Easter 13 Color

I live in a place that stays pretty green all year round, but it's particularly lush right now. As I was

taking my bus to downtown and work down Memorial Drive one morning this week, I was drawn in by the parks and other green  spaces along the way. I was reminded that the color green itself is often used to symbolize life.

In a stream of consciousness way, I mused that while we associate green with life, no humans have naturally green skin or hair (eyes, though!). Then I thought how unusual for us humans to not put ourselves in the center of something. How strange that we don't make the color of life some shade of human skin. But those thoughts were more whimsy than any serious reflection.

But I do enjoy noticing the colors around me, particularly of living things. I saw a robin today, with its red breast. There's an orange cat that I adore in a neighbor's window

(I do my best not to be the creepy neighbor staring at someone's window, but the cat is gorgeous!). There are dogs everywhere, in every shade a dog might manage. And flowers. Year-round flowers in Houston. Right now, there are patches of wildflowers here and there, bluebonnets particularly.

I can begin to feel like my pink and blond self looks mighty dull in comparison.

But you know what? We're all mighty beautiful, too, in all our shades of human.

So today, I'm celebrating the colors of all the living things in the world, the green and the brown and the red and the yellow . . . they all sing to my eye, "alleluia."