pull up a chair

it came over me like a wind from the north. suddenly, my little wagon was steering straight toward the tree lot. too early to be opened, i climbed a snow mound (as if i were far more agile than i am) peered through the cyclone fence to get a peek at the price tag, let out a gasp, and climbed back down from the mound.

the little wagon wasn’t finished. it steered toward yet another tree lot, where a clump of three last trees lay cast off in a heap. these were not the sort of firs that stand proud in rows, showing off their verdancy. these were orphans, literally tossed aside. one, i decided, was mine. so i marched in and paid, and looped the tree atop the wagon. then we drove home, the little tree and me. and all by myself i hauled it from car to back door, and into the house, where it lay, awaiting another pair of hands for the vertical lift.

this urge to green, this life force that would not be slowed, as i merried my way into the season, looping garlands, dangling wreaths, lacing strands of lights and cranberries through the boughs of the little lost tree, all of it was as if a whirl had swept through the house—and through me.

“seasonal affliction,” you might think. belatedly getting with the program, another way to put it (for i’d waited far too long for the fresh young trees, and the Christmas countdown was now in single digits). merely catching up, the motivating force that drove this fa-la-la-ing.

until the next morning, when suddenly it made sense—immense sense—in a way i’d not seen it nor felt it before.

there i was, sitting off to the side of the little chapel where i sometimes go to pray, when a holy fellow stepped to the pulpit and began to talk about hildegard of bingen, the great twelfth-century german benedictine abbess and mystic, whose whole theology (a cosmology, really) was centered on the idea of viriditas, a latin term she coined from the words for “greening” and “truth.” it was her notion that all of life has ever been, and will be, imbued with a Godly force, a greening aliveness surging toward wholeness, holiness, and healing. it’s another vision for the breath of God filling our every corpuscle with the oxygen of the Divine. yet hildegard, a polymath and herbalist whose notebooks were filled with writings and doodles of birds and trees and stones and stars, centered her vision on “the greening,” fueled by a sacred sap coursing through and pervading all of creation, and the animating force in each of our souls.

in other words: there is in us, and in every atom and ion of creation, a current, a holy river, propelling us and all creation toward the ultimate whole, the holiness God has ordained and which we mere mortals can only imagine.

hildegard came to this as she studied the greening of plants in the monastery’s garden, paying close attention as stem and bud absorbed the sunlight, and—long before photosynthesis was understood by botanists—she grasped that the sun’s offerings (light and warmth) were the forces that brought the fronds’ unfurling and the peeling open of the blossom. if the garden worked thusly, then why oh why wouldn’t humanity, wouldn’t all of creation, so too? mightn’t we too absorb a holy surge, a Divine light, one that would enable us to bring forth the healing, the wholeness, this world on both a micro and macro level so deeply needs?

and so she set about preaching her twelfth-century truth, imploring and prodding in equal measure, needling those who’d masquerade as mighty, rattling those half-asleep in their pews.

as the theologian matthew fox once put it: “hildegard is not only mystic; she is also prophet. . . . she disturbs the complacent, deliberately provoking the privileged, be they emperors or popes, abbots or archbishops, monks or princes to greater justice and deeper sensitivity to the oppressed. . . .”

no shrinking violet in the churchly world, the mystic-prophet minced no words:

“If . . . we give up the green vitality of [our] virtues and surrender to the drought of our indolence, so that we do not have the sap of life and the greening power of good deeds, then the power of our very soul will begin to fade and dry up.“

suddenly, my greening of the house, the catapulting of the tree into vertical stance, the looping of my mother’s garland at the windows, the hanging of the wreaths, was not simply Christmas festooning but rather a task with heavenly purpose: ushering in a holy force, filling the house, the rooms, with Godly presence.

it’s an anointing i’d not imagined before but now my little orphan tree reminds me, as it sparkles in the corner, what hildegard once knew: in all of us there is a holy surge. and the time is now to infuse our world with it.

this old house is not just greener than it used to be, but resonant with God’s permeating presence.

on the eve of the longest night, when shadow cloaks the planet’s northern half, may you find greening—holy greening—deep within, and may you bring it vibrantly into this desiccating world.

merry blessed countdown. may your days find quiet. and in the depth of these dark nights may the kindling come and cast its light upon your way….

a little bit of bingen to stir the greening….