Beholding (Pink)

I am not a fisherman but I loved the book (and movie), A River Runs Through It. (Side note - I’m also reading Pete Nunnally’s new book called Catching Hope: The Spiritual Wisdom of Fishing¹ and finding it speaking to me in so many ways). Anyway...both the book and the movie of River begins with this same incredible line.

In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.

I have adapted that line for many other settings over the years and especially for this week...

In my seeing this week, there was often no clear line between pink and a host of other colors.

At what point does pink start to be more orange and when does it move into purple? I’ve since made this photo, from a few weeks ago, the background for my devices — it captures exactly that question.

At what point does the pink that is peeking out of the blue/grey clouds become red or orange or purple? I think that’s the beauty of spectrum thinking and living. Spectrum helps us to recognize that few things are clearly this or that, a or b, black or white. But instead they all exist along a spectrum, where something might be more ‘this’ than ‘that’ while still holding some ‘that’ within the ‘this.’

On my first day of beholding pink, I ran into this exact issue when I saw some flowers out on my walk. I wasn’t 100% sure if they were purple or pink but they were more on a spectrum of those two wonderful colors. Interestingly, as you’ll see below, my first pink photo didn’t end up being that one. It’s how these things go. But the question remains the same and is then evident in what you’ll see from another photo below. This is part of the practice of beholding... paying attention to what is there and honestly engaging what we are receiving from the world around us.

In her post this past Monday, my friend Arianne Braithwaite Lehn shared a quote along these lines from Alice Walker’s book The Color Purple. Arianne writes:

Along those lines, paying attention and being mindful ~ One of my favorite books is “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker, and within it, there’s a line from the character Shug who says, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.” Paying attention is prayer and pure devotion, friends.²

You could easily swap out any other color for purple in the quote but the color isn’t the important part of it. The important part is the awareness and the beholding. And in that awareness we can engage questions such as “is that pink” or “is that purple” or “is it some of both”?

Here are my pink beholdings for the week.

Wednesday - this is my all-time favorite lego set I've ever built. And it does the coolest thing in our basement. When I turn the LED lights to just blue, you can see what happens. And there's a LOT of pink throughout

Thursday - Is it pink or is it purple? Is it both?

Friday - Is it pink? Is it orange? Is it orangy-pink?

Saturday - So there's just a tiny bit of pink in this. Or is it red?

Saturday - apologies in advance if you are a vegetarian, but this is one of the pork butts that were smoked for dinner. Nothing like the pink smoke ring...yum...

Sunday - there was a beautiful reflected sunrise happening at this exact moment but when I looked more to the west I saw what looked to me like feathers of pink against the slowly blue-ing sky...

Monday - I honestly couldn't choose between these two (and they were literally 10 feet from each other). I loved the homemade art and the messages and then the subtle pink on the pin stuck on the utility pole

Tuesday - Tongue out tuesday! Scout wanted to get in on the act she's showing off her big pink tongue (and I had to join in as well)

And one more of Scout…that sunrise where there were “pink feathers” in the western sky? Well, if you look really closely, you’ll see the eastern morning horizon reflected in Scout’s right eye here as well as some of the pink color of the morning

So, how did you behold pink this week?

Interestingly, the randomizer that shuffled all my colors resulted in two shades of blue over the next two weeks. Cyan this week and then full-on blue the next!

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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1. Fr Pete the Wilderness Priest

2. Monday Manna