"God is in the Egg."
Our (Mid)weekly Blessing this time is inspired by CG Jung and Hildegard of Bingen
Dear fellow traveler,
Welcome to our midweek blessing—a quiet pause here at The Cloister, rooted in the garden of soul and season.
This Spring, I find myself pondering anew the miracle of egg-shaped buds bursting into green. Not just a single flower or leaf—no, a whole universe of leaves, stems, blooms, trees!
Have you noticed?
Perhaps walking with my six-year-old lets me participate in her perspective—seeing the world through a child’s eyes, as though for the very first time.
“Mama, look—a new leaf! And there, another!”
Last weekend, during our Hildegard retreat at the monastery, we celebrated viriditas—the sacred greening that animates all being. This month in our Cloister Notes, we’ve been exploring gardening as sacred practice—not just in our soil, but in our souls.
Surely there is wisdom in celebrating Easter in Spring (did you know the liturgical Easter season lasts 50 days?)—and in choosing the egg as its symbol. 🐣
Because it is the egg that holds all life within.
As buds burst from bare branches, so the fertilized egg cracks open to release new life.
C.G. JUNG, the Swiss depth psychologist, once said: God is in the egg. And in its beginning.
And I can’t agree more.
Spring seems to be a celebration of this great unfolding of new beginnings.
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN saw it too—she envisioned the birth of the cosmos as an egg-shaped universe: enfolded by love, warmed by divine breath, and echoing the anatomy of human birth.
The egg, Hildegard reminds us, is not just symbol—but reality: of growth, tension, incubation, emergence.
Of waiting.
Of wonder.
What if the soul’s work is to sit beside the egg, and learn to wait?
To watch what cracks open when the time is right?
Blessings to you in this season of enfolding,
Almut — The Weary Pilgrim
🌀 A Practice
Our midweek blessing today invites you into a simple practice of beholding, inspired by the words of CG Jung:
Set the egg before you,
The God in the beginning.
And behold it.
And incubate it
With the magical warmth
Of your gaze.
✨ To Ponder
What are you quietly incubating?
A longing, a change, a return?
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In case you missed it
From the Cloister Garden
Retreating to the Garden. Monastic Gardens as places of nature, nurture, contemplation and healing.
(Mid) weekly blessing:
Letters to America
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I love the image of the "egg" as womb. We watched carefully to safeguard four junco eggs as the male and female created a nest in the wreath at our front door. I realized something was happening when I went out the front door the adult birds would fly from somewhere to a tree in the front of our house. It took me about a week to realize there must be a nest. When my son and his family came for supper he held up his youngest son to see what was happening on that side of the wreath. Santino reported four tiny eggs. We avoided going in or out the front door, using our garage door for leaving and returning when my husband and I would take walks. After several weeks I realized the adults were no longer coming and going. I took down the wreath to check it out. There was a sweet, perfect, empty nest. I was overjoyed, the emerging small birds had survived their incubation. Several years ago there was a nest in a more open wreath and the nest was raided by a scrub jay. The evidence of egg shells on our front step told us about the attack and also there was a video on our doorbell identifying the event. While I won't know the future of these current birds, I had to announce to everyone who might have cared about these new lives that our shelter for the junco parents wasn't invaded by a predator. In these sad times of uncertainty for so many human beings, our country, our relationships with others, I still found joy which lifts me up and allows me to continue my mantra about "Resistance is about saying yes to love."
Thank you for these thoughts and the significance of the words, the Cosmic Egg. I had wondered what R. Rohr meant when he spoke of the Cosmic Egg. All of the visual symbols you have offered us in this post: the greening of viriditas and the cycles of life that we are to embrace as much as the rising of the sun and the crashing of the ocean waves. How to look at the egg itself and the separate layers inside of the egg: growth, incubation, tension, emergence. How to hold the tension in our life, as Nadia Bolz-Weber writes as we "try to keep our eggs and bacon away from our French toast and syrup - pain and sorrow are always served on the same plate as joy, and despite my best efforts, I cannot keep them from touching." How to not cling or avoid what life is presenting us with. Michael Singer teaches that we are living on a planet that isn't very evolved. How to practice living this life I've been given, with the wonder and eyes of a six year old. To honor the path I'm walking and let my soul expand as best I can given my level of awareness. To trust the journey the infinite Divine has created for my limited, finite being. I am thankful for all those who are perhaps on the path in front of me - offering breadcrumbs of understanding so that I might follow. I am thankful for CG Jung, Hildegard and you...for sharing breadcrumbs. May I forever remember to behold and trust the Divine cycles of this human existence and share love as best I can given where I am on my path of evolving. Thank you for all the blessings you and Chuck write for us.