Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
~Paul Gauguin

The winter leaves us starved for color. Especially this past winter. One that found us cocooned inside with threat knocking at our door and fear swirling its meanness in corners like dust gathering. For those of us in the northern climes winter has its own language but this year’s words were particularly unkind. No warm gatherings with friends except those we could do outside round a fire calling on the wisdom of our ancestors who did stoked their own circles of fire before us. Though the fire was warm, our layers many, the freezing temperatures kept our meetings short and sweet reminding us of the control we didn’t have. And while the spring is slowly unfolding there are still days shot through with cold winds, low temps and even the stray snow flake.

All this has led me to reflect much on color. I have often thought that it is the absence of color that finally gets to us after a long winter. Many of us seem to strengthen the cold’s hold on us by wearing black, brown, gray, as if to mirror the colorless world outside our window. Days of white and gray become our only vision which the seed providers must know well as they send out little pages of hope in the catalogues that begin to arrive in January. Sitting in my colorless clothes, leafing through those pages is a balm.

Right now I am standing watch over yellow tulips that have emerged in my garden. I am guarding them from the squirrels that like to snip off their heads as soon as they bloom. I have nearly wept at the orange-reds the little rascals left laying on the ground after decapitating the green stems that stand nearby. Perhaps the squirrels are hungry for color, too. They do not know the depth of my need for this color and will likely encounter an enraged woman running at them to protect the bloom reaching its green body toward the heavens as I scare them away. My neighbors are hopefully turning a grace-filled eye.

It is not a coincidence that artists speak boldly about color. “Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” writes Claude Monet. “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any way.” says Georgia O’Keefe. And Wassily Kadinsky spoke,”Color is a power which directly influences the soul.”

Yes. The soul. It is the healing power of color that reaches out to touch our wintry souls. Souls that are weary of the pandemic and all the pain and suffering of this last year. Weary from isolation and staying away from those they love. Weary from tragic headlines and compassion for the lives they hold. Weary from winter’s cold and hibernation. Weary of our dark wardrobes and multiple layers. Soul weary.

Last week I had the great privilege of being bathed in immense swaths of color as I visited the tulip fields in Washington. Seeing the large numbers of people filling their hunger for color(socially distanced, of course)was like sitting down at a soul buffet. While their faces may have been covered with masks, their eyes were smiling and the air around us danced with beauty and hope. My soul was soothed and ready to once again face life’s beauty and terror. 

Color. It is not the only healer of the soul but it is a good place to start. What colors are you seeing in your daily rounds? What color will lift your weary spirit? It is definitely a time to be awake, wide awake to all the color that is being offered up to us. May the colors of this spring dance before our waiting eyes and may we all be present enough to see because as poet Savita Tyagi says in her poem, Tulips:

…But I didn’t know much about tulips then. 
Soon I came to realize that each stem 
Bore just one flower, and their delicate 
Flashy bloom lasted only for a week most…

This blast of color is short-lived. Eyes open…and now I have to get back to my post, guarding yellow!