Purple

When I came home on Friday I cam home to the first flowers of spring bursting forth. I find it interesting that each spring at least in my yard the color of the flowers are purple. Purple is historically the color of royalty but also for Christians the color of lent.

Purple was the color of royalty because it was a hard dye to make and cost a lot of money due to the time it took to create it. I tend to look at how long it took for the bulbs and seeds to generate there energy to create the blooms that bring me such joy and think how they came from the seemingly dead earth but yet are alive. We place purple on our worship spaces on ash Wednesday. Well I am not sure of the ‘official answer’ to why we do this I think it is because we are awaiting. We know the end to the story, that God was seemingly dead but came to prove that everything that we had assumed was wrong. That a royal had come not to keep there kin-dom to themselves but rather to share, so we all could be clothed in the purple of royalty.

I am also drawn to think about one of my favorite movies(I confess I have not read the book, woe to me I know) The Color Purple. Purple is a huge theme that runs through this book along with God. Purple for the main character has associated purple with negative things. A mistress/lover of her husband through their time together shows her that life rather needs to be celebrated. When they discuss this they are in a purple field of lowers and says "You must look at all the good and acknowledge them because God placed them all on earth". After this she comes to learn to love herself and to love God.

Purple for me is a sign of life, just as much as red is a sign of the spirit. Maybe if we think differently we can seek to see the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

Considering Other Voices

For my New Testement class, I am writing a midterm where I dare to consider the other voices that are related to the authentic Pauline letters.  Well it is fun to imagine what the women of Corinth might have said to Paul (Paul, take a hike we are done having bake sales for missions) or what Philemon might say to Paul (I’m troubled that you think that I would mistreat a salve).  It is important to think what our writings today also say and who’s voices we do not hear.

            I also just finished Sara and the author Marek Halter, dares to think in the first installment of a series what was Sara doing when she was still Sari. Why did she do the things she does in the Bible.  Well I was not pleased with how he handled some of the fillers for the parts of the story we do know (the Binding of Isaac, her death). I valued that he yes a he dared to take a listen to the text between the texts. He also writes about Zipporah, Wife of Moses Lilith and Mary mother of God.  I cannot wait to read the other ones in the series!

            He describes himself in the author interview as a storyteller and the Jewish faith has a long standing tradition of expanding the stories in the Hebrew Bible in a Midrash( Living with contradiction). They fills in many gaps left in the biblical narrative regarding events and personalities that are only hinted at  Do we dare to write the stories of those outside the written and accepted text? Do we even think about them, consider them and the impact they have on our understanding? 

           

      If we dare to think about the ‘other’ does this now mean that we must act differently towards the other. To think that these stories and letters are not just fables but rather discuss issues that our ancestors had then and we still have now. But maybe if we think about them we can find ways to solve some of the problems from the ways that it did not work out for our ancestors.