The quotes below convey something of the significance of “place” and location for my prayer-life, which is ultimately my relationship with our triune God. In addition my prayer-life is informed, resourced, and nourished within this land, Aotearoa New Zealand – the land, its remoteness, its mountain and ‘desert’ landscape, its coastlines, and its ocean. The rugged West coast of the South Island and also that of the north are significant places of consolation and contemplative prayer for me. The greenness of this land, Celtic spirituality, and Hildegard of Bingen’s (1098-1179) notion of Veriditas “…usually translated 'greenness' or 'greening'… For Hildegard, viriditas seems to refer to the principle of vitality that is at work in all of creation. God breathed viriditas into Adam and Eve at their creation. It fills the season of spring and "causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life". Yet viriditas is equally the Spirit of God at work in us bringing spiritual life and renewal. 'Greening' was her way of speaking about the creativity and fruitfulness of a human being fully alive and in harmony with the purposes of God…” [i] For me green represents exuberant life – abundant life. It represents the “greening” of my life and my aliveness to God, self, and other human beings. To pray deeply and exuberantly is to live deeply and exuberantly. Further, the importance of the “landscape” (it could easily have been a suburban or “urban-scape”) is not a displacement of the centrality of God, but is rather an assertion that my prayer life, my God-ward life is not a retreat from the world, but an encounter within the everydayness of the world, my world.
“‘Only those people who know where they come from, where they belong, are safe to travel.’ So said an Indian acquaintance of mine of the many westerners in search of a home in the mystic Orient. If that insight is true of outer travel, it is equally so of the inner, spiritual; journey. Yet, how difficult it is for so many of us to know our place, our context, or, at least to take it seriously and have it taken seriously by others as the bedrock of our spiritual quest. How difficult, in other words, to believe oneself to be saved in the world or truly to pray ‘in our place’…”[ii]
“Our spiritual journey, our relationship with God, is so often about admitting that I am displaced and about discovering where I am placed by God, where is my place. For the follower of Jesus my place will be in the world, my world, for Jesus has chosen our world, my world, to be his place also…We can come to know him only by embracing who we are where we are. That is where he is. He chose this world, my world, to be the only place he could reveal God to us” [iii]
It was David Crawley who introduced me to Hildegard and viriditas in a course on historical and contemporary sprituality. All his notes for that week, including the practical exercises for us to try, were on green paper.
The course is now available from CDL at the bottom of the list - M805.
Posted by: Stephen Garner | Wednesday, 25 May 2005 at 11:02 AM