Gather 'round the fire

In an aching world, laboring in birth, many seek reconciling, affirming connection beyond the traditional church and established denominations. Our members are called to elevate the current offerings by digging deeper. OH offers deeply rooted, spiritually relevant community, fellowship and leadership affiliation opportunities. There is no reason to go it alone and start communities or churches with no support system. We have the template to develop and support many creative forms of ministry in an organic, widespread base. We have esteemed, distinguished tools and resources at our disposal and a wealth of scrappy, faithful experience and wisdom. In fact, we are both training new spiritual leaders and *retraining* established ones.  With OH, you can affiliate or pursue ministry credentials.

What is our common commitment?

The Order of Saint Hildegard revisits the tradition of common vows as a blessing and an invitation rather than legalistic expectation. 

We aim daily toward:

Courage and Reconciliation, Authenticity and Awareness, Prayer and Embodiment. 

Our mission:

The Order of St Hildegard transforms public and private faith through fostering the ongoing innovative ministry of individuals in various dynamic arenas such as community builders, counselors, artists, spiritual directors, writers, musicians, teachers, healers, yoga teachers, pastors and other practitioners.

Our work together honors a nonbinary embrace of:

 ancient and emerging

 masculine and feminine

heaven and earth

embodied and transcendent

 inner and outer

mystical and practical

East and West

heart and mind 

orderly and free. 

With due honor, dignity and proper criticism  we  leave behind the patriarchal/hierarchical container built by the church of the first 2000 years. 

We work forward to build the Beloved Community where all are celebrated in their gifts and where we are reconciled one to another.

We will serve bravely and seek to do no harm, aiming to get it right without always being right.

Leadership Tracks, Memberships and Affiliation Opportunities set to launch in late 2021 and 2022

• Join the Order. Affiliation Membership is $25/month. You will be admitted to our private online community and offered free admission and rate reductions to monthly visioning workshops, meditations, conversations, conferences, and support groups as well as credentialing opportunities. You can connect in-person to other members. Your growth in this space is unlimited. Resources abound.

• Apply for credentialing. Become a free-range cleric or chaplain with support and accountability. 

• Apply to be a part of our advisory panel of practitioners

Hildegard of Bingen was canonized as a Saint in 2012. Her Feast Day in the Catholic church is September 17. But her acceptance as a Saint is not what leads us to her. A closer look reveals a woman who embodied the wisdom of the ages and her example leads us in a time where the church is awakening from hibernation to a new, hopeful world.

" Hildegard of Bingen (also known as Hildegarde von Bingen, l. 1098-1179 CE) was a Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, and polymath proficient in philosophy, musical composition, herbology, medieval literature, cosmology, medicine, biology, theology, and natural history. She refused to be defined by the patriarchal hierarchy of the church and, although she abided by its strictures, pushed the established boundaries for women almost past their limits. "

from https://www.ancient.eu/Hildegard_of_Bingen/

"Hildegard of Bingen inhabited that legendary line between genius and madness. Her inner world was a luminous web of visions and voices, scientific breakthroughs, artistic epiphanies, and emotional obsessions. This is a dance that has always intrigued me: the interplay of brokenness and brilliance, that numinous zone where chemical imbalance meets spiritual giftedness.

Halfway through her life, Hildegard finally came to peace with her uncommon mind and spirit. Only then was her true genius able to flower with such potency that her wisdom ripples across nine centuries. In the midst of the equivalent stage of my own life's journey as I was compiling this collection, I sat at Hildegard's feet in awe, alert to the many clues she offers for cultivating an authentic life.

Hildegard's interests and talents were so diverse that it was impossible to fit them into tidy topical compartments. Following the mode of understanding Hildegard herself models, I (in writing ) relied on an ineffable intuition of those themes I felt were most important to her: praising the Creator; claiming our birthright as wisdom beings; navigating the human experience; the wild holiness of Nature; and the feminine face of the Divine. "

Mirabai Starr