Last year, in this part of the world, a sudden drop in temperature killed a lot of buds on the fruit tress that had started to form too soon. The vineyards suffered severe damage as well. Most of the soft fruit and a lot of the grape crop for the Okanagan a was loss.
The orchards are not only pretty this spring, they are full of promise.
They remind me of hope deferred and hope restored.
Thank you, Lord.
When God made the color purple, God was just showing off.
-Mae Jemison
Like many teenage girls, when I finally had a room of my own, I chose to decorate it in shades of purple. It fit the person in process that I was then. Purple takes the innocent sweetness of posie pink, the audacity of in-your-face magenta, the rage of raw red, the perfect peace of prairie lake blue, the hopeful ascension of sky blue and the deep reverence of mystical indigo and swirls them all around in an unsteady mix of hot and cold. If I look long enough, I can see the colours that make up purple dancing and spinning in a nervous partnership that leaves evidence they are never really fully committed to their roles. This is purple, the colour I chose for the first space I could call mine.
I may be a retired seventy-year old, but I’m not content to squeeze my accumulated years into a single conclusive expression. In my dreams I’m still a bewildered child, a wizened saint, a mischievous flirt, an introspective ponderer, an angry idealist, a conscientious servant, a lover of the unlovely, a reconciled plodder, and an every-which-way-at-once teen trying on each mood and personality in my cache before coming out of my room to run and catch the day. I wonder if, in ancient times, this may be why purple was a colour reserved for priests and royalty (aside from expense). Perhaps only those with the assumed freedom and time to appreciate the tenuous stability of paradox (and its influence on helpless bystanders) could wrap the heights of humility and the depths of pride around themselves in the ambivalent glory of purple and sally forth.
I too shall wear purple. It fits the person in process that I am now. I am, after all, with millions of others, part of a royal priesthood of believers. That’s qualification enough.
My thoughts at least, before I make the same to-do list for tomorrow as I made for today, prop my arthritic knee on my purple pillow, and turn off the light .
Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by his holiness, the nourishment of the mind with his truth, the purifying of the imagination of his beauty, the opening of the heart to his love, the surrender of the will to his purpose. -William Temple
“The trouble with really seeing and really hearing is that then we really have to do something about what we have seen and heard.” ~ Frederick Buechner
Sometimes, for some of us, a simple prayer of appreciation to the Creator of love and beauty for his goodness to us is as great a victory over self-centeredness as is sailing across the world to set a thousand captives free.
The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can’t stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope–and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.
-Walter Wangerin
There’s just something about purple that is like the exquisite beauty of a song of overcoming sung in a minor key. Victory yes, but not without sorrow.
“Lord, catch me off guard today. Surprise me with some moment of beauty or pain so that at least for the moment, I may be startled into seeing that you are here in all your splendor, always and everywhere, barely hidden, beneath, beyond, within this life I breathe.”
Frederick Buechner
When I was a child I wondered who good Mrs. Murphy was. My teacher was named Mrs. Murphy and she was good, at least she was good to the kids who knew the right answers to her questions. She was not as kind to the naughty boys at the back of the classroom, but she didn’t follow them around, as far as I knew. Still we sang in Sunday School, “Good Mrs. Murphy shall follow me all the days of my life,” so there had to be a good Mrs. Murphy somewhere.
It wasn’t until I read the words in the Bible for myself that I realized I had misheard. “Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” I still didn’t understand what it meant, but it let Mrs. Murphy off the hook.
I misheard a lot of things about God when I was young. Sometimes I heard clearly but the speaker “misspoke.” I also skipped over a lot of things I heard and read, but since I had little experience, they remained in a file of “nice sayings” stored on a dusty shelf in the recesses of my brain. Later, when life tests showed up, I needed to dive into that file and learn what they were truly about.
Today I was reminded of my frustration two years ago. I have trouble walking very far, but I have improved a lot. Two years ago, I could hardly walk around my own house. I have always loved walking in the woods and often rambled in the countryside and through the streets of our town looking for beautiful things to photograph. Photography has been a way of intentionally looking for beauty in a world where we are confronted with so many demonstrations of the lack of goodness and mercy between people.
We live in a different city now. Spring arrived about a month sooner than I have been accustomed to. I can’t walk as far as I want to yet, but I can walk. For that I am very thankful. This week, I visited a local garden originally planted by a woman from Scotland over a hundred years ago.
As I stopped to appreciate every sign of colour and new life, I felt peace. I felt my spirit rest in the goodness of the Creator of beauty and the love of beauty he placed in the heart of a young woman far from everything that was familiar to her.
A song is playing in my head today:
I love You, Lord
Oh Your mercy never fails me
All my days, I’ve been held in Your hands
From the moment that I wake up
Until I lay my head
Oh, I will sing of the goodness of God.
I have looked back over the years of my life and seen “Good Mrs. Murphy” guarding my steps. It turns out Mrs. Murphy is actually my Father, my Friend, and my God.
Storms will come and storms will go.
Wonder just how many storms
It takes until I finally know
You’re here always.
(From Arms of Love by Amy Grant, Gary Chapman, Michael Smith)
Charis: Subject to Change 