Don’t let yourself forget that God’s grace rewards not only those who never slip, but also those who bend and fall. So sing! The song of rejoicing softens hard hearts. It makes tears of godly sorrow flow from them. Singing summons the Holy Spirit. Happy praises offered in simplicity and love lead the faithful to complete harmony, without discord. Don’t stop singing.             Hildegard, Scivas [intro]

Hildegard’s profound self-doubting was, however, the very root of her vibrancy, because it was matched with an equally acute certainty in God the merciful and mysterious. The English Romantic poet John Keats called this tendency “Negative Capability”, when a person “is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”          [p.7]

Humans are heavenly and earthly. We’re heavenly beacuse our rbight souls think rationally, and we’re weak earth-based because we also know dark lusts.  The more a person notices and accepts the good in themselves, the more they love God.