Creative greenness

With a Festival of Germany on in Delhi and Mumbai, the two metros are getting a master blast of Teutonic images, sounds and ideas. However...

With a Festival of Germany on in Delhi and Mumbai, the two metros are getting a master blast of Teutonic images, sounds and ideas. However, because of the Nazis, a deadly stereotype persists. Despite Max Mueller and co8217;s Vedic studies, nobody here thinks of Germany as a sacred land, but rather as the godless heart of Europe, soaked in the blood of innocents.

At best we might remember the father of the German Reformation, Martin Luther, with his emphasis on scripture as the sole authority on matters of faith and a Christocentric insistence that took away from the Catholic importance of Bibi Maryam. Certainly this macho tenet had the plus point of defining religion as a less priestly, more individual and inward experience, while engaging very actively, later, in social work, education and missions. And even now, more than four centuries later, Luther8217;s fierce words could put steel in any flagging spine: Atilde;sup2;f40Atilde;sup3;Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, Ein gute Wehr und Waffen A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark, never failing.

But in refuting Rome, the Germans perhaps lost track of interesting saints like Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179, though she8217;s known to students of the history of western music her compositions are on CD today!. This medieval mystic was raised by a religious recluse called Jutta. Influenced by her preceptress, she entered the community of Benedictines that had gathered around Jutta over the years, a mendicant Catholic order which we might know better for the liqueur they supposedly invented. Twenty years later, Hildegard succeeded Jutta as abbess and some years afterward, moved her people to Rupertsberg near Bingen, on the Rhine.

Hildegard shines softly as a real and interesting person through the dim pages of history. For one, she was apparently a very accomplished lady. She wrote on her personal experience of faith in a book called Atilde;sup2;f40Atilde;sup3;Scivias Know Thy Ways, and a treatise on healing called Atilde;sup2;f40Atilde;sup3;The Book of Simple Medicine 8212; the origin of homeopathy? She was artistic enough to illustrate her books. She was also a musician, composing a Symphonia8217; with several song settings as well as a morality play with reportedly 82 melodies. More, she saw beautiful visions of light that she identified with God: quot;And when I look on it, every sadness and pain vanishes from my memory, so that I am again as a simple maid and not an old womanquot;. Heaven knows what disappointments and trials 8212; surely faced with quiet courage 8212; lie concealed in those plain, direct words.

Another reason I like Hildegard so much is that she is said to have seen men and women as equal partakers of God8217;s quot;creative greennessquot;, with the shared mission of spreading good work. Most of all, it8217;s nice to know that amidst the clamour of clashing ambitions in spiritual and temporal realms, in the quiet, still spaces between the hurling of ologies and isms, there were people like Hildegard who studied for God, healed for God, sang, played and drew for God, like the anonymous temple craftsmen of India.

Apropos which, senior Kashmiri artist Gayoor Hassan, who8217;s currently in Delhi for an exhibition, shares how astounded he was at Fatehpur Sikri where ASI excavations are going on. Himself a stone sculptor, his favoured medium is black Kashmiri marble that looks very much like South Indian temple granite. In fact it8217;s still called devar stone8217; in Kashmir, a relic of its long-ago use in idol carving. In Fatehpur, he noticed a small female temple figure with a necklace. quot;Even the thread between the beads was perfectly carved out of sandstone!quot; he marvels. quot;Those unknown artists paid such attention to detailquot;. How can we fail to be charmed by those for whom faith is a reason to create beauty?