Tag Archives: Color

1170. Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. ~Oscar Wilde

by

14

Let me, O let me bathe my soul in colours;
let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow.
~Kahlil Gibran

Screen Shot 2016-06-10 at 4.00.21 PM.png

A colour, no doubt, is a trifle in itself, and only has its full value when it is in contrast or harmony with other colours…. each colour has an expression and a character peculiar to itself, and each is enlivened as it approaches its lightest shade by its mixture with white, just as it is saddened and perishes as it approaches its darkest shade by its mixture with black. ~Auguste Alexandre Philippe Charles Blanc (1813–1882)

Screen Shot 2016-06-10 at 5.29.01 PM.png

In a sense, one could speak of the secret life of colour. Despite its outward beckoning, like true beauty, colour is immensely hesitant in giving away its secrets. Painters learn to respect the hesitancy of colour and endeavour to refine their skill to become worthy of its revelations. A painter learns the language of colour slowly. As with any language, you struggle for a long time outside the language. There is a willed deliberateness to how you sequence the strange words to make a sentence.Then one day the language lets you in to where the words dance to your thoughts with ease and fluency. Perhaps for the painter there is a day when colour lets him in, when his palette sings with synergy and delight. ~John O’Donohue

Screen Shot 2016-06-10 at 9.41.11 PM.png

I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me(God) and the earth. ~Genesis 9:13  ✝

**All images taken by me in my yardt; all collages created by me

1159. Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything; they stain the mind or warp the feelings. ~Diane Ackerman

by

12

Ecstasy is what everyone craves —
not love or sex, but hot-blooded, soaring intensity,
in which being alive is a joy and a thrill.
That enravishment doesn’t give meaning to life,
and yet without it life seems meaningless.
~Diane Ackerman

Screen Shot 2016-05-27 at 8.06.37 PM.png

In the name of the daybreak
and the eyelids of morning
and the wayfaring moon
and the night when it departs,
In the name of the sun and its mirrors
and the day that embraces it
and the cloud veils drawn over it
and the uttermost night
and the male and the female
and the plants bursting with seed
and the crowning seasons
of the firefly and the apple,
I will honor all life —
wherever and in whatever form
it may dwell—on Earth my home,
and in the mansions of the stars.
~Excerpted verses from a poem
by Diane Ackerman

Whoever pursues righteousness and love finds life, prosperity, and honor. ~Proverbs 21:21  ✝

**All images (my enravishments) were taken by me in my yard.

1136. Each color lives by its mysterious life. ~Wassily Kandinsky

by

11

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning,
and unallied with definite form,
can speak to the soul
in a thousand different ways.
~Oscar Wilde

Screen Shot 2016-05-01 at 10.01.43 PM.png

Color… thinks by itself, independently
of the object it clothes.
~Charles Baudelaire

Screen Shot 2016-05-01 at 9.34.30 PM.png

Color, rather than shape,
is more closely related to emotion.
~David Katz

Screen Shot 2016-05-01 at 10.05.41 PM.png

Colour is, on the evidence of language alone,
very bound up with the feelings.
~Marion Milner

Screen Shot 2016-05-01 at 10.22.12 PM.png

Color is the language of the poets.
It is astonishingly lovely.
To speak it is a privilege.
~Keith Crown

Screen Shot 2016-05-01 at 9.55.50 PM.png

From the blue, purple and scarlet yarn they made woven garments for ministering in the sanctuary. ~Excerpt from Exodus 39:1  ✝

**All photos taken by me in my yard

1134. I must have flowers, always, and always. ~Claude Monet

by

26

Color is my daylong,
obsession, joy and torment.
~Claude Monet

Screen Shot 2016-04-29 at 6.15.24 PM.png

Smitten! I’m completely and reverently smitten! And like Monet, what I’m smitten with are flowers and color. Not only that but when the two unite to create something as spectacular as has occurred in this iris, I’m doubly smitten, doubly enamored of, doubly attracted to, doubly enchanted by, and doubly swept off my feet! Then if the element of frilliness appears in the drooping down falls (sepals) of the flower, I become triply smitten. Last but not least, when the flowers are adorned with veining (lines and/or dots) the smittenness takes a leap totally off the scale of smittendom! How can anything as exquisite as this iris not speak of holiness as well as Divine intent and design to anyone who beholds its beauty.

Flowers are beautiful hieroglyphics of nature,
with which she indicates how much
she and God, her Creator love us.
~Edited quote by 
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Flowers have spoken to me more
than I can tell in written words.
They are the hieroglyphics of angels,
loved by all men for the beauty
of their character, though few can
decipher even fragments of their meaning.
~Lydia M. Child

I know that my redeemer livers, and that at the end He will stand on the earth. ~Job 19:25  ✝

**Iris image taken today in my yard

1095. Every moment of light and dark is a miracle. ~Walt Whitman

by

10

In order for the light to shine so brightly,
the darkness must be present.
~Francis Bacon

Screen Shot 2016-03-17 at 6.04.36 PM.png

Three days from now, we’ll officially leave winter, the season of darkness and death, and enter spring, the season of light and rebirth. So I decided to share some thoughts about light and darkness, and since today is St. Patrick’s day and John O’Donohue was an Irish poet, I chose the following lines because some of what O’Donohue describes herein resembles as well what happens to the earth at times.

Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.
In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.
That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.
That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.
When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.
That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.
When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.
When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.
When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.
As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.
And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found world.
~John O’Donohue

He (God) reveals the deep things of darkness and disorder, where even light is like darkness. ~Job 12:22  ✝

**Image found on Pinterest

1067. And far and wide, in a scarlet tide, the poppy’s bonfire spread. ~Bayard Taylor

by

16

Flowers could be described as bursts
of color, pattern, and infinite grace
all governed by sacred geometry.
They are perfectly woven into the fabric of
existence to brighten up our world.
~Cherie Rae Dirksen

Screen Shot 2016-02-14 at 5.37.12 PM.png

To see the flower,
to really see it
takes time: knowing
what to praise
and for how long. Suppose
the poppy’s a scarlet
ibis afloat on a bed
of leaves, cardinals
in flight, a tanager calling
its mate. The artist
enlivened this flower
so you could know it.
Yet here you stand
befuddled by a poppy:
recognizable, small
delicate as a robin.
Relax. Try not to stare
so hard. It knows
you’re here admiring
its birdlike petals.
Opalescent, the red
poppy shines from within
dark, oval center
clipped from a swath
of velvet cloth.
You can feel the wings
sway: five of them
on a huge scale
gathering sun.
Not one of us
can ignore their
willful beauty.
~Georgia O’Keeffe

Screen Shot 2016-02-14 at 5.59.01 PM.png

Who is like the wise? Who knows the explanation of things? A person’s wisdom brightens their face and changes its hard appearance. ~Ecclesiastes 8:1  ✝

**Some images via Pinterest; others from my archives; collage by Natalie

***Georgia O’Keeffe was regarded as one of the most significant and intriguing artists of the twentieth century. She was known internationally for her boldly innovative art, being best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers such as this red poppy.

1030. What was that? Did you see it? There, there it goes again! Look! It can’t have disappeared.

by

24

Screen Shot 2016-01-06 at 3.52.40 PM.png

In the half light of dawn a quick flash of red had been darting back and forth just beyond the blue gazing ball. Whoosh! There is was again! Surely you saw it that time. No? Ohhhhhh, but I did! Even from 30 yards away the vibrant color and black mask of a male cardinal is unmistakable. Fully awake and focused now I could clearly see what the beautiful flash was, and yet sadly I had not obeyed the call earlier to get up and find my camera. After weeks of early wake ups, I just couldn’t make myself get up out of my chair; I was being lulled into a kind of stupor by the gray, quietude of the early January morn. Then I remembered the last line in Kalidasa’s Sanskrit poem, “The Salutation to the the Dawn. “Look well therefore to this day,” he said. So with a better late than never resolve, I started trying to untangle myself from a blanket and get up from my chair when all of a sudden the amazing crimson creature landed not ten feet away from me on the other side of my patio door. Lots of cardinals live in and around our yard, but until today none of them had come this close to the house. What a brave, cheeky guy was this one who had found and perched itself atop the blackberry vine I’d purchased last week. Though he tarried there a while, I was afraid to move for fear I’d shoo it away. So I eased back down in my chair, watching in awe and admiration until it flew off. Afterwards, I did go grab my camera in case the beauty returned again. Alas, however, it did not. Instead now it was only flying back and forth, along with its mate, from the feeders to the top of my rose arch outside Natalieworld

Screen Shot 2016-01-06 at 3.00.27 PM.png

Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at His coming. ~1 Peter 1:13 ✝

**Images found on Pinterest

 

1026. The simplicity of winter has a deep moral. The return of Nature, after such a career of splendor and prodigality, to habits so simple and austere, is not lost either upon the head or the heart. ~John Burroughs

by

11

Winter is the slow-down
Winter is the search for self
Winter gives the silence you need to listen
Winter goes gray so you can see your own colors…
~Terri Guillemets

Screen Shot 2016-01-02 at 6.20.01 PM.png

What is your color? Do you know? If you do, do you like what you see? If you don’t, maybe you should give some thought as to why. For what colors us, colors our world and the way in which we respond to those around us. Perhaps like me, the seasons determine your colors, which I’m given to believe is a good thing. I rather like the idea of being a whole spectrum of colors as opposed to being a monotonous stream of only one or two. Whether such things matter is not the true import of my discourse here however. As Guillemets suggests we truly do need time to slow down, time to rest, time to listen, time to reflect on things for soon we will forge full speed ahead into another year of life that we’ll never get back, that when it’s over will never afford us more chances to change, that when it’s spent will never allow us more time to become all that we are meant to be, that when it ends will never give us other opportunities to forgive, to love, to find and bring peace. So when I find myself grumbling about the grays of sunless, winter days, I tell myself that perhaps they happen because the color gray is a good back drop for discerning the true colors of life, the unmasked face of the world, and our authentic reflection upon its stage.

A year of beauty. A year of plenty.
A year of planting. A year of harvest.
A year of healing. A year of vision.
A year of passion. A year of rebirth.
A year of peace.

This year may we renew the earth.
Let it begin with each step we take.
And let it begin with each change we make.
And let it begin with each chain we break.
And let it begin every time we awake.
~Edited poem by Starhwak

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. ~Psalm 90:12   ✝

**Image via Pinterest

1019. There’s not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice. ~John Calvin

by

19

We were always intoxicated with color,
with words that speak of color,
and with the sun that makes colors live.
~Andre Derain

Screen Shot 2015-12-27 at 4.33.30 PM.png

By filling the earth with color the Lord has painted a kind of portrait of himself, and in so doing He has revealed an intentional path to His throne. This is no less true in winter for color is a continuous, rhythmic part of the mystery of God’s life and thus is deeply rooted in all four seasons. Winter may allow periodic breathing spaces for garden and gardener on forbidding days, cold and lacking in sunshine, but on days when the sun does make an appearance, there’s the usual soft, golden glow at sunrise, the sometimes pinky/purply bands low on the eastern horizon at day’s end, and the random blazing red and orange streaks of intensely tinted sunsets in the west. On occasional cloudless nights, there’s the white glow of the moon at times illuminating the deep indigo canopy overhead; on days when the bright yellow sun shines, there are the china blues of daytime skies, and when the sun doesn’t appear, there are the lovely, velvety grays of clouds filled with rain or  in rolling fogs or mists. I’ve heard winter called the season of drabness of the spirit yet I find bliss and hope not only in the things I’ve already mentioned but also in the reds of winter berries and the cardinals at the feeders, in the white of snow when it falls, in the silvery sparkles of icicles and frosts, in the constancy of green on hollies, conifers, spruces, and such, in the beiges and browns of dried grasses, autumn leaves, and seed pods, in the magenta of hyacinth bean seed pods or ornamental grass seed heads, and on and on it goes, the glorious, never ending sacred voice of color.

Of all God’s gifts to the sighted man,
color is the holiest, the most divine…
~John Ruskin

…for God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable. ~Romans 11:29  ✝

**Images and collage by Natalie

 

939. Silence is the universal refuge… ~Henry David Thoreau

by

15

When I am alone I can become invisible.
I can sit on top of a dune as motionless as an
uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned.
I can hear the almost unhearable sound
of the roses singing.
~Mary Oliver

Screen Shot 2015-11-10 at 6.21.06 PM

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free. Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
~John O’Donohue

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. ~Matthew 11:15 (ESV)  ✝