Noticing (Orange)

For the next year or so, I’m going to see a lot of orange as I go out of my house. I wish it was because we had a bunch of orange trees in our yard but it is because our street is undergoing major construction. The main water line has already been replaced but then they are going to be repaving the whole road, adding new gutters and sidewalks, etc. It will be great when its done but it is going to be a mess until we get to the finish line. In the meantime, LOTS of orange signs and cones and workers wearing orange - my noticing color for the last week.

Last week, when intro-ing the color red, I shared that I had a rather conflicted relationship with that color. Orange is quite different sports-wise as my beloved Denver Broncos’ colors are orange and blue. Similarly, as I now live in Cincinnati, orange is all over the place for the colors (along with black) of the Cincinnati Bengals.

Orange is the next color in the rainbow after red so it flows from red and flows into yellow - hence how the color orange emerges as the mixing of red and yellow. As you’ll see in my noticings this week, there also isn’t “one” orange. There’s a spectrum of what is considered orange.

Orange also has deeply varying meanings. It generally speaks to energy, enthusiasm, and happiness but it also has a sense of warning / danger. The signs I noted above on my street are orange to draw peoples’ attention to be sure they know they are in a work zone to keep the workers safe (as well as those traveling through). Orange is also a color that hunters and outdoorspeople are to wear to be sure that others can see them.

Orange is also the color for one of the leading gun-safety movements in the United States - wearorange.org is the website for Everytown for Gun Safety and drew the inspiration from the tragic story of Hadiya Pendleton. Quoting from the website:

On January 21, 2013, marched in President Obama’s second inaugural parade. One week later, Hadiya was shot and killed on a playground in Chicago. Soon after this tragedy, Hadiya’s friends commemorated her life by wearing orange, the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others.

Wear Orange honors Hadiya and the nearly 130 people shot and killed every day in the United States, along with the hundreds more who are wounded and the countless others whose lives have been changed by gun violence.

I personally wear orange each year on National Gun Violence Awareness Day in honor (this year it is June 5) and will continue to work and advocate for common-sense gun safety in our country.

Orange also has a deeply spiritual side to it. However, in my Christian tradition, orange isn’t a regularly used color. There isn’t an orange liturgical season (our primary liturgical colors are blue/purple, green, white, and red). Similarly as far as I could find, there is nowhere in the Bible where the word “orange” is used either to refer to a color or to the fruit. When doing an internet search about this, I found one website that came up called “30 Powerful Verses about the Color Orange.” However, none of them were directly related to orange, but instead it was just a ploy to pull in traffic and put out a bunch of Bible verses that (with some imagination) could connect to the meaning of the color. Interestingly though, the church that I serve now (ResoundingJoy Church) has orange as one of its primary colors in the logo because of a sense of warmth, energy, and vitality.

But that is not to say that other religious traditions are the same. In the Buddhist tradition, orange is a central color. Buddhist monks often wear robes that are bright orange. They’re sometimes referred to as saffron robes because they used to be created by using scraps of cloth that were then dyed in saffron or tumeric infused waters. The meaning with this is tied to simplicity (robes), eschewing material possessions (using cloth scraps), and a connection to the natural world (using natural dyes and colors).

One last orange thing before sharing my noticings for the week. So I have a weird thing I do when I am finishing my daily workouts with a yoga flow. In our basement we have some of those wifi-enabled light bulbs which can emit a wide range of colors. So I generally try to connect the primary color of the yoga teacher’s outfit to the colors in the room (yes I know its weird but it gives a good vibe). Anyway, on Tuesday morning, I pulled up a video for that day and what color was the yogi wearing? Bright orange. So I made the room a nice shade of orange and I did photograph my legs at the end of the flow with an intent to share but it looked rather creepy…so I’m not subjecting you to that…

What does orange mean to you? How did you see orange in the last week?

Next week is a shift away from the traditional spectrum colors - this week ahead is… brown!

Here are my orange noticings ...

Wednesday - I couldn't do a reflection on oranges without a sunrise over the lake. This morning was a bit of a yellow/orange but still orange nonetheless. The sunrise that morning had such a gorgeous glow of that same color

Thursday - This week the bird was early in the week. We had Robins all over our yard after I finished mowing. They are much more cooperative for photos than Cardinals...

Friday - Not sure what it was but it felt like there was orange everywhere on our walk around the neighborhood. A forgotten stocking cap, paint on the sidewalk, utility markings on grass, hazard lights on cars (and also on an orange truck), an orange pole, a mural...everywhere it seemed

Saturday - I went down to the Cincinnati Zoo to see their zoo blooms only to discover that I was about a week late for the peak. But there was one patch of these orange flowers that were just majestic. (There was also a pink flower that if this was pink week, it might have been the featured one)

Sunday - the same tree that started this color thing. Not sure if it was the time of day or whether the leaves are shifting from a red to an orange. But on Sunday morning, they sure looked orange!

Monday - this is one of those photos that a singular moment just won't do. This is one of several buoys that are just before a dam and are there to warn boaters from getting too close. But when I arrived on Monday, there were these beautiful currents of fog rising up and blowing across the waters. So a video is below...

Tuesday - One of the many orange signs along our street for the next year +

Scout with her yellow/orange plush llama whose name is Lugnut

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

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