Monk in the World Guest Post: Sharon Dawn Johnson
I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Sharon Dawn Johnson’s reflection Finding My Song, Finding Its Colour.
My heart’s deep-down hunger urges me: Enroll in this skincare formulating course! Signing up honours my wild self and her contours—as organic as that of the skincare organization’s eco-sustainability ethos. Lesson by tasty lesson, my heart and mind are nourished and at peace.
Even so, self-doubt’s entangling flip-flops set up creative struggles in me—to keep exercising the sign-up trust that’s digestively sustained and strengthened by each formulating lesson.
For St. Hildegard, the recovery of the “original wisdom” already within invites us to call upon the virtues—fruitful practices that include patience, kindness, and compassion—to empower us with the life-sustaining choices that counter our wayward tendencies. When my doubt-trust, vice-virtue entanglements are too hard to handle directly, I turn to creative beading—where my needle-and-thread’s pace eases, and so releases, self-doubt’s power to sabotage my heart’s desires.
Naming my disorderly self-doubt (and its fear-knots) as energy shared with my faith-trust engagements, like sides of a coin, helps me call forth radical hospitality, a basic monastic action. Welcoming strangers—saboteurs and wildish ones—is an essential practice whose viriditas power invites me into knot-transformations, not fisty-cuffs. As Meister Eckhart asserts: “We are to practice virtue, not possess it.”
Wildness, I note, is not on Hildegard’s list of subconscious virtues and corresponding vices displayed at the Healthy Hildegard website. Only later will I marvel at the mystery attraction that draws my eye to the Generosity / Bitterness pairing.
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First hearing about Hildegard’s viriditas—divine greening power displayed in nature and applied in body and soul metaphors—generates a resonating hum in me. That hum became an invitation to learn to sing the tricky, first line phrasing from one of Hildegard’s songs honouring the Virgin Mary:
O viridissima virga,
Ave [O greenest branch, Hail]
I also learn the Abbey song, Viriditas, which starts:
Let my soul be greening with the Living Light…
When I first hear Hildegard’s phrase ‘Mary as the greenest branch’, that upwelling image becomes a green bead-encrusted branch, whose story is detailed here. That artwork initiated a green-themed series still unfolding.
Even with years of viriditas greenness flowing in, around, and through me, I was brought anew to my own soul-anguished song search, much like the fairy tale Sophia in Abbess Christine’s book Journey to Joy (2025). The tale’s archetypal motifs reach out to touch and teach me.
How I resonate with the tale’s motifs, such as Sophia’s song search—one enfolding basic human questions: Who am I? What am I here for?
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Based on Hildegard’s original recipe, the digestive bitters tablets promoted on the Healthy Hildegard home page lists six health benefits, including: Improve[s] Skin Care.
What first floors me is learning that the skin’s outermost layer, the epidermis, contains bitter taste receptors! Brief details explain how bitter botanical substances stimulate the skin’s receptors to create a healthy skin barrier. A second link takes me to the 2015 research paper that first published this discovery. That paper reminded me of yesterday’s reading in my skincare formulating course, which underlined the need to support claims for an ingredient’s skincare benefits with scientific evidence.
The pairing of skin-beneficent bitters and supporting research serve as vibrant green signposts. I notice that the formulating journey, like those of contemplative and creative ones, share similar way-markers. All focus more on the lessons of presence, process, and practice than fast-lane destinations.
Like the way-marking arrows that direct Camino walkers, my signposts help me befriend my formulating doubts. Both my self-doubt and direction-navigating trust need the wild-hearted hand-on-the-shoulder companioning to keep us on course, step-by-pilgrim step.
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The signposts give me pause to reflect. Self-doubt stalled Hildegard’s midlife awakening for a time. Yet Holy Wisdom helped her shift this wearisome weakness sufficiently to redirect its energy into sustaining creative strength. Her subsequent years of multi-faceted fruitfulness exemplify the transformation. Hildegard herself was sustained by the flowing green sap—a model of green-hearted nourishment to comfort and satisfy me—body, soul, and spirit.
“The piety of doubt”, in James K A Smith’s reflection “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt; it’s fear”, offer nuances that apply to Hildegard’s doubt-and-faith companionship—and mine. As he notes, “Faith, in Scripture and a long Christian tradition, is bound up with peace, not certainty. In faith one entrusts oneself.” How that resonates with my skincare formulating lessons! A still, small voice sings, Fear not. Your green signposts are trustworthy.
Singing, for Hildegard, is medicine: “Singing softens hard [and fearful] hearts and summons the Holy Spirit.” She urges me: Don’t stop singing!
“What is my song?” I revisit fairy tale Sophia’s question to answer: My song is a three-part harmony of expressive green forms. When the wind asks, “What is your truth?”, I pause—then it comes to me: Green. My truth is green!
This disclosure—surprising then, obvious now—reminds me of Hildegard’s love of Latin wordplays. Wisdom (sapientia) and taste (sapere) share the same root. Her virga (branch) and virgo (virgin) playoffs are matched by a similar Latin game between viridis (green) and veritas (truth) whose volleys coined viriditas.
My journey’s signposts deepen my wild self’s willingness to become a green ambassador for safe and effective skincare. This third facet—along with my calling to writing and bead and fibre artmaking—opens a three-dimensional space, all equally enriched by viriditas.
Green singer! Green song!
*Image – Green Bugle Bead Mandala 2.5 in/ 6.5 cm diameter, work-in-progress by Sharon Johnson
Sharon Dawn Johnson, of Ottawa, Canada, delights in the interplays of writing, beading/ fibre artistry, and organic skin care formulating. This dynamic threesome nourishes and sustains her creative and contemplative practices.
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