"She is so bright and glorious," by Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard was a twelfth-century Benedictine abbess, mystic, composer, and polymath. Here’s an excerpt from her classic vision of Divine Wisdom, a passage from her illustrated visionary text, Scivias (a title derived from Sci vias Domini, “Know the Ways of the Lord”) — here laid out as a poem for your reading pleasure:

She is so bright and glorious
that you cannot look at her face
or her garments for the splendor
with which she shines.

For she is terrible with the terror
of the avenging lightning, and gentle
with the goodness of the bright sun;
and both her terror and her gentleness
are incomprehensible to human beings…

But she is with everyone
and in everyone,
and so beautiful is her secret
that no person can know the sweetness
with which she sustains people,
and spares them in inscrutable mercy.

+ Hildegard of Bingen