"Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and..."

"Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and...": “Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

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St. Hildegard von Bingen, Doctor of the Church (via getmetoanunnery)
#one of the things that cuts me to the quick  #is how easily-dismissed parallels between God and sexuality are  #because there’s this strange nebulous area in the human consciousness  #which we have demarcated for things that feel like they arise from beyond us  #yet have their most profound impact within us  #and sexuality and God both fall within that area  #beyond and yet within  #it isn’t a choice we’ve made consciously; it’s arisen from without  #yet its most lasting and deepest effects are within  #and so when Hildegard or Catherine write about God in (sometimes explicitly) sexual terms they get written off as repressed  #when really it makes sense that they would use the same language because it feels like the same phenomenon (notbecauseofvictories)