Now, how did it all begin?
When we tell a story, we usually tell it backwards, with full knowledge of how it turned out. The apostles did this, after Jesus had died and he kept showing up. Archaic civilizations did this, trying to explain the beginnings so they could explain the meanings of things later.
But, let’s begin with Leah. I only knew Leah after the accident. There was a fire and she lost her only child. She struggled with depression for a long time. Someone handed me this note she had written them one evening in a lesser state of melancholy:
I am alone tonight, but somehow I feel positive about the future. As children,
we all heard about the rainbow and the pot of gold. Nobody told us that the
tricky part was that we had to paint our own rainbow from the colors we had
been given. I have had to learn that, in our search, we also have a choice –
we can stay under a cloud, or we can get busy and find our rainbow. I have
decided that I have stayed under a cloud long enough and now I must
begin creating my own rainbow.
Please know I love you,
Leah
This is a creation story of sorts. Leah allowed the ferment in her soul to swirl and incubate in darkness until the light of color could break through and rouse her.
She sat with the black, the dark of depression and loss, until the red of her passion for life could bleed through. She discovered the red in the black and worked with that until the colors of her life turned vibrant again. The slow emergence of healing stirred within her and showed her how to live with tragedy and loss.
Leah created a life, so to speak, from the broken pieces of her struggle, from the rainbow colors she had. Complaining, comparing, bargaining would not help. After sitting in darkness long enough, she discovered in it the light, what she needed to get on with her work.
She understood, after much suffering, that the rainbow is enough. Living with our daily struggle and creating a life within it — finding purpose, meaning within it — is enough. We don’t need the gold at the end. Living is the prize.
Discovering eyes to see beyond the obvious color dealt us to the hidden, emerging color within it allows for healing and transformation. We deal with the circumstance of the moment, we mix our own colors, until something emerges from it that allows us to connect with something larger than our struggle, larger than ourselves.
Leah thought the power outside of her – the fire that could destroy – was greater than the power inside of her – her resilience, her capacity to find reasons for hope in the broken pieces of her life. Sitting in the darkness, she discovered within her all she needed to create purpose and meaning in the life now before her.
The pot of gold turns out to be not some elusive elixir of the god of happiness, but our own capacity to create, from the circumstances of the present moment, the seeds for a satisfied life.
If we look for this gold outside ourselves – in success, in safety, in someone else — we cannot draw on the power of our own colors, blinded as we are by the glare of our discontent.
There is no one way to create a rainbow, to have a full life. We can move at the speed of our own creative spirit. We can work with our colors in as many patterns and formations as our soul dictates. There are as many colors in our color spectrum as there are feelings in our heart.
Creating a life is creating this capacity to see the red in the black, even when no one else can. It is learning how to call out the best in us even in the worst of times. We know the sorrow we feel now contains the joy we know is in us.
Creating a life is discovering the green of our life force in the blues of our not-having-it-all. We know having does not nurture our being. We know that, if we work them and wait, new color will emerge out of our present ones.
Life, whatever else it can be, is struggle. Our rainbow colors teach us that, out of the struggle we experience now, a deep wisdom and resilience and paradigm emerges that will help us embrace the black moments when they come around for us one more time.
Leah found the power within her depression to see to the other side. She created a life, not out of what she thought her life would be, but out of what it was.
In this sense, beginnings are everywhere, like openings into the forest that take us on our own individual journey. The colors of our life become revelatory, sacred images of the God-energy within us, calling us forth.