Hildegarde Von Binghen (artist unknown)

Hildegard von Bingen (1098- 1179 ) the first and only Abbess of a monastery in the Middle Ages, named the “green force” of life Viriditas. She saw it as a spiritual power that penetrated everything and imbued the earth with life. The green flame, it has been called. “There is a power that has been since all eternity, and that force and potentiality is green!” she wrote. She described this power as divine, the animating life-force within all creation, giving it life, moisture and vitality. Viriditas was green fire and energy. 

Butterflies are Heralds of the Spring (photo Wes Chester)

I peer into the garden, seeing the buds of a favorite trumpet flower getting fatter and fatter. At the bud’s very tip, a tiny speck of red that will, a few days later, unfurl to reveal the thumb-sized crimson trumpet. Other wispy twigs are sporting feathery antennae, that, over a few days unfurl and turn into leaves.

At this time of year the mystery of nature and life itself beguiles and beckons our eyes from agave to zeninas with this greening greeting. Even in temperate San Diego, Spring is the season of new awakening and vitality. 

In art, from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, to Dylan Thomas’  “Green Fuse”, spring and greening figure prominently. When I first met Elizabeth McKim, the poet laureate at the European Graduate School in 1997, I had just lost my beloved brother to the ravages of diabetes in the form of a fatal heart attack. As we walked in the larch forest, she recited the refrain “…and the green goes over and over.” I began weeping, not only with grief, but at once for the death of my brother, and for the recognition that life in its infinite seasons goes on.  His life didn’t, my life won’t, but life itself goes on, as in the humble form of grass.

Want to make your own art to celebrate your  greening? Here’s a simple, meditative process…