Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John Michael Talbot is the founder of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity, a creative Franciscan community that is helping to revitalize ancient contemplative and monastic traditions in the twenty-first century. Known as the "Troubadour for the Lord," Talbot is Catholic music's number one recording artist with over thirty albums to his credit and sales topping four million copies.

Steve Rabey is a prolific writer who has written numerous books and hundreds of articles about religion, spirituality, history, and popular culture for magazines, newspapers, and Web sites. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Christianity Today, New Age, and Publishers Weekly.

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Tap Into the Wisdom of the Mystics

"For too long the moral has been a substitute for the mystical. This fine study places the mystics back at the center of Christianity. These spiritual elders tell us that all true religion must be grounded in experiential knowledge of God, 'a lump in the throat,' and not just ideas about God."
―Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

"In this day and age when our feet and our hearts seem to go in so many different directions―how good it is to find in this book an offering of earthy men and women whose feet and hearts were drawn like a magnet to the Divine. The Way of the Mystics will be a very good companion for anyone who is searching for intimacy with God. I joyfully recommend it."
―Macrina Wiederkehr, O.S.B., monastic, author, spiritual guide

"John Michael Talbot is a faithful worshiper of our Savior, whose music and meditations not only refresh many, but whose witness reminds us of the breadth of the scope of vital, living witness throughout the whole Body of Christ, and how much we who love Jesus Christ have to give to each other of our mutual growth and benefit."
―Jack W. Hayford, chancellor, The King's College and Seminary, Los Angeles, California

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Tap Into the Wisdom of the Mystics

"For too long the moral has been a substitute for the mystical. This fine study places the mystics back at the center of Christianity. These spiritual elders tell us that all true religion must be grounded in experiential knowledge of God, 'a lump in the throat,' and not just ideas about God."
—Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque, New Mexico

"In this day and age when our feet and our hearts seem to go in so many different directions—how good it is to find in this book an offering of earthy men and women whose feet and hearts were drawn like a magnet to the Divine. The Way of the Mystics will be a very good companion for anyone who is searching for intimacy with God. I joyfully recommend it."
—Macrina Wiederkehr, O.S.B., monastic, author, spiritual guide

"John Michael Talbot is a faithful worshiper of our Savior, whose music and meditations not only refresh many, but whose witness reminds us of the breadth of the scope of vital, living witness throughout the whole Body of Christ, and how much we who love Jesus Christ have to give to each other of our mutual growth and benefit."
—Jack W. Hayford, chancellor, The King's College and Seminary, Los Angeles, California

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The Way of the Mystics

Jossey-Bass

Chapter One

The visions were intense and often overwhelming, and they began invading the soul of a young girl named Hildegard when she was only three years old. As the tenth child of well-to-do German parents, she was dedicated to God as a tithe, entering a Benedictine monastery at age eight. But she kept her visions to herself, as was appropriate for a woman growing up in the Middle Ages. After all, everyone knew women could be weak and easily confused. They shouldn't be trusted to convey divine truths. That was a man's job.

Everything changed when Hildegard was about forty-five years old. God spoke to her in a vision and commanded her to begin recording her visions and sharing the fruits of her experiences with the world. Hildegard always tried to obey God's promptings, no matter how crazy other people thought she was or how much trouble she caused, so she began writing down everything she saw in her private reveries.

She was still receiving visions as she entered her eighties, and throughout the second half of her life she kept a series of secretaries busy as she dictated accounts of her hundreds of excursions into the extraordinary. In some cases, she was transported to the future. At other times, she was given a front-row seat for witnessing events of the past. She was shown both the glories of heaven and the torments of hell. She was empowered to see deep into the souls of other people, including some of the less-than-saintly leaders of the Catholic Church-an institution she served as a loyal member all the days of her life. She was given insight into the cellular structure of plants, the anatomy of animals, and secret healing remedies. And her spiritual journeys took her deep into the creative worlds of art, music, and language.

Some of her visions inspired her to write words and music she would sing with her fellow sisters. Other visions included divine instructions she was obligated to pass on to others, and she duly relayed these messages, regardless of whether they were full of cheer or condemnation and regardless of whether they were intended for wayward kings or sinful popes.

Some of the visions were beautiful and comforting; others were shocking and frightening. But after her otherworldly encounters, she usually felt strangely alive and deeply connected to God.

"I have never felt secure in my own abilities," she wrote in a letter to a monk named Guibert around the year 1175, four years before her death. "But I stretch out my hands to God, so that like a feather, which lacks all solidity of strength and flies on the wind, I may be sustained by him."

There are many ways to connect with God. Some people say they hear verbal messages. Others find comfort and guidance in sermons, books, intuitive impressions, or advice given by loving friends. But God apparently chose to communicate with Hildegard through visions, some of which came complete with blinding Technicolor(tm) images and thundering 1,000-watt sound.

"I see things," she told Guibert, a trusted friend and secretary during the later years of her life, "and I do not hear them with my bodily ears, nor with the thoughts of my heart, nor do I perceive them through a combination of my five senses, but ever in my soul, with my external eyes open, so that I never suffer debilitating ecstasy."

At times, the visions overpowered Hildegard's senses. "I see and hear and know at one and the same time," she wrote. "And the words which I see and hear in the vision are not like the words that sound from the mouth of man, but like a sparkling flame and a cloud moved by the pure air."

At other times, Hildegard caught a glimpse of something she called "the Living Light." She found it impossible to describe this image of the eternal God, but she sure knew how it made her feel. "While I behold it, all sadness and pain is lifted from my memory, so that I feel like a carefree young girl, and not the old woman that I am."

A Complex, Controversial Saint

Throughout her troubled and stormy life, Hildegard did her best to use her gifts for the glory of God and the service of the world. And even though she called herself a "poor little woman," she wasn't afraid to defy the sexual stereotypes of her age. She served as an abbess at her monastery and later founded two new monasteries of her own near Bingen. Her numerous preaching tours throughout her native German Rhineland area attracted large and passionate crowds, making her a kind of regional religious superstar.

Her growing fame and influence made Hildegard an easy target for her critics, most of them male leaders who didn't like her "haughty" manner or were jealous of her popularity and power. Some called her mad. Others said she was in league with the devil. But friends in high places, including the influential Bernard of Clairvaux, helped her out. Bernard, who exchanged letters with Hildegard after hearing about her visions, appealed to the Pope, who gave his seal of approval to her writings.

At the time of her death, Hildegard was a celebrated seer. But after her death, she seemed to fade from people's memory and the historical record of her time. Perhaps it was because Germany was experiencing a mini-renaissance that witnessed an explosion of bold new thinkers and daring new ideas. Perhaps it was because her writings were so dense and inscrutable that few could figure out what she was saying. Perhaps it was because a charismatic young Italian mystic named Francis of Assisi, who was born two years after Hildegard died, would quickly turn Europe's religious scene on its head.

It would be centuries before Hildegard became famous once again. Interest began picking up again around 1979-the year many small but devoted groups of scholars and nuns around the world celebrated the eight hundredth anniversary of her death. Soon a growing number of people were rediscovering the Rhineland mystic and embracing different portions of her complex legacy.

In the 1980s, a defrocked Dominican priest and apostle of "Creation Spirituality" named Matthew Fox wrote books about Hildegard. Meanwhile, other spiritual seekers and disciples of alternative spirituality applauded Hildegard as a potent seer who transcended the narrow doctrinal confines of the Christian creeds. Feminists embraced her as a pioneer of women's equality. Natural health aficionados pored over her fascinating works on medicinal plants and healing techniques. And musicians dusted off her old musical compositions, combining her ethereal words with world beat rhythms and electronic musical accompaniments.

By the time English author Fiona Maddocks finished her biography of Hildegard in 2001, the Rhineland saint was awash in "a flood of misappropriation and fabulous invention." Maddocks complained about those who transformed Hildegard into the patron saint of their pet causes. "As a quick look at the Internet shows, she has become the darling of crankish cults and New Age zealots, Creationists and Greens, women's movements and alternative doctors."

Always complex and often confusing, Hildegard is as little understood in our day as she was in her own. And I must confess that I find much of the recent Hildegard hoopla a bit off-putting. As a result, I had never read much about her until my coauthor...