Chasing down a quote misrepresented in a book about four women philosophers, I find the correct and deeper statement of the reference:
"We often look to someone like Hildegard or to other great people throughout the ages as if what they have is not ours to have; we admire them, honor them, study them. We want to make use of them, and we allow them to consummate our inner light for us. We allow them to be the still point of our turning world. We feel incapable, yet the world wants to infuse us and to be infused by us. At that point no one can help us, not angels, not men, not Hildegard, not Jung, not Rilke. We cannot live securely in a world which is not our own, in a world which is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to put our ears to our own inner voices, to see our own light, which is our birthright, and comes to us in silence."
(-- vol. 21 Fall 1991 Gnosis, quote is from the last paragraph of Elaine Bellezza's article entitled "Hildegard of Bingen, Warrior of Light”.) https://www.facebook.com/groups/hildegardsociety/posts/10154634287567953/
It will only get more difficult to find accurate and less artificial representations of something said or meme-ic posting on social media or even front pages of propagandistic media.
We live in a world of comical world leaders posting absurd pericopes about fabricated news meant to sway markets and swell private wealth and who-gives-a-damn about the rubes and marks populating our playground?
Hildegard might not have said it, not as written here, but her influence is detectible in those final words:
We cannot live securely in a world which is not our own, in a world which is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to put our ears to our own inner voices, to see our own light, which is our birthright, and comes to us in silence.” [ibid]
Perhaps the demand on us is to accept that, in a now fragmented and desiccated world of deception and mendacity, it becomes our intelligent inquiry to resurrect or refashion a world with the resonance and resemblance of something genuine and authentic to counter the falsity and gaslighting of those who would dissemble what is true into a misalignment that is advantageous only to them and their sycophants.
In prison yesterday, I feel like a ninth grader being schooled in the geometric tumbling of AI and financial manipulation of world markets and military strategies for the benefit of the few and topmost people.
I am not intelligent enough either to comprehend what is going on nor, certainly, to have any impact on the correction of the misconnections and severances amputating authentic service and assistance to those needing help domestically and abroad.
What we thought once was Christian has become casuistry on the part of snide and triumphalist false folks appropriating the symbols, metaphors, and scriptural references once reserved for authentic holiness and redeeming service.
We need to find again and reclaim our own inner voices, our own light, and the invigorating silence that inspires restored Being and true Humanity to our communities/surroundings.*