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The Creative Spirit: Harmonious Living With Hildegard of Bingen

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Hildegard of Bingen was a twelfth-century Benedictine Christian theologian, mystic, poet, healer, and musician who left an enormous body of writings representing a legacy of spiritual insights that continues to be read today. In The Creative Spirit: Harmonious Living With Hildegard Of Bingen, June Boyce-Tillman presents a superbly written introduction to a woman who was the first female whose writings were approved for publication by the Pope; one of the first women to have her music written down for her contemporaries and posterity; and the first science writer to ever put pen to paper on the subject of childbirth and women's sexuality. The Creative Spirit explores the life and thought of this remarkable woman as well as providing practical spiritual exercises based on Hildegard's ideas and concepts for brining wholeness, wisdom and healing to a busy, fragmented, modern life. Highly recommended.

I found this book this year at the bargain section and was impressed by it. I never knew anything about the visionary, poet, theologian, composer, healer, and abbess, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179).

History suggests that she fell into obscurity, only to be resurrected in the closing decades of the twentieth century. She produced major works of theology, wrote on science and natural history, and frankly discussed human sexuality but is best known today for the ravishingly beautiful chants and hymns she composed.

The author June Boyce-Tillman examines various aspects of Hildegard from a practical perspective. The early chapters set Hildegard in historical context. Others place her work in the context of her prayer life, her visions, her approach to healing, and her music and its centrality in her theology.

It, at times, was a little hard for me to follow, but overall it was worth it. I recommend it!