It is a common question asked in a variety of settings. “What is your favorite color?” When asked of young children, I’ve seen purple and pink rise to the top. When asked in an ice breaker, get-to-know you situation, people can often make assumptions about another from their answer. Red? Bold and passionate. Blue? Perhaps introspective and moody. Color is a fascinating thing that makes for great conversation and eye pleasing awe.

Here in my part of the world we perhaps have a greater appreciation, even longing, for color. Spending as much time as we do with white…or white touched by dirty gray as winter holds us in its grip, we are starved for the experience of color. Oh, the cold and wind can get to us but there are always more layers that can be added for warmth. But color…that is a whole other matter.

Green. My favorite color is green. From childhood it has been, is, and will likely always be the color that makes my heart sing. These spring days that have been colder than usual have been a nasty tease with the color green. There were hints of it poking through the ground and then, wham! Snow. White again. The gift of green snatched from us in the blink of a frosty eye.

Last week I visited my sons in Seattle and we took the ferry out to Bainbridge Island. I never pass up a chance to ride a ferry! On the island we visited Bloedel Reserve, a beautiful setting of walking paths and more green than seems possible. Walking through the tall trees and the fields, I became so aware of the various shades of green that exist. Deep, rich green. Brilliant green we’ve named ‘kelly’. Pale,almost yellow, green which you can glimpse as buds begin to emerge. This sea of green was the intention of founder Prentice Bloedel who created this preserve and was also color blind. The acres are void of many flowering trees with an emphasis on green. Just green. I am not sure how colorblindness works but apparently green was something he was able to discern. And I was thankful for it.

Green is the color that says growth. It signals a hope that stimulates creativity and mirrors for us the possibility of new life. It is the color that surprises our tired, ice weary eyes when the season makes a turn. Wake up! Something wonderful is about to happen! It calls us to a wildness we can forget when our shoulders are pulled up to our ears and we forget to look into the lovely eyes of those we pass on our winter walk. Green can remind us of that child that still lives within us urging us outside to play.

Of course when it comes to the color green, we would expect poet Mary Oliver to weigh in:

Don’t you dare climb that tree
or even try, they said, or you will be
sent way to the hospital of the
very foolish, if not the other one.
And I suppose, considering my age,
it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me, she
lives alone in a green cottage
high in the air and I know what
would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
she’d shake her green hair, she’d
welcome me.  Truly.

I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be.  It’s impossible not
to remember wild and not want to go back.

So if someday you can’t find me you might
look into that tree or—of course
it’s possible—under it.

Every day now, green is calling, inviting us to break out and remember. Wildness. Spring. Color.

I’m so, so ready and I hope you are, too.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
~Isaac Newton

The sentiment of these words by Newton have been said in a variety of ways over the years. I have read and heard them in so many places and they always bring me up short. Because of their truth. And because so many times I forget or behave as if it were not so. They showed up again in the book, Good Enough, I have been reading during the season of Lent. This time with the citation as to their origin. I have been thinking of them since I read them a few days ago and it has led me to name some of those on whose shoulders I stand. Those who have helped me see further, or more openly, more critically, more inclusively, with a hoped for wisdom.

I had been thinking of these words even before I read them in the book because of an amazing sculpture I saw on a recent trip to New Orleans. In the sculpture garden of the City Park, I came upon this artwork by Do-Ho Suh, a brilliant Korean artist. It is called ‘Karma’. Coming around a bend in the beautiful, green gardens it rose several feet high causing a catch in my breath. Its creation seemed nearly impossible to me. Its power was deep and I felt awestuck in its presence. The weight of each person standing on the shoulders of the next and the next and the way the bodies bent in that weight seemed so exact. I thought of the people who have perhaps bent under the weight of those who stood, even metaphorically, on their shoulders. Parents. Grandparents. Teachers. Care-givers. Neighbors. Leaders. Spiritual guides. Friends. So many people, so many shoulders, so many lives.

If the sculpture weren’t enough to send this message swirling in my mind, further in the chapter in which the Newton quote was written author Kate Bowler writes: “It’s hard to remember a deeper, comforting truth: we are built on a foundation not our own. We were born because two other people created a combination of biological matter. We went to schools where dozens and dozens of people crafted ideas and activities to construct categories in our minds. We learn skills honed by generations of craftspeople. We pray and worship with spiritual ideas refined by centuries of tradition. Almost nothing about us is original. Thank God.”

We are built on a foundation not our own. In this world that tries to imprint a message that we are all self-made, this is a wake up call. In our culture that emphasizes individuality as a highest value, it is so difficult to remember all the people who shaped and sacrificed and nurtured and even prayed over our unfolding. Though many may no longer be with us it is still, I believe, important to remember them, to even say their names aloud and to breathe our gratitude. For the strength of their shoulders and the weight of their bending. 

I do not have the gift of creating such a powerful sculpture. But I do have the gift of remembering. In this unfolding season of spring when growth will be visible in countless ways, I will give thanks for those on whose shoulders I have stood, those who have bent with the weight of urging my growth. Those who have helped me see further. And further. And further.