A group of schoolchildren walk amid the autumn colors at a park in Hamburg, Germany, Oct. 2008. (CNS photo/Christian Charisius, Reuters)
“I flame above the beauty of the fields to signify the earth – the matter from which humanity was made. I shine in the waters to indicate the soul, for, as water suffuses the whole earth, the soul pervades the whole body. I burn in the sun and the moon to denote Wisdom, and the stars are the innumerable words of Wisdom.”
- St. Hildegard von Bingen, translated in Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine by B. Newman (1987)
