Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century contemporary of Bernhard [of Clairvaux], left one of the more amazing accounts of the mystic life in her Illuminations, a verbal and pictorial account of her visions. In her highly original theological imagination, sin is conceived as the drying up of the sap of life. When we are unjust and uncaring, we become cold, hard, brittle, and dusty. Salvation is verdancy, greening, juiciness. Jesus, the juiciest of the juicy, is Greenness Incarnate. The Holy Spirit is the greening power that makes all things grow and sends merciful dew into the human heart to overcome dryness.
— Sam Keen, Hymns to an Unknown God