"I heard a voice saying to me,” wrote St. Hildegard
from “The Upcycle:Beyond Sustainability - Designing for Abundance by William McDonough
"I heard a voice saying to me," wrote St. Hildegard von Bingen in The Holy Spirit as Sapientia. "This Lady whom you see is Love, who has Her dwelling place in eternity. When God wished to create the world, He leaned down, and with tender Love, provided all that was needed, as a parent prepares an inheritance for a child. And thus, in a mighty blaze the Lord ordained all His works.
"Then creation recognized its Creator in its own forms and appearances. For in the beginning, when God said, 'Let it be!' and it came to pass, the means and the Matrix of creation was Love, because all creation was formed through Her as in the twinkling of an eye."
St. Hildegard was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary and polymath, which is a person of wide-ranging and varied learning. She lived into the early twelfth century and wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems.
Her sainthood has been formally recognized for centuries, but only in parts of the Roman Catholic Church. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI named her a Doctor of the Church.
Author and architect William McDonough is a recognized leader in the field of sustainable growth and development. His recent book, co-authored with Michael Braungart, The Upcycle, discusses strategies, and a vision beyond ecological sustainability, into the realm of abundance.
McDonough is neither an optimist nor a pessimist. "An optimist," he said, "sees the glass as half-full. A pessimist sees the glass as half-empty. Each of those is the wrong answer. The glass is always full. The glass has always been full. It is half-filled with water, and half-filled with air."
In the introduction to The Upcycle, McDonough quotes Hildegard von Bingen:
Glance at the sun.
See the moon and the stars.
Gaze at the beauty of earth's greenings.
Now,
Think.
•••
Learn more about The Upcycle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart here: http://www.mcdonough.com/speaking-writing/the-upcycle/
11.22.14