Containing all things (Hugh #2)

Meister des Hildegardis-Codex, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hugh begins his Didascalicon with an opening praise of Divine Wisdom. He then directs the reader inward, to find the truth of who we are.

“Wisdom illuminates man so that he may recognize himself,…”

“Sapientia illuminat hominem ut seipsum agnoscat,….”

Within we find who we are, and what we need. Within we find the human being created in the image and likeness of God. The scriptural source of this teaching can be found in Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.” There a number of ways this has been interpreted by pray-ers and theologians. Hugh explores it from the angle of the human mind-soul, which relates to our ability to see and love God and neighbor like ourselves. Our ability to see and love is cast into our very being, as the image of God in us, or us in it. This scripture and the teachings it inspires show the intimate origin and destiny of humankind in the Divine life. They aid in illuminating us, so that we recognize ourselves.

But this wonderful ability to see and love has been weakened, clouded and fractured. When have we failed to see, or chosen not to ‘see’ something, to not act in love as we might have, or just found ourselves in a situation where we were unable to understand and act as we rightly desired? Sin lurks in these kinds of misdeeds, mistakes and daily tragedies. Hugh offers a spiritual path by which we recover from our profound frustrations, willful misperceptions, and ignorant if not particularly bad motivations. Hugh’s Didascalicon contains a christian spirituality that promises the healing of the God-given abilities within our ‘heart, soul, mind and strength’.

Hugh’s understands the human mind in a complex and elegant fashion, which situates us within the whole creation. The human is a little world that is related to the larger world of earth and heavens. In a certain way, humankind contains all things within it.

Human Being as Microscosm, according to Hildegard von Bingen.

I think one way to undertands what Hugh means is that the human mind, as a little world, is created so that it can see and relate to all the things that belong to the larger world or cosmos. It lives in time and change and in eternal dimensions. It can see, or recover the ability to see, according to our physical senses, our mind, and our eternal spirit. The human mind can learn about things and investigate them, explore and tinker and make use of them to serve life. Being made in God’s image equips humankind with symbolic awareness, an ability to contemplate the soul and the world as within and moving toward the Divine life. The mind is created so that it can see the material world symbolically, a ‘sacramental universe’ that communicates the glory of God in countless ways. But this ability to see, love and live in the world as a ‘sacramental universe’ must be restored in us. For Hugh the practice of arts, craft, science, study, work, offer the course in the love of Wisdom that restores our mind’s ‘sight’ of who we are, and the world as it is within God.

Hugh had a heart to see the earth and its stuff this way. Through a detailed image of wood catching fire, he speaks of three stages of the soul’s movement into loving union with God.

“So fire is kindled with difficulty on a heap of green wood; but then, fanned with stronger breath, the flame burns higher, and we see volumes of smoke rolling up, with flame flashing through. Little by little the damp is exhausted and the leaping fire dispels the smoke. Then victrix flamma, darting through the heap of crackling wood, springs from branch to branch, and with lambent grasp catches upon every twig; nor does it rest until it penetrates everywhere and draws into itself all that it finds that is not flame. At length the whole combustible material is purged of its own nature and passes into the similitude and property of fire; then the din hushed, and the voracious fire, having subdued all and brought all into its own likeness, composes itself to a high peace and silence, finding nothing more that is alien or opposed to it.”[1]

Hugh could see in fire an analogy of spiritual development, the mystical journey of the mind, moving into union with God. I have fire on the mind as the smoke from late summer wildfires fills the sky where I live. As the earth’s climate changes, the natural seasons of fire intensify, exceeding the western compulsion to control it. In the process, it causes great destruction to human and all creaturely habitats. It is hard to not see it, if your eyes are open. Among our tasks and callings is to (re)learn the art of living with and managing fire in ecologically appropriate land use systems. And there are many people and creatures in immediate harms way, and in years pressing upon us. Pray for them.

There is a healing needed without, where all creatures have their natural habitats. In this work humans have a vital role. Who are we, and what are we to do now humans on earth?

We might first turn within, to seek the wisdom and love we need. There we find the face of Christ, who has touched our human nature with the renewing fire of the divine nature.

“…and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” Ex. 3:2

[1] As quoted in Late Medieval Mysticism, Ed. Ray C. Petry.