I used to be a Theology lecturer.
My days were filled with lectures on divine mysteries, medieval mystics, and the intricate teachings of the Church. As a specialist in Christian mysticism, I found myself drawn to the raw beauty of personal encounters with the divine – those moments when boundaries between self and sacred dissolved.
The path led deeper still, beyond the confines of any single tradition, into the universal heart of mystical experience.
What began in Christian mysticism expanded to encompass the contemplative traditions of many cultures, each offering its own vocabulary for that ineffable connection. And there, at the end of this scholarly pilgrimage, I found permaculture – not as an ending, but as a practical embodiment of everything the mystics had been trying to tell us all along.
Because once you truly see the interconnectedness of all things, permaculture isn’t a choice – it’s the only honest response to being awake in the world.
Let’s back up a bit first.
The Poem that Hit My Like a Lightning Bolt
"O most honored Greening Force, You who roots in the Sun;You who lights up, in shining serenity, within a wheelthat earthly excellence fails to comprehend.
You are enfoldedin the weaving of divine mysteries.
You redden like the dawnand you burn: flame of the Sun."
– Hildegard von Bingen, Causae et Curae
Hildegard von Bingen was a 12th-century German Benedictine abbess, mystic, composer, and herbalist whose visions of the divine in nature continue to resonate with ecological thinkers today.
This poem hit me at the right time in my life.
Here was a 12th-century mystic writing about divine power not as something distant and ethereal, but as a force that “roots in the Sun” and “burns: flame of the Sun.” She saw the sacred not floating above creation, but surging up through it, manifesting in every unfurling leaf and reaching tendril.
The implications staggered me. If, as Hildegard insisted, this “greening power” was God’s presence made visible, then every garden was holy ground. The medieval monastery gardens weren’t just for growing medicinal herbs – they were living temples where monks and nuns could witness divine creativity in action.
But Hildegard went further. This viriditas, this greening force, wasn’t just something to admire from a safe distance. It was a power we were meant to participate in, to cultivate both in the soil and in our souls.
A faithful person, by this measure, wouldn’t just study nature – they would be utterly in love with it, seeing in every plant and creature a letter in God’s love poem to creation.
The logic was inescapable: if I claimed to be a person of love, I had to love the creation. Not just the pretty parts, not just the useful parts, but all of it – the decomposing leaves, the struggling seedlings, the intricate fungal networks beneath my feet. Each was “enfolded in the weaving of divine mysteries.”
This wasn’t just theology anymore. This was an invitation to a new way of living.
Stuck in my systems
Growing up privileged in the Philippines means living in a bubble of comfort while surrounded by profound inequality.
In a country where 80% of the population lives below the poverty line, my life has always been cushioned – air conditioning against the tropical heat, clean water at the turn of a tap, education at prestigious institutions.
As a child, you don’t question these things.
They’re simply the water you swim in, invisible until someone shows you how to see. My awakening came gradually, through Marxist professors at university who challenged my worldview while respecting my faith, through liberation theology that demanded I see Christ in the faces of the poor, through Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed that taught me how systems perpetuate themselves through our unconscious participation.
But knowing and doing are different beasts entirely.
How do you shed privilege when it’s woven into the fabric of your daily life?
I have a family to support, children who need education and healthcare. I’m caught in systems of consumption and comfort that I critique even as I benefit from them.
The roots of privilege run deep, and pulling them up threatens to destabilize everything I’ve built.
Hildegard’s greening force speaks of a divine vitality that connects all things, but what does that mean when you’re enmeshed in systems that sever those connections?
At some point, you face a choice: either stop looking too deeply and continue living in comfortable disconnection, or keep pushing deeper, searching for ways to live in greater wholeness despite the contradictions.
It’s tempting to let these insights be stillborn, to file them away as interesting theological concepts rather than demands for radical change.
But once you see the interconnections, you can’t unsee them.
The question becomes not whether to change, but how to nurture new ways of being while still rooted in the soil of your circumstances.
Permaculture is my attempt to try
I have a piece of land (as I mentioned— privilege)
And something I am desperate to start here is permaculture. (Though admittedly, I don’t know where to start.)
Perhaps there’s an element of guilt-assuaging in this desire, a way to feel better about my position of comfort in a country where so many struggle. But I’ve learned that guilt is only useful if it moves you toward action. And while I can’t immediately transform the larger systems I’m part of, I can begin creating alternative ones in my own space.
This land represents possibility. Through permaculture, I can attempt to create a different model, however small, however imperfect. A way of growing food that regenerates rather than depletes, that builds community rather than walls, that honors both Hildegard’s greening force and the practical wisdom of sustainable living.
It’s a beginning, not a solution. But in a world of disconnection, maybe that’s what we need most – people willing to try, to experiment with different ways of being, to create small pockets of wholeness within broken systems. Not to ease our conscience, but to prove that other ways are possible.
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Thomas Merton