It’s funny the unexpected things that can happen before noon in a day…You can wake up singing show tunes (which I did this morning); You can shoof-shoof-shoof the flappy ears of a puppy, brush a cat, and lay witness to a duck on a wander…all in the middle of a city, all within twenty minutes, each in three different places; and, you can have a conversation with a woman who will be ordained an Anglican priest that leads you both to look at beauty, discernment, and the Wizard of Oz in a whole new way.
I’m hard pressed to remember why one of us said “We’re not in Kansas anymore…” while in the middle of an initial conversation welcoming her to the Spirituality Centre. This sparked the memory I have of the sweeping winter vista from upstairs at the Farmer’s Market. How you can look out over the beauty of grayscale and move one’s eyes through the wall of the market building and then pass into the Market where suddenly everything blooms into technicolor and textural glory. The table where I usually perch is right along that wall…right where the crossover happens from cold clear-edged units of neutral tones alongside each other into the humid wonder of sensory saturation.
The black and white tonal world is much clearer…like Kansas was for Dorothy. Rules and roles laid out with clarity; little to doubt or question; One can move through and know that This is not That; and They are of There whereas We are of Here; Right is clear from Wrong and so the puzzle fits together.
That works for some people. The clarity is comforting, if potentially limiting.
For those who are able to pass through the tornado, or wall, or sometimes, the normative social convention, technicolor awaits with its splendour and its confusion, both. There is where we meet those people we might not otherwise; On the journey we take together, we learn to be vulnerable, scared, and strong together, to watch out for each other, to grow in self-knowledge and grace. It loosens us without untethering us…allows us to see beyond the limits of our sight.
That technicolor place is the territory of the mystics and creatives; the curious and the daring; the soul-traveller, star-walker; the what-iffers and those who give themselves over to the call to Love.
I believe we are made in the technicolor image of God, wondrous, confusing, full, of the senses, of glory, of edges that blur into expanses of welcome where there is room for all who seek a road that leads onward, together, toward Home. Toward home. Wiser for the journey, kinder for those we have met, bolder for the adventure, more grounded in hope, more courageous because we know that we are not alone and that amazing things can happen when we give ourselves to possibility rather than limitation, when we open outward even when afraid.
And then we shall be marvelling, and yes, likely struggling, together, in the landscape of the heart of God.
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