Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, d. 1179

The year was 1990 and I was busy writing my senior thesis, a somewhat overblown and self-important treatment of death imagery in fin-de-siecle German literature. (I know, I know. Insufferable. I'm still embarassed.) My college dorm was a neo-Cambridge college gothic building with trees and a wide grassy yard around it. Inside, we were a great co-ed mix of people. We had party monsters who were always having kegs and loud music, but we also had the guy who was doing his thesis on alchemy and somehow managed to turn his room into a medieval set piece from Foucault's Pendulum. I was somewhere in the middle.

Well, spring break came and I didn't have anywhere to go. Plus, I was way behind on my thesis. I had lots of ideas, and a youthful sense of how important they were, but I didn't really have much in the way of words on a page, if you know what I mean. And my deadline was approaching. So a few fellow procrastinators and I decided to forgo a traditional spring break vacation and stay in that wonderful gothic building with the lead-pane glass windows, and write our theses. The partiers left to South Padre or wherever those people go. The funny alchemy boy stayed behind.

It just so happened that the weather in that spring was overcast, dreary, and quiet. There wasn't much reason to go outside into the gloom so it was easy to concentrate on writing. Pretty soon I settled into one of the oddest routines of my life. With no real obligations, and no real distractions, I read and wrote when I wanted to, and I ate when I was hungry, and I slept when I was tired, and when I met people in the hallway we would occasionally socialize. After a few days I simply didn't care about the schedule of the world.

Even more remarkable was that the constant gentle and gloomy rain outside erased any way to mark time by looking out the window--it was just either rain or dark. I quit using my clock because there were no schedules to follow. It was bizarre. Wonderfully bizarre. Time meant nothing.

One of the books I was reading for my thesis was Rilke's Book of Hours, so sensing the monastic connection I listened to music from Hildegard of Bingen for most of that week. I couldn't think of a better accompaniment to that wonderful time than her magical, other-worldly chant.

Hildegard had visions. She would see lights within lights, perceived not with her eyes but with her soul, and the voice of God spoke to her in Latin. These experiences were utterly transforming for her. Her doubt, anxiety, and fear would disappear and she would commune with Grace. In 1141, five years after she was promoted to Abbess, she began to write her visions down in word and song. In more recent times people have tried to interpret her visions as temporal lobe seizures. Fine; if so, then those seizures were sent by God. The fact that Hildegard can still transport us with her music 850 years after her death is awesome and chilling. Listening to her is like touching a live wire and feeling a tingling shock of energy.

We celebrate Hildegard today, September 17th, and I find it a wonderful commemoration. I listened again to her music tonight and thought back with love to that cloistered week in an almost empty old dorm room, surrounded by drizzly soft days, dark cool nights, candle light, red wine, friendship, timelessness, and the ethereal music of a saint.