Viriditas is home to honest stories of faith which express the reality of our humanity and God’s enduring, greening love for all people.
Viriditas is a latin word first used by Saint Hildegard of Bingen and it translates to ‘the greening power of God.’ For Hildegard, spiritual growth and vitality was as important as physical growth, and she often wrote about the power of God as she experienced it in the natural world around her.
In this newsletter, I explore the ‘greening power of God’ - how we experience God’s goodness and vitality - and our formation as spiritual people in relationship with ourselves and one another.
Viriditas is a space which holds in tension our humanness and God’s divinity, signs where the two meet, and illumines God’s divinity in ourselves and each other. I share my own stories and I hope you’ll trust me with yours.
Here we sit together in hardship and joy. We ask tough questions as we seek to rediscover a Christianity that has room for everyone and is for everyone. We wonder about the reality of the good news in the midst of pain and grief. We bear witness to the Spirit of God at work. We reflect on our beliefs, and what those actually look like in our day to day lives when it seems they no longer make sense.
What do I get if I subscribe?
Viriditas has both free and paid options for joining the community. I aim to provide a safe space, facilitate conversation, and share honest, theologically-informed reflections on the Christian faith and spiritual formation. If you subscribe, you will receive these benefits:
A free subscription provides a monthly newsletter with
reflections on spiritual formation within the Christian tradition, and how it is expressed in the minutia of our lives
recommendations for exploring your own spiritual formation
The paid tier of Viriditas includes all of the above, as well as informal letters which include
more candor about my own faith reconstruction
stories from my work in hospital chaplaincy
insight and a first look into other aspects of my life & work
About me
My name is Janette and I’m a native Texan, former expat in the UK, current homebody, and forever Anglophile. I spend my nights wandering a hospital as its chaplain, and my days are made up of sleeping, mothering, and gardening. I’m a hard enneagram one, though I often wish I was a four. I love big ideas and Taylor Swift.
In my work and in my home, I talk with people about the stories that make up our lives: stories of life and death, hope and despair, suffering and joy. We talk about the relationships, beliefs, and practices that enable us to live with and bear witness to ourselves, those we love, and the world around us. And sometimes we talk about when those things fail to help us feel hopeful at all.
Of course there’s also chatter about books and shows and travel and memes and news and tea and dinosaurs (you can thank my six year old for that one).
At the end of the day, my one big hope is that I manage to convince you there really is a Taylor Swift lyric for everything.
