Hildegard of Bingen and Richardis: Medieval mystic and the woman she loved

Hildegard of Bingen was a medieval German nun, mystic, poet, artist, composer, healer and scientist. She founded several monasteries, fought for women in the church and wrote with passion about the Virgin Mary. Some say she was a lesbian because of her strong emotional attachment to women, especially her personal assistant Richardis von Stade. Hildegard was declared a doctor of the church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2013. Her feast day is Sept. 17 (today).

For a new version of this article, click this link to Qspirit.net:
Hildegard of Bingen and Richardis: Medieval mystic and the woman she loved


The title “Doctor of the Church” is a rare honor, bestowed upon only a few saints whose writings have universal value to the church. Their “eminent learning” and “great sanctity” must be affirmed by the Pope. Currently the Roman Catholic Church has only 33 doctors, including three women.

The friendship -- or love story -- between Hildegard and Richardis is included in a 2009 film from German feminist director Margarethe von Trotta called Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen. Von Trotta is one of the world’s most important feminist filmmakers and a leader of independent German cinema. Von Trotta allows Hildegard to speak for herself by using a script based on Hildegard’s own writings and a soundtrack filled with Hildegard’s music. Watch a trailer at the end of this post.

Richardis von Stade (center, played by Hannah Herzsprung) and Hildegard (left, Barbara Sukowa) in the biopic “Vision” (from zeitgeistfilms.com)

Hildegard also inspired a play by lesbian feminist playwright Carolyn Gage. In the play “Artemisia and Hildegard,” Gage has two of history’s great women artists debate their contrasting survival strategies: Gentileschi battled to achieve in the male-dominated art world while Hildegard created women-only community to support her art by founding a nunnery.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the tenth child of a noble family, was offered to the church as a “tithe” when she was very young. She was raised from the age of 8 in the hermitage that later became her Benedictine abbey. She founded two other convents where women performed her music and developed their artistic, intellectual and spiritual gifts. She spent almost all of her life in the company of women.

“Hildegard: The Vision” by Tricia Danby

She had visions throughout her life, starting at age 3 when she says that she first saw “the Shade of the Living Light.” She hesitated to tell others about her visions, sharing them only with her teacher Jutta.

When she was 42, Hildegard had a vision in which God instructed her to record her spiritual experiences. Still hesitant, she became physically ill before she was persuaded to begin her first visionary work, the Scivias (Know the Ways of God).

"St. Hildegard of Bingen" by Plamen Petrov

Hildegard was nursed in her illness and encouraged in her writing by Richardis von Stade, a younger woman who was her personal assistant, soul mate and special favorite. Whether or not they were physically intimate, Hildegard’s actions suggest that she was a lesbian in the sense that her primary love interest was in women.

In 1151, Hildegard completed the Scivias and trouble arose between her and her beloved Richardis. An archbishop, the brother of Richardis, arranged for his sister to become abbess of a distant convent. Hildegard urged Richardis to stay, and even asked the Pope to stop the move. But Richardis left anyway, over Hildegard’s objections.

Hildegard wrote intense letters begging Richardis to return: “I loved the nobility of your conduct, your wisdom and your chastity, your soul and the whole of your life, so much that many said: What are you doing?”

Richardis died suddenly in October 1151, when she was only about 28 years old. On her deathbed, she tearfully expressed her longing for Hildegard and her intention to return.

“The Universe”
by Hildegard of Bingen

Wikimedia Commons

Hildegard’s grief apparently fueled further artistic creation. Many believe that Richardis was the inspiration for Ordo Virtutum (“Play of Virtues”}, a musical morality play about a soul who is tempted away by the devil and then repents. According to Wikipedia, “It is the earliest morality play by more than a century, and the only Medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both the text and the music.”

In an era when few women wrote, Hildegard went on to create two more major visionary works, a collection of songs, and several scientific treatises. She was especially interested in women’s health. Her medical writings even include what may be the first description of a female orgasm.

“Hildegard of Bingen: Vision of Music” by Tricia Danby

As a church leader, Hildegard had to support its policy against homosexual behavior. But she often wrote about the divine feminine and the dignity of women, presenting sexuality in a generally positive way. She wrote, “Creation looks on its Creator like the beloved looks on the lover.” Many readers today delight in her erotic descriptions of marriage as a metaphor for the union of a soul with God. Hildegard writes:

The soul is kissed by God in its innermost regions.
With interior yearning, grace and blessing are bestowed.
It is a yearning to take on God's gentle yoke,
It is a yearning to give one's self to God's Way.

In the Symphonia, a collection of liturgical songs to Mary, Hildegard writes with ecstatic passion of her love and devotion to the Virgin Mary. She extols Mary as “greenest twig” and sings the praises of her womb, which “illuminated all creatures.”

Her songs to Mary are available for listening in the following video and on the Sequentia recording, “Hildegard von Bingen: Canticles of Ecstasy.” Her music is still just as beautiful today.

Hildegard died on Sept. 17, 1179 at age 81. The sisters at her convent said they saw two streams of colorful lights cross in the sky above her room. She became a saint by popular acclamation.

The icon of Hildegard and Richardis at the top of this post was painted by Colorado artist Lewis Williams of the Secular Franciscan Order (SFO). He studied with master iconographer Robert Lentz and has made social justice a theme of his icons. This post also features images of Hildegard by artists Tricia Danby and Plamen Petrov.

Hildegard appears as a young woman in new portraits by Tricia Danby, a spiritual artist based in Germany and a cleric in the Old Catholic Apostolic Church. Her images reveal a sensuous side to Hildegard’s rapturous connection with God.

Stained-glass artist Plamen Petrov of Chicago is known for his window showing the male paired saints Sergius and Bacchus at St. Martha Church in Morton Grove, Illinois. His Hildegard window shows her illuminated with beautiful aquamarine colors.

“Hildegard von Bingen” by Tobias Haller

Hildegard was sketched in blue with intense blue eyes by Tobias Haller, an iconographer, author, composer, and vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church in the Bronx. He is the author of “Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality.” Haller enjoys expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He and his spouse were united in a church wedding more than 30 years ago and a civil ceremony after same-sex marriage became legal in New York.

“Saint Hildegard of Bingen” by Robert Lentz

Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar known for his innovative and LGBT-positive icons, portrays Hildegard with a wild rose. She used to dip a rose in the Rhine River and use it to sprinkle water on people as a blessing when she traveled between monasteries. Lentz is stationed at Holy Name College in Silver Spring, Maryland.

LGBT-affirming creation theologian Matthew Fox has written two books on the life and work of Hildegard. The newest is Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century, which presents her as an "eco-warrior" who meets such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Howard Thurman, Dorothee Soelle and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Fox also wrote Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.

Hildegard was the subject of a major sermon by Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori when the House of Bishops met in Taiwan on Sept. 17, 2014. “Hildegard speaks scientifically and theologically of divine creativity as viriditas, reflecting both greenness and truth… Hildegard’s vision motivates all healers of creation who understand the green web of connection that ties creation together in Wisdom’s body,” she said. (Thanks to Ann Fontaine at Episcopal Café for the news tip.)





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Related links:

Pope sets date to declare two new church doctors (Catholic News Agency)

Ritual to Honor Hildegard of Bingen by Diann L. Neu (WATER)

To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Hildegarda de Bingen y Richardis: Una mística que amaba a otra mujer

To read this post in Italian / in Italiano, go to gionata.org:
La forza della visione. La vita della mistica Ildegarda di Bingen
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Top image credit: “St. Hildegard of Bingen and Her Assistant Richardis” by Lewis Williams, TrinityStores.com

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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBTQ martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.

The Hildegard icons are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com

Gay love stops hiding from church oppression in new music video: “Hiding” by Ray Isaac

Gay love in the church, electroshock “conversion” therapy and Christianity’s role in suppressing homosexuality are exposed in a controversial new music video by Australian pop singer-songwriter Ray Isaac.

His single “Hiding” and its accompanying music video have offended some religious groups and delighted many listeners since its release in late January.

“I say, no more hiding,” explained Isaac, who is both a Christian and a supporter of LGBTI rights. “The message in my video is that everyone deserves to be loved for who they are without conditions.”

Based on Isaac’s own experiences, the video includes disturbing scenes of sparks flying as church leaders try to rid a man of same-sex attraction by zapping him with electric shocks.



“The electroshock scene in the beginning and end is a therapy which is still happening to gay people to convert them and UnGay them. This is supported and referred to by church organisations in secret. It happened to me!” Isaac said in his YouTube comments on the video.

Isaac plays the role of a priest who is in love with another man, but still helps administer the torturous church-sponsored ex-gay “reparative” therapy.

Ray Isaac plays a gay priest overseeing anti-gay electroshock therapy in his “Hiding” music video

“It’s time to hold mirrors up towards ignorant religious groups and force them to face the unrealistic terms and conditions placed on the LGBT community. We must expose what is going on behind ‘holy closet doors’ and change the rules to be more inclusive of all human beings,” Isaac explained.

The content is so tough that public-relations companies refused to help promote the music video. And yet Isaac’s video does offer hope that religious leaders have the potential to change and liberate LGBT people.

The emotional video also tells Isaac’s own story of loving another man who loves him back but is pressured to marry a woman, leading to unexpected plot twists and a surprise ending. “Ultimately, they must decide to either keep hiding or set themselves free and pay the consequences,” he said.

Isaac decided to portray a priest for the sake of LGBT clergy. He commented on YouTube that he wanted to express his hope for “a world where clergy and their partners will be accepted as gay, as well as every human being and their partners accepted by religions for being gay or bi or trans.”

Electric shock has been used in efforts to “cure” homosexuality since the early 20th century. The method was discredited decades ago by psychologists, and some states and countries outlawed it. But it still continues in some places. One prominent gay clergyman who experienced it was Mel White, an evangelical pastor who later came out, transferred his clergy credentials to LGBT-affirming Metropolitan Community Churches, and founded Soulforce to end religious oppression of LGBTQI people. In his autobiography “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America” he described his early years of being exorcised, electric-shocked and nearly driven to suicide because his church said homosexuality was wrong.

Isaac affirms that LGBT love is compatible with Christian faith. “We are made perfect in GOD's image,” Isaac said. “I hope one day that all religions will erase such judgement and contradiction and finally accept that EVERYONE is of God and has the right to love without consequences, guilt and regulations!”

Fans responded with enthusiastic comments thanking him for “sharing your pain and showing it to reveal to the world we need to love everyone the same.”

Recently Isaac released a shorter and more upbeat “Funk3d Remix” video of “Hiding,” with some of the most frightening scenes omitted.



Isaac’s previous song “Who I Am” has been used in anti-bullying and equality campaigns around the world. He first made a splash on the music scene with such hits as “I Don’t Give a Damn” and “U Want or U Don’t,” both of which enjoyed chart-topping success. His edgy brand of pop music has been called “an emotionally-driven rollercoaster ride.”

Isaac grew up in a Catholic Lebanese family in Sydney, Australia. He experienced a vision of Mother Mary that inspired his music -- and also led him to get more involved in the church, eventually including electroshock therapy.  Finally his own personal connection with God, Jesus and Mary gave him the strength to leave the church group that was damaging his spirit.  Now he is courageously revealing his experiences through his music.

Ray Isaac runs as a priest in his “Hiding” music video

His deep, loving connection with Mary is expressed musically in his song and music video “Mother Mary Song (Ya Oum Allah).” It begins with an Arabic prayer that is similar to the “Hail Mary” prayer.



Isaac discusses his spiritual journey in depth in the following exclusive interview with Kittredge Cherry of the Jesus in Love Blog.


Kittredge Cherry: Why did you choose to release the “Hiding” music video even though PR companies refused to promote it?

Ray Isaac: Because I felt it was very important to tell my story and my struggles. I also know that so many people have suffered far worse circumstances than mine and I needed them to know that I understand and I want to help let the world know! This torment still exists.


KC: You have said that the “Hiding” music video tells your story… of falling in love a man who is hiding that he is gay, of getting electroshock therapy to change your sexual orientation. What role did religion play in your own story?

RI: After Mother Mary appeared to me a few years back I felt the right thing to do was to start going to church and getting more involved in the Catholic religion. But boy was I wrong! The more I went to church and mixed with the devout Catholic groups, the more I started to feel guilt for being myself and living day to day. Such as guilt for swearing or for being gay, going to gay bars, not giving up things for Lent etc. The people in the church were dimming my light and they didn’t even realise.

So instead of growing spirituality so that I could have that closer connection with God, Jesus and Mary, I started to question if I was worthy and loved just the way I was. I then went through depression because of it. I wanted to be straight. I didn’t fit in anywhere. Not with the gays and not at church.

During the low times I heard a voice in my mind and it woke me up out of my sleep and it said “My Son, There’s nothing wrong with you! I made you perfect just the way you are. Get up out of that bed and know that you know the truth about me more than any of these people.”

From that day forward I went on my spiritual journey by myself and now I have found many inclusive churches which are fantastic.


KC: Why do you portray yourself as a priest in the video?

RI: I just wanted to tell two stories: One is of a gay person forced by his family and community to go back in the closet and marry a woman and the other is for the sake of gay clergy. I just chose to be the priest because I have known many priests in that situation and it just felt the right thing to do. My belief is that if religions just accepted all people for who they are then we wouldn’t have such a divide -- within clergy and within the community in general.


KC: Have you considered becoming a priest or minister in real life? With your message of all-inclusive love, you would make a good one.

RI: No, I think I can heal more people by being an artist and being freer without rules. I also don’t fully think the Bible is accurate, so it would just upset me too much. I would prefer to use my songs and lyrics to heal people that way. Thank you so much. I have many amazing priest friends. And they support me (in secret) lol.


KC: Many Jesus in Love readers have struggled to bring together Christian faith and LGBT spirituality. Please tell about your spiritual journey and your current relationship with the church and with God.

RI: I think I answered most of that above, but right now I feel God and my angels, especially Jesus and Mother Mary, are closer than ever. The day Jesus spoke to me and I left the church ironically was the day my relationship was healed and closer again.

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This post is part of the Artists series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series profiles artists who use lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and queer spiritual and religious imagery.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

RIP David Bowie: Queer messiah figure of LGBT liberation, music and art

I celebrate the life of David Bowie, genderbending British singer-songwriter, rock icon and actor who died Jan. 10 at age 69. He was my most important early queer spiritual artistic inspiration -- a prototype for my later visions of the queer Christ.

And he moved the whole society toward acceptance of LGBT people. Bowie proved that a man can be intensely feminine and changed public perceptions about sexual orientation and gender identity.

Several readers pointed out a resemblance between Bowie and the contemporary gay Jesus painted by Doug Blanchard in our book “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision.” The 24 paintings show Jesus as a young urban hipster in modern dress as he faces his arrest, trial, death and resurrection. Maybe I didn’t notice the similarity myself because the Jesus of my private meditation often looks like Bowie. But the likeness shows in the photo (above) that I took of my vintage Bowie cassette tapes with a page from the Passion book.

It’s true that for me as a teenager growing up in Iowa, Bowie embodied the archetype of the misunderstood queer messiah… although the salvation he promised was based on rock music (Ziggy Stardust) or alien technology (in “The Man Who Fell to Earth.”) The inspiration that I found in Bowie became the foundation for my later understanding of the queer Christ.

Actually in “The Last Temptation of Christ,”” Bowie played not Jesus, but governor Pontius Pilate, who interrogates the would-be messiah in this video clip.



My vocation now is to write about LGBTQ spirituality and the arts, and Bowie had all three aspects when I was a teen searching for role models: a cool queer persona, an artistic sensibility and strong visual style, and what I perceived as a subtle spiritual quality. All of this was while I was still an unbaptized secular person, albeit with spiritual inclinations.

When asked to choose the “walkout song” for my Queer Clergy Trading Card last year, I picked a Bowie tune. His “Oh! You Pretty Things” expresses how I felt when I walked out to preach at the predominantly LGBT Metropolitan Community Churches, especially during the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s. I saw the people in the congregation as beautiful, even though they were condemned as sinners by many churches and “driving their mamas and papas insane” with their gender nonconformity.

Saint David Bowie candle from GrannysHopeChest

Sexuality
Bowie came out as gay in an interview in 1972, when it was far from cool. That was only three years after Stonewall. Elton John and Freddie Mercury were still in the closet. Rumors reached all the way to Iowa hinting that he had a sexual relationship with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Bowie seemed to be one of us. He projected otherness.

In a 1976 Playboy interview Bowie described himself as bisexual. His sexual experimentation and desire to break moral taboos were real, although in 1983 he claimed, “I was always a closet heterosexual” and regretted his declaration of bisexuality as “the biggest mistake I ever made.”

His coming out was important even if it turned out to be an artistic statement or publicity stunt, because all the world-famous musicians who were really gay were still afraid to admit their homosexuality in public. Bowie took a risk and helped clear the way.

He may not have actually been gay, but he did experience some homophobia. Bowie reported that he lost opportunities to perform because of his self-proclaimed bisexuality. “America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do,” he said in a 2002 interview.

His refusal to be labeled or stick to any one label seems strikingly contemporary.

How gay did Bowie really seem back in 1972? Check out the 1972 video of Bowie draping his arm suggestively around guitarist Mick Ronson while singing “Starman” (from his “Hunky Dory” album) on the British primetime show “Top of the Pops.” Homosexuality was still considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association. (They de-listed it in 1973.)



Religion
Bowie told a reporter that he was bothered by being “not quite an atheist,” and yet religious leaders offered tributes to him when he died. Even the Vatican had some praise for him, tweeting his lyrics and declaring him “never banal.”

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby told the BBC, “I’m very, very saddened to hear of his death. I remember sitting and listening to his songs endlessly in the ‘70s particularly, and always really relishing what he was, what he did, the impact he had.”

Before becoming a rock star, Bowie explored various religions, including Christianity. He studied Tibetan Buddhism for four years starting when he was 13.  He considered becoming a monk, but his guru urged him to follow music because he could benefit others more that way.

He confessed to having “a passion for the visual in religious rituals,” which he expressed in the dramatic flair of his costumes, cover art, and the sets and staging of his concerts and music videos.

In a 2005 interview he revealed that his spiritual quest continued through his music: “Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always.”"

Bowie knelt and led thousands in the Lord’s Prayer at the 1992 Freddie Mercury tribute concert captured on video.


Dear God - PLEASE BLESS David Bowie FOR THIS... by kneepadsphysical

Favorite albums
My life partner Audrey said that one reason she fell in love with me was that I had David Bowie and Chopin tapes next to each other in my cassette drawer at college. Bowie had a HUGE impact on me as a teenager, bringing what we would now call a queer sensibility to a budding lesbian growing up in Iowa and getting me through high school.

I can’t choose my favorite Bowie song because I love so many so much. I can’t even choose my favorite Bowie ALBUM! Here are my top three, in chronological order.

“Hunky Dory” (1971) includes songs about the underground world of drag queens (“Queen Bitch”) and my favorite artist Andy Warhol. When I fell in love with Audrey, so many songs on this album expressed our moods: “Kooks” proclaimed happily, “If you stay with us you’re gonna be pretty kooky too.” “Fill Your Heart” rejoiced that “Love cleans the mind and makes it Free.”

“The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” (1972) is about a bisexual rock star / prophet who prepares the way for extra-terrestrials who will come to save the Earth. Bowie’s own explanation of the Ziggy Stardust album: “I wanted to define the archetype of the messiah rock star.”

Listening to “Ziggy Stardust” again, I am struck by how many religious references he did make -- to priests, God and church. My walkout song “Oh! You Pretty Things” is on this album.

The song “Five Years” is like a Buddhist lovingkindness litany for “all things without exception” as he sings about trying to take in everything before the Earth dies in five years:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T.V.'s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so many people

“Aladdin Sane” (1973) had an amazing androgynous cover image of Bowie with red hair. My favorite song on this album has always been “Time.”

I drifted away from Bowie later as he went through many “Ch-ch-changes” (another great Bowie hit song) and distanced himself from his genderfluid personae.

New and final album: Blackstar
I like that Bowie did a final album (Blackstar) designed to be released when he died, dealing with his own deathbed and the transition to heaven. It shows he was a real artist who used every life experience as fuel for his artistic expression. His collaborator called it a “parting gift.”

Bowie showed me how to grow up queer. Now he’s showing me how to face death and go to heaven.

Particularly striking is the song “Lazarus,” an obvious reference to the Biblical Lazarus whom Jesus loved and raised from the dead. Bowie, face bandaged, opens by singing from his hospital bed in the Lazarus video:

Look up here, I'm in heaven
I've got scars that can't be seen
I've got drama, can't be stolen
Everybody knows me now.

“Blackstar” was released on Bowie’s 69th birthday, just two days before he died. May this music icon be welcomed to heaven by the other LGBTQ saints whose lives are honored here at the Jesus in Love Blog.  As he sang in “Space Oddity” (his first US hit song): “May God’s love be with you.”



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Related links:

David Bowie: Queer Messiah (Wild Reed)

LGBT People Reveal Why David Bowie Was So Important To Them (Buzzfeed.com)

How David Bowie Sexually Liberated Us All (Daily Beast)

In Memory of My Great Gay Saint, David Bowie (pitchfork.com)

That time David Bowie almost became a Buddhist monk — and what he said (and sang) about that time (lionsroar.com)

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This post is part of the LGBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Hildegard of Bingen and Richardis: Medieval mystic and the woman she loved

Hildegard of Bingen was a medieval German nun, mystic, poet, artist, composer, healer and scientist. She founded several monasteries, fought for women in the church and wrote with passion about the Virgin Mary. Some say she was a lesbian because of her strong emotional attachment to women, especially her personal assistant Richardis von Stade. Hildegard was declared a doctor of the church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2013. Her feast day is Sept. 17 (today).

For a new version of this article, click this link to Qspirit.net:
Hildegard of Bingen and Richardis: Medieval mystic and the woman she loved


The title “Doctor of the Church” is a rare honor, bestowed upon only a few saints whose writings have universal value to the church. Their “eminent learning” and “great sanctity” must be affirmed by the Pope. Currently the Roman Catholic Church has only 33 doctors, including three women.

The friendship -- or love story -- between Hildegard and Richardis is included in a 2009 film from German feminist director Margarethe von Trotta called Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen. Von Trotta is one of the world’s most important feminist filmmakers and a leader of independent German cinema. Von Trotta allows Hildegard to speak for herself by using a script based on Hildegard’s own writings and a soundtrack filled with Hildegard’s music. Watch a trailer at the end of this post.

Richardis von Stade (center, played by Hannah Herzsprung) and Hildegard (left, Barbara Sukowa) in the biopic “Vision” (from zeitgeistfilms.com)

Hildegard also inspired a play by lesbian feminist playwright Carolyn Gage. In the play “Artemisia and Hildegard,” Gage has two of history’s great women artists debate their contrasting survival strategies: Gentileschi battled to achieve in the male-dominated art world while Hildegard created women-only community to support her art by founding a nunnery.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the tenth child of a noble family, was offered to the church as a “tithe” when she was very young. She was raised from the age of 8 in the hermitage that later became her Benedictine abbey. She founded two other convents where women performed her music and developed their artistic, intellectual and spiritual gifts. She spent almost all of her life in the company of women.

“Hildegard: The Vision” by Tricia Danby

She had visions throughout her life, starting at age 3 when she says that she first saw “the Shade of the Living Light.” She hesitated to tell others about her visions, sharing them only with her teacher Jutta.

When she was 42, Hildegard had a vision in which God instructed her to record her spiritual experiences. Still hesitant, she became physically ill before she was persuaded to begin her first visionary work, the Scivias (Know the Ways of God).

"St. Hildegard of Bingen" by Plamen Petrov

Hildegard was nursed in her illness and encouraged in her writing by Richardis von Stade, a younger woman who was her personal assistant, soul mate and special favorite. Whether or not they were physically intimate, Hildegard’s actions suggest that she was a lesbian in the sense that her primary love interest was in women.

In 1151, Hildegard completed the Scivias and trouble arose between her and her beloved Richardis. An archbishop, the brother of Richardis, arranged for his sister to become abbess of a distant convent. Hildegard urged Richardis to stay, and even asked the Pope to stop the move. But Richardis left anyway, over Hildegard’s objections.

Hildegard wrote intense letters begging Richardis to return: “I loved the nobility of your conduct, your wisdom and your chastity, your soul and the whole of your life, so much that many said: What are you doing?”

Richardis died suddenly in October 1151, when she was only about 28 years old. On her deathbed, she tearfully expressed her longing for Hildegard and her intention to return.

“The Universe”
by Hildegard of Bingen

Wikimedia Commons

Hildegard’s grief apparently fueled further artistic creation. Many believe that Richardis was the inspiration for Ordo Virtutum (“Play of Virtues”}, a musical morality play about a soul who is tempted away by the devil and then repents. According to Wikipedia, “It is the earliest morality play by more than a century, and the only Medieval musical drama to survive with an attribution for both the text and the music.”

In an era when few women wrote, Hildegard went on to create two more major visionary works, a collection of songs, and several scientific treatises. She was especially interested in women’s health. Her medical writings even include what may be the first description of a female orgasm.

“Hildegard of Bingen: Vision of Music” by Tricia Danby

As a church leader, Hildegard had to support its policy against homosexual behavior. But she often wrote about the divine feminine and the dignity of women, presenting sexuality in a generally positive way. She wrote, “Creation looks on its Creator like the beloved looks on the lover.” Many readers today delight in her erotic descriptions of marriage as a metaphor for the union of a soul with God. Hildegard writes:

The soul is kissed by God in its innermost regions.
With interior yearning, grace and blessing are bestowed.
It is a yearning to take on God's gentle yoke,
It is a yearning to give one's self to God's Way.

In the Symphonia, a collection of liturgical songs to Mary, Hildegard writes with ecstatic passion of her love and devotion to the Virgin Mary. She extols Mary as “greenest twig” and sings the praises of her womb, which “illuminated all creatures.”

Her songs to Mary are available for listening in the following video and on the Sequentia recording, “Hildegard von Bingen: Canticles of Ecstasy.” Her music is still just as beautiful today.

Hildegard died on Sept. 17, 1179 at age 81. The sisters at her convent said they saw two streams of colorful lights cross in the sky above her room. She became a saint by popular acclamation.

The icon of Hildegard and Richardis at the top of this post was painted by Colorado artist Lewis Williams of the Secular Franciscan Order (SFO). He studied with master iconographer Robert Lentz and has made social justice a theme of his icons. This post also features images of Hildegard by artists Tricia Danby and Plamen Petrov.

Hildegard appears as a young woman in new portraits by Tricia Danby, a spiritual artist based in Germany and a cleric in the Old Catholic Apostolic Church. Her images reveal a sensuous side to Hildegard’s rapturous connection with God.

Stained-glass artist Plamen Petrov of Chicago is known for his window showing the male paired saints Sergius and Bacchus at St. Martha Church in Morton Grove, Illinois. His Hildegard window shows her illuminated with beautiful aquamarine colors.

“Hildegard von Bingen” by Tobias Haller

Hildegard was sketched in blue with intense blue eyes by Tobias Haller, an iconographer, author, composer, and vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church in the Bronx. He is the author of “Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality.” Haller enjoys expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He and his spouse were united in a church wedding more than 30 years ago and a civil ceremony after same-sex marriage became legal in New York.

“Saint Hildegard of Bingen” by Robert Lentz

Robert Lentz, a Franciscan friar known for his innovative and LGBT-positive icons, portrays Hildegard with a wild rose. She used to dip a rose in the Rhine River and use it to sprinkle water on people as a blessing when she traveled between monasteries. Lentz is stationed at Holy Name College in Silver Spring, Maryland.

LGBT-affirming creation theologian Matthew Fox has written two books on the life and work of Hildegard. The newest is Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times: Unleashing Her Power in the 21st Century, which presents her as an "eco-warrior" who meets such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Howard Thurman, Dorothee Soelle and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Fox also wrote Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.

Hildegard was the subject of a major sermon by Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori when the House of Bishops met in Taiwan on Sept. 17, 2014. “Hildegard speaks scientifically and theologically of divine creativity as viriditas, reflecting both greenness and truth… Hildegard’s vision motivates all healers of creation who understand the green web of connection that ties creation together in Wisdom’s body,” she said. (Thanks to Ann Fontaine at Episcopal Café for the news tip.)





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Related links:

Pope sets date to declare two new church doctors (Catholic News Agency)

Ritual to Honor Hildegard of Bingen by Diann L. Neu (WATER)

To read this post in Spanish / en español, go to Santos Queer:
Hildegarda de Bingen y Richardis: Una mística que amaba a otra mujer

To read this post in Italian / in Italiano, go to gionata.org:
La forza della visione. La vita della mistica Ildegarda di Bingen
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Top image credit: “St. Hildegard of Bingen and Her Assistant Richardis” by Lewis Williams, TrinityStores.com

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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBTQ martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.

The Hildegard icons are available on cards, plaques, T-shirts, mugs, candles, mugs, and more at TrinityStores.com

Resurrection song: “Sometimes religion rubs me wrong”

A queer sensibility shines through revolutionary new lyrics about resurrection in a song performed on Easter at LGBT-affirming Founders Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles.

Lucia Chappelle, minster of social justice at Founders MCC, wrote new words for a melody made popular by Paul Simon as “American Tune.” The same music is also  known as the traditional hymn “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.”

Chappelle's version begins:

I think of the questionable history,
I think of the fascination with death,
I think of the role of Christianity
In spreading human distress,
But it's alright, it's alright,
The Resurrection's here!
Though the institution may be our cross to bear,
We're called to persevere, we're called to persevere…

(Full text is at the end of this post.)

Titled “The Resurrection’s Here,” the song premiered on Easter morning when singer-guitarist Garrett Wolfe performed it during communion.

Garrett Wolfe

In typical MCC style, communion was served with touch and personalized prayer to individuals, couples and groups, thereby affirming queer families along with everyone else.

In a video of the song’s debut, Jesus in Love publisher Kittredge Cherry can be seen receiving communion with her partner Audrey Lockwood starting at minute 1:45.

Founders MCC is the first church in a denomination that has served the LGBT community since 1968. Chappelle has been part of MCC since 1972. She pastored DeColores MCC, a lesbian feminist-womanist collective congregation in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The DeColores MCC Hymnal includes more of her new lyrics to familiar hymns, such as her Christmas carol “Silent Night, Raging Night,” plus songs and liturgies contributed by many other women from DeColores and beyond.

There is also a queer connection to the tune's better-known hymn lyrics, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.” Those words are based on a homoerotic poem by Bernard of Clairvaux. For more info, see Saints Bernard of Clairvaux and Malachy: Honey-tongued abbot and the archbishop he loved.

Thanks, Lucia, for writing these liberating lyrics and sharing them on the Jesus in Love Blog!

Lucia Chappelle, center, shares a joyous moment with Kittredge Cherry, left, and Audrey Lockwood after the Easter premiere of her resurrection song

The Resurrection's Here!

By Lucia Chappelle

I think of the questionable history,
I think of the fascination with death,
I think of the role of Christianity
In spreading human distress,
But it's alright, it's alright,
The Resurrection's here!
Though the institution may be our cross to bear,
We're called to persevere, we're called to persevere.

Sometimes the church just drives me crazy,
Sometimes religion rubs me wrong,
Sometimes the meaning gets so hazy,
Like I don't really belong,
But I'm alright, I'm alright,
The Resurrection's here!
Even when you seem to get crucified again,
It always reappears, it always reappears.

And I live in the vortex --
A place where my faith grows exponentially,
Experientially,
Blessed dichotomy!
And I dream of the promise --
I honor a voice crying inside of me,
Full of complexity,
"Here's where you need to be."
So I live in the vortex.

We look for the Resurrection morning,
We look for a supernatural event,
We look past the simple springtime flowering
For some new sacrament,
But it's alright, it's alright,
The Resurrection's here!
So when it seems to be playing hard to get
Just use your eyes and ears, just use your eyes and ears.

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Related links:
eclecticlucialand.blogspot.com (Lucia Chapelle’s blog)

Sacred gay union with Christ evoked by music of New-Age “Passion of Mark”

Jesus initiates a young man into God’s mysteries with a rite of spiritual and erotic union in a musical Passion play by New-Age composer Christopher A. Flores and gay lyricist/priest Adrian Ravarour.

Songs from “The Passion of Mark” were recently posted online for the first time on Flores’ new Soundcloud page, and the creators are looking for a venue for its debut onstage. Both live in California.

Christopher A. Flores

Their hauntingly beautiful sacred music brings a fresh approach and gay sensibility to the traditional elements of a Passion play – a dramatic presentation of the events in the life of Jesus from the Last Supper to the resurrection.

In their portrayal of the Passion, dreamlike music transports the listener to a blissful state where divine union feels imminent.

“We created it as a spiritual work to help transform consciousness and bring people into the divine,” Ravarour said. “Any rendering of Jesus must go deeply to the sacred heart of life and all existence. In essence, we are addressing the soul, eternity and God.”

Adrian Ravarour

Jesus and his Beloved sing sensitive lyrics to each other that inspire enlightenment by putting the ineffable into words such as these:

Naked am I to you
Naked you are to me
Baring ourselves to each other
You see all of me
I know all of you
Love is a holy union
We are joined as brothers
In your arms
Lovers forever

The lyrics speak of transcendental male-male union between “you” and “I” with only a few references to Christ. The creators’ intention to construct a full-fledged Passion play with a gay Jesus is made clear in their written synopsis and stage directions.

“Throughout cultures and time people tend to create deities in their own image... and so a gay Jesus is healing to LGBT people who have been excluded from many Christian churches,” Ravarour explained.

According to the synopsis, “The Passion of Mark” begins under a starry night sky, when Jesus and his 12 disciples gather and declare their love around a reflecting pool in the Garden of Gethsemane. A mysterious young man follows the group into the garden.

The opening song is “In the Beginning,” An angelic voice sings with an orchestrated version of the electronic score in the recording posted here and at Flores’ new Soundcloud page:

Holding you at night
Your essence blends with mine
I drink in your soul
Filling me with your life

The full lyrics of “In the Beginning” are posted at the end of this article.

The young man disappears while the disciples and Jesus wash each other’s feet in the pool. After the disciples fall asleep, he returns and embraces Jesus. The next scene unfolds during a sweet song called “Surrender,” which begins:

Let us anoint each other
With the Sacrament of Love
Come, drink from my cup
Before I’m gone

Jesus takes off the young man’s shirt, washes his feet, and feeds him bread and wine. They bathe together in the reflecting pool and the night mist conceals their bodies. They exit the pool and dry each other. Then the young man leaves.

The disciples wake up and ghostly visitors from Jesus’ past arrive to thank and bless him. Jesus and the disciples share communion with the audience until Jesus is left alone onstage. His crucifixion is communicated by the dark atmosphere of the music, which climaxes as blood-red light surrounds him.

The final scene unfolds at sunrise in the garden. The disciples wake to find that Jesus is back with them, only now his hands are marked by the stigmata of crucifixion wounds. They hug him good-bye and leave him alone – but not for long. The Passion play ends when the mysterious young man returns to embrace and kiss Jesus.

“Adrian and I have written numerous works which touch upon themes from various philosophical and spiritual perspectives and traditions,” Flores said. “In Mark we wanted to approach the personality and story of Jesus Christ within the structure of a mystery, Passion play, and musical tableau...combining various storytelling and music traditions, the Scriptures, poetry, art, liturgical music, etc. into a unified whole, and which in and of itself would be ultimately be a ritual. The piece is also quite simple, dream-like, and at its core, simply a meditation.”

“The Passion of Mark” was inspired by Morton Smith's book “The Secret Gospel,” and incorporates elements from Will Roscoe's book “Jesus and the Shamanic Tradition of Same-Sex Love,” Flores and Ravarour said.

The manuscript known as the “Secret Gospel of Mark” includes more details about Jesus’ relationship with the “naked youth” than Mark’s standard canonical gospel. Secret Mark says that the pair spent the night together while “Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God.” The lost gospel was discovered in 1958 by Smith, a Columbia University history professor. He interpreted it to mean that Jesus may have used nocturnal rituals of sacred sex to initiate male followers. Roscoe’s book re-examines the lost text, finding parallels with shamanic rites from ancient cultures that pre-date Christianity.

Secret Mark has been questioned as a possible hoax, but the lack of solid evidence doesn’t mean that the homoerotic Christian initiation rituals never happened, nor does it diminish the power and importance of envisioning a queer Christ today.

“I used Morton Smith's ‘The Secret Gospel of Mark’ as my departure point, and created a what-if text based upon a lifetime of reading about Jesus and countless theories and interpretations of him; and reasoned how would spiritual love and love be shared between them,” Ravarour explained. “And so my lyrics are all imagined. It’s a Passion play of what his followers would have expressed could they have said more. It’s about Love which includes the whole being....spirit/soul, mind, body. You know, LOVE.”

The lyrics and music both have an intoxicating, hypnotic quality that grows out of the artistic process of its creators.

“To be perfectly honest, I write the lyrics from a sort of trance space,” Ravarour said. “I intuit the subject, let it churn in me for days, and then birth-write the lyrics in one sitting of only 10 to 30 minutes. And I never rewrite them because I would have to be in the same sacred space to edit them. Christopher used tell me that he reread the lyrics over and over until he felt them and wrote music from that embodiment.”

Flores elaborated on the importance of the gay Jesus theme in a statement for the Jesus in Love Blog: “The concept of a gay Jesus is controversial solely because of the religious, social, political, and moral structure Western thought and culture subscribes to. In reality, there is nothing revolutionary about this if we subscribe to a different theory about God, Creationism, gender, and male / female roles. On a very basic level, a new vision of Jesus may create a sense of empowerment for some, a reclamation for others of a philosophy and message which has primarily been utilized to instill fear, guilt, and control over society…. I prefer to eradicate any definition of Jesus and view him more as the physical attribute of a Divine Being, and within that, Christ becomes the physical manifestation of such abstract ideas of love, kindness, peace, healing, and so on.”

“The Passion of Mark” has never been produced on stage, although Flores and Ravarour created it in 2002. But some of their other LGBT-themed spiritual collaborations have been performed in the years since then. For example, “The Transfigured Body: A Requiem in Celebration of Gwen Araujo” premiered in 2003 at Founders Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles, and “The Celestial Veil” was presented at Hollywood Lutheran Church in 2007.

“It is probably oddly fitting that Mark has taken this long to come to fruition, given the current state of world events,” Flores said.

Ravarour is a long-time LGBT-rights activist who co-founded the LGBT youth organization Vanguard in San Francisco in 1965. In Los Angeles he was an associate bishop and rector at the Beloved Disciple parish of Bishop Robert M. Clement’s American Catholic Church and he continued as bishop in Mikhail Itkin’s last Order of Thomasines. Since 1979 he has created various LGBT/gay art, photography and writings. He received his Ph.D. in Eastern philosophy and biopsychic energy studies in 1985 from the Union Institute under the supervision of Jose Arguelles (Valum Votan).

His books include "Epiphanies: Energy Flow Poetry" and "Portals: Energy Flow Photography," and "Keys to Spiritual Being: Energy Meditation and Synchronization Exercises." He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and San Francisco. “Rather than a traditional ministry, I was set-apart to make spiritual art as my ministry; personally, I am not bound by 20th-century conventions,” he said.

Los Angeles-based composer Flores is a multi-disciplinary artist who is active as a sound, set and lighting designer, audio engineer, and stage / production manager. Past commissions include scores for productions at the Los Angeles Theater Center and technical support for the Getty Center, Mark Taper Forum and East-West Players. “He has given his life to composing music of the soul for individual spiritual connection and societal transformation,” Ravarour said.

Flores was raised in the fundamentalist, evangelical, and charismatic traditions, but now he simply defines himself as spiritual. “During my formal music studies I was introduced to Buddhism, within which I was finally able to reconcile my views about the World, Life, and God,” he explained. “The mid-1980’s proved to be my spiritual awakening, discovering numerous world, social, political, philosophical, and metaphysical perspectives, and developing a strong interest in Mesoamerican history, mythology, and philosophy.” In particular he was inspired by the work of Jose Arguelles, visionary mystic and author of “The Mayan Factor” and the multi-volume Cosmic History Chronicles.

The complete lyrics for “In the Beginning,” the opening song in “The Passion of Mark,” introduce readers and listeners to the sublime love expressed in the work.

Holding you at night
Your essence blends with mine
I drink in your soul
Filling me with your life

The sweetest sense
I have ever known
Is your sacred heart
Knowing who you are

You, formed of soul and light
You, who occupy space and time
When you lived in this time
How blessed I am to behold you
Sacred friend whom I love

Your thoughts as music
Paint the fields of life
And breathe your heart
Into all you see and feel

You are my Christlight
True soul, alive, revealed
I am your Twin Flame
Alive within our unity…

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Related links:

Hunter Flournoy: Teacher says we are the erotic body of Christ

“The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” paintings by Douglas Blanchard


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This post is part of the Queer Christ series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts