.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of interesting, isn't it? He he would have been a cleric, Benedictine. And I suspect Benedictines maybe thought at first to keep an eye on her and to see what all of this was about. But over the years, he stayed with her for quite a long time. And over the years, he became very much secondary to Hildegard. She became highly regarded enough as far as her visionary work was concerned. And she wrote three visionary books. So, yes, he was quite literally her secretary, as most abbesses in the day would have had. And he would, she would receive the visions sort of instantly and transcribe them quickly onto a wax tablet with a stylus. So he had to be then taking the tablets away and quickly transcribing them to kind of get that, you know, instantaneous flavor of the visions. And Hildegard would interpret them as they were received as well. She said that at age of 41 or 42, when all this was starting, that she not only heard from God that she should write them down, but she was gifted the ability to understand all of scripture. Big claim.
SPEAKER_00Very big claim, yeah, well.
SPEAKER_01But she does give what we certainly would see as theological interpretation to her visions. But she had to, because she was a woman, couch it in terms of what was in the Middle Ages understood as the humility topos. She had to say that, look, she was just the instrument of God. She would say she was the feather on the breath of God. I don't think for one minute she was a feather. I think she was more, you know, what do they say? That leaden hand in the velvet glove kind of woman. But she went along with that because that facilitated everything could be disseminated. She was playing the game to a point, I think. And look, no doubt, what she received in her visions, she certainly, I know, would have believed they were from God. But it's in the transmission that, you know, she had to be a bit cautious.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, living in dangerous times, but also at the very height of Benedictine in the Middle Ages, in terms of the numbers of them and the expanding. So if she was keeping on the good side with the Benedictines, there was certainly influence that would have couched or supported her.
SPEAKER_01Oh, she was absolutely she was very highly regarded for so many reasons. And even in her old age, after all of these things were written down, she went on what we would call preaching tours. She was sort of allowed to do that.
SPEAKER_00So, you know, she was Yeah, which is outstanding in that kind of time and age that she just undertook that.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And that would not have been an easy trips to do, you know, in the back of a cart or whatever. And she she would have been late 60s, maybe into her 70s, and probably full of well, she no, she was probably very robust, but still not not easy. Not easy.
SPEAKER_00No, it's not like the luxurious trips down the Rhine you see that these days.
SPEAKER_01No, no, it wasn't a river cruise.
SPEAKER_00Did she have or did she write about or have any sense of why her in terms of these visions?
SPEAKER_01Why she received them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, why it was through her. Did she have a sense or any kind of idea why this gift was given to her?
SPEAKER_01As far as I know, she never commented, never speculated on the why. And in the whole idea of mysticism in the Middle Ages, the idea was that these things came unsought. That was part of the definition, I guess, of mysticism, that it was an unsought but immediate apprehension of the divine. So I think she probably really did believe that she was, for whatever reason, chosen as God's instrument, and it was incumbent upon her to honour that honour that she was given. She didn't say why, she just accepted.
SPEAKER_00No, I guess that's a it's a modern concept, a modern question, really, as you say, the the understanding of the mysticism as gift at that time. Yes. So Hildegarden's engagement with the world includes music, natural science, and theology, and art, of course, from her visions, like notating the visual aspect of it, not just the interpretation. What are some of the things that you've discovered about her that are genuinely audacious and particularly inspire or really kind of capture your imagination?
SPEAKER_01You know, that when I first came across her, not everything that she'd written had been translated. It wasn't accessible, it hadn't even been taken out of the codexes that the Benedictines had. Observed in local area. But as it was coming out, it was so vast and it was so varied. In that first respect, that was inspiring. Just the determination and the energy of the woman was inspiring. And I also was inspired and found it very audacious in that time. And it is still today, her willingness to bring all of her talents to bear on her life as an abbess and a leader. She didn't hide her brilliance under a bushel, not any of it. She did the visionary stuff, but she brought other brilliance in too, her observations. And she did that despite the kind of social structures and that severely limited women in that time. And so, yes, I guess as an abbess, you know, she had certain advantages in this respect over women in general society. And as I said, she did feign to appoint a humility topos, but I imagine her as an absolute force of nature. Absolute. And she was audacious as an abbess and leader because she fought for what she thought her nuns needed when they really needed to be away from under the control of the Benedictine males. She fought for that and she succeeded. And it wasn't easy. When she was told not to bury a certain man who had fallen foul of the church before his death, allow him to be buried in their convent cemetery. She disobeyed, even though she was put under an interdite for that and her nuns, which was very close to excommunication, actually. But finally she won through. So she was just determined. And in amongst it, she seems to have such a love of the natural world. She's observant of nature, and her nature is observant. And so she takes time to look at and rejoice in the world and share that. That wasn't from her holy vision, that was from her own life. And she obviously had musical talent and she brought all of that to the fore. I think she just didn't hold back. She just she's audacious in living life to the full. She didn't waste time.
SPEAKER_00One of the things I find essentially benedictine about Hildegard is that love and passion for beauty and meaning. Like there's the depth in some aspects, but there's this broadness, this passion for everything for the whole, this real incarnational yet mystical kind of life, as you say. Very John 10-10, living life to the full. Yes. What are some of the things in regards to natural science? Because some of our listeners might not know, the things that she kind of dug into.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so many things. She's the first person to describe the female orgasm. So she was very interested in the generative aspect of nature in every sense. And I guess she'd help women in the local area with giving birth. She would have been a midwife to all kinds of things and dealing with women in her convent. And she was a herbalist, I guess, a very excellent herbalist. As many women in convents and in homes had to be, they had to understand what in the gardens could be used for medicine. But she wrote that down and she had cures for all kinds of things. She also was interested in what we might think is quite new, new age, but not so. Things like jewel therapy. So she knew about the qualities of minerals and precious stones and their use and their application to illness and to promoting health, for example. And she looked at the greening of nature and she didn't exactly coin the word theriditas, but really we associated with her a few people before, like Augustine, had used it, but not in the expansive way that Hildegard did. This idea of greening of the spirit in line with the greening of the natural world, the transition of the seasons and what each, as you say, the beauty that each one offered. And the beauty in the sounds, total awareness of whatever was happening. She was immersed in it.
SPEAKER_00And you see that cosmic awareness when you see some of the artwork that is attributed to her. Now, is it the artwork? It's not by her hand, but it's kind of her vision. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01We don't actually know for sure. We don't know because she describes her visions when she's receiving them in the skipping, she describes them in such detail, and there they are reproduced in these images. And it's thought probably that they were done in her scriptorium, her convent scriptorium, probably under her guidance.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm sure she would have gone, no, that's not it. Try again.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. But she's never said that, you know, here's the image that goes with the vision. It's just we put it together now. And they were preserved in a particular codex. Much of it was lost during World War II, but one copy of it had been preserved elsewhere. So we still had those images in the uh Rufshine Codex.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're stunning. I think my favorite is the Trinity, one that's believed to describe the Trinity with the circular and the elements also connected with Trinity. I believe I've seen an image, and maybe it is even being a more church associated with her, that it's the image at the back of the altar, an enlarged tapestry version of it. I think it is. I'd love to see it one day.
SPEAKER_01I'm not sure about that. That sounds very interesting.
SPEAKER_00I've seen a photo somewhere. I'll have to dig in and find out where it is.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yes, let me know. No, I I can't recall that. I do like her image of, you know, the cosmic egg, and then if there are beautiful images, even in her other works, like the Book of Divine Works, are some fabulous images like that of Universal Man, which looks very much to me as if it's a precursor for uh Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
SPEAKER_00Well, her legacy is definitely extraordinary. What are some of the things about her, particularly that are relevant for reflection today?
SPEAKER_01There's so many, you know. One of them I think is about speaking truth to power. So she doesn't hold back. If she knows something is right, she goes for it because that follows, I think, and it's relevant to all of us that she was true to herself. And so I think it's relevant for all of us to thine own self be true and to one's calling and commitments and to God above all, that was really her motivation all along. And I think that's very relevant to us. It's too easy to follow. And yet, if you are gifted as a leader, it's incumbent upon one to be the leader or to share one's gift. That's why we've got them. The other thing I've talked about a bit, but her valuing of the natural world is something that is so relevant today as we find our world falling apart, climate change and lack of care for people and the environment.
SPEAKER_00Well, that very cosmic and incarnational view of all things, I think, is something that we can all latch on to and need to in this current era in terms of how we relate to each other and do all around us. I think is yeah, definitely a reflection we need to connect with. I wanted to ask you if you had a particular favourite piece of music or art from her works that you may come back to now and again or you're attracted to.
SPEAKER_01Uh, there's a couple of them. That universal man fascinates me, as I've said. And there is one called Veriditas, which is also from the Book of Divine Works, and it's in a circle, and it just shows the sort of change of season so beautifully. It's so subtle, and there's greening within it, and it's just so subtle and so beautifully observed. But from her skiviers, I love the choir of angels, it's just so jam-packed with action. And I love the cosmic egg because I think that was quite a brilliant insight to think about the cosmos. She was in line with her medieval world and their understanding of it to a point because of the elements that are were understood within the world, and it was a geocentric, not solar system world. But she takes that knowledge and she puts it into an egg, which is like the beginning of life as well. So I think that putting together the macrocosm and the microcosm of life was quite brilliant. I love that one. It's very clever and it's very insightful.
SPEAKER_00One day I'd love to do a retreat just on her art. Be a beautiful reflection retreat to just contemplate and yeah, so much there. You could you could spend it on just one painting over days or or capture a few.
SPEAKER_01Yes, quite true. And she does explicate what she describes all of those things. Like we're talking about the choir of angels, the cosmic egg, and she says what she's seen, and of course, that's where the image comes from, but she goes back to scripture as well. She's talking about, you know, the star, she's she's bringing in the old testament right up to John and Revelations and these stars in the sky. This is the beginning and this is the end, and it's cosmic in itself. It's a cosmic vision in a cosmic egg, but the whole skivias are cosmic in their vision, which is microcosm and macrocosm as well. So I love that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so much to take in, so much extra reading I need to do. We've been talking about such vastness in her legacy that we need to kind of tap into it. I wanted to talk to you a bit about your book, The Mystics Who Came to Dinner. It's certainly a dinner party I would love to attend. Can you tell us a bit about how the concept for the book emerged?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Well, the mystics who came to dinner is a dinner party in the modern world, the here and now, in which six medieval mystics are invited to dinner by the host and they all accept. And they all accept because, as Hildegard said, we had to come. We don't get many invitations like this. We couldn't possibly pass it up. It's a creative non-fiction book. And what I wanted to do was, I think most people love the idea of the mystics. Some people might have slightly a wrong idea about what mystical literature is about. There are no wizards in it, that's for sure. But it's dense and it's a bit plodding to read generally, but there's great beauty in it. And so over the many years since I began to write and teach on the mystics, and it's you know 25 years, every now and then someone would say, Oh, you explain it really well. Now, can you recommend a book on it that I would enjoy? And I had to say no, because the books are either very academic or they're very few actually that are flippant, or they'll just give little bits and pieces. And I thought I must write one, but I never did for the first 20 years because it was too hard. And that's why I realized there wasn't such a book, because you don't want to minimize the power of the message of the mystics, you don't want to trivialize it. I didn't want to, but I wanted to show its relevance. So that was my idea. And during COVID, oh, you know, I've I've got no excuse, and I've got to think of some way to do this. And I don't know, I'm sort of meditated on and we just sleep one night and in the morning, well, I'll just invite them to dinner and ask them what they've got to say about it. It's brilliant. So that was the idea that these mystics, Hildegard of Bingham, three men, three women. I chose them because I knew them really well, these three. I didn't have to research.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for our listeners. It's the Francis of Assisi, Hildegard, of course, and then English mystics, Julian of Norwich, The Cloud of Unknowing. The Cloud of Unknowing, Richard Roll, and Marjorie Kem.
SPEAKER_01And so The Cloud of Unknowing doesn't sound like a person. He is a person. Many of your listeners probably, I think, might have read The Cloud of Unknowing. It is quite pivotal medieval text, but he was an anonymous author. And so we don't have a name for him. So in the book, he's just Cloud. Don't be formal with me. It doesn't have to be Mr. Cloud. Cloud will do. We're all friends. And so they all come to dinner to the host Annie's house, and they're modern. Hildegard is quite outspoken. She likes her wine. She likes her brandy, forceful character. She dresses sort of plainly, but with a statement. She's stout. That's how I imagine her. Frances is more hippie style. He arrives at the house by public transport. It's a rainy night, so he has to dry off and he goes in and chats to Hildegard. And then Marjorie and Julian arrive in an Uber together. And they had met during life, so I thought it was appropriate that they came together. Cloud, because he's all nobody knows much about him. He just kind of warps in when nobody's looking. And Richard Roll, in his fire of love, confesses to being a bit of a ladies' man. That was one of his failings. So I make him a rather dapper and a very charming man. So it's just the pictures that I've had in my head of these characters. They come from no actual source, the personalities and appearances that I give these people.
SPEAKER_00No, but it's what has been evoked in your imagination as you've been kind of living with the.
SPEAKER_01Yes, but whatever they talk about in the book is from their texts with a bit of creative license. So they talk about how they came to the mystical life, what can be gleaned from their texts, and that's in the soup course. It was going to be entree, but because it's American publisher, I had to go with entree's their main course. I had to change it back to soup. So they talk about their entree to the life in soup in the main course. That's the heaviest course where they talk about their main mystical insights. It's, I guess, the most theologically based chapter, but I lighten it and there's plenty of wine flowing, and the food is good, and Pat the Dog is in amongst it. But there's lots happening. Then dessert is more about their other writings or the other aspects of their life. So Julian with her natural science and her jewel therapy, for example, and Marjorie was always in trouble. She had an eye for the men. She makes a pass at Francis's. There's those kinds of things. That has to be sorted. He's flattered, but not for me, you know. And then at coffee, then they ask hostess Annie to say, look, you invited us here because he wanted to know why we were relevant. So we're going to get you to summarize what we've talked about. And so then the pressure's on her to summarize what's happened. There's some special gifts that they sort of bring out in that coffee section, and then they depart. It's about how they call an Uber or go back out into the rain or describe what they'll be doing next. That's the kind of structure of the book.
SPEAKER_00It's a beautiful concept. Maybe sticking to Hildegard. Do you have a favorite conversation that you kind of created for Hildegard in that dinner party?
SPEAKER_01There's a lot. There's several. I did write this down. How she handles maybe that little interruption of Marjorie and Francis around their appeal for each other, where they're talking actually, but it's them in the main course. And Hildegard is talking about the cosmic egg and how she wrote things with a good basis in fact, but her understanding of the microcosm, macrocosm. And the hostess says, I'm fascinated by anything to do with physics. And as I listened to you, I was trying to imagine what a sixth of a second is really like, because the cloud says that your soul can be won and lost in an athemus. And she says, What's an athemus? And it's with the idea of one sixth of a second. And so it's all trying to get the feel of what that might be. And then she said, and then I was thinking that now we can measure units of time that are vastly shorter than anathemus, not to mention the unimaginable smallness of the quarks, and perhaps there is something even smaller that constitutes matter. And then I was thinking that as you pointed out, in every tiny moment there are countless possibilities and choices that we can make. One moment, one choice. And Hildegarde is listening to all of this. And in the meantime, Marjorie's attention has strayed a bit. It's all a bit heavy. And she says, Frances, Marjorie says, please don't take this the wrong way, but you're a very attractive man. I noticed Hildegard, this is the hostess's the eye. I noticed Hildegard tilt her head to one side and narrow her eyes as she says, Marjorie, I don't disagree with you, but I'm interested to know why you've been moved to make this observation about Francis. Oh, Hildegard sighs, Marjorie, it's a weakness of mine, I must confess. In my day I had quite an eye for the men. We all have our failings, don't we? All the seven deadly sins, I'll admit that lust was the top of my list. And so they talk on a little bit about that. And then Hildegard roars with laughter. Such honesty for all of you. I'd like to hear more about this, but I think we'll be straying very far from our topic, don't you? No, I just think that's very Hildegard. She brings them back. She engages to a point and then she brings them back. So I don't know that it's my favorite conversation of hers, but it's kind of emblematic of how she works within the text. She's never a spoil sport, but she gets them back to the matter at hand.
SPEAKER_00Well, that sounds very much like the picture I've been forming of her in terms of to hold so much in a life. You have to be able to, you know, go down the rabbit hole, but then kind of bring yourself back and say, what's the purpose of this? Where is this taking me? Where what's the journey we're actually need to be focused on?
SPEAKER_01And she does that throughout. And I think even as you say that, she is the dominant character. I try to give each of them the same kind of time to speak, but if she is the most forceful, perhaps, but lovely as well. She doesn't mince her words ever.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for sharing a bit about your book. And I and I highly recommend it to others, particularly as you say, as an introductory kind of text to take path into these particular characters, but this journey of the mystics. I guess as we're coming to a close for our conversation, do you think there's a piece of advice Hildegard would give to those seeking connection with God for this age?
SPEAKER_01I'm sure she would. I'm sure she wouldn't hesitate to do that. And I think it goes back a little bit to being true to oneself, but also to be aware, you mentioned that, to be aware of what's happening around you and to be attuned, I think, to one's senses. So to be listening for God, to be looking for God, for the signs of God in one's life through all of our senses and nature, in music, and art, as you've said, and in the interactions that we have with people. I think she would, she would say, you know, that we have to believe in our talents and use them because they are God-given. I think uh she would also recommend that we take time for self-reflection, but that balance, always balance this, not too much navel gazing, balance it with dedication to work and kind of the development of those talents and skills. And I think look with wonder at life. Just look with wonder at nature, protect it, protect all of life, all that we've been given until we can't any longer. That's I think that would be her advice.
SPEAKER_00Oh well, that is a perfect place to finish. Thank you so much, Carmel, for giving us some insights into this uh amazing, audacious woman and Benedictine. And I mean, I meant to mention earlier that one of her writings was a commentary on the rule of Benedict. So it's very much a part of her life. It's the path she was on, and all of these other parts are reflective of that path. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for being part of our story today. Thank you, Gabrielle. My pleasure. Well, it was so great to talk to Carmel today, and I'll be making sure that in our description of the podcast on the website, you'll be able to have lots of links to both her resources, her books, but also some places where you can find some of the art and music of Hildegard so that you too can see some of those images that we were talking about here, some of the beautiful music that is part of her legacy, so that you too can see this vastness, this beautiful depth and cosmology and incarnational reality that she brings and gives us this enormous capacity for us to reflect on today, as we talked about that sense of greening very Lodato C. So I hope this episode has been a joy for you as much as it has been to me to learn more about Hildegard and to just dip our toes in a little bit to the extraordinary work of this amazing woman and thanks to Carmel for helping us along that path. So I hope as you go about your day, the transforming table of hospitality is wide and inspires you with mercy and compassion to go and do likewise.
