 |
| new growth ~ soft green on spruce tips |
HAVING COMPLETED the Easter cycle and the subsequent feasts of Trinity and Corpus Christi, we've returned to the long summer weeks of liturgical green. We're being told through color: Now go and grow in these things ~ grow in your own resurrection, up and out of yourself into a new creation.
I'm listening to the many speeches of the many people who are declaring themselves as presidential candidates these days: They are saying the exact same things, making the same promises, using the same cliches and jargon they have been using since I can remember having a vote. New logos but otherwise, same old, same old.
Why is a green question. We seldom ask why because the answer might very well be terribly threatening. That's why there are lots of folks already arrayed against the pope's pending encyclical about environment and climate and global poverty - they fear the pope's thoughts will threaten their (our?) security, power, money, elitism.
Many people won't even consider therapy or counseling because there the essential question is why. We want to answer, "I don't know" hoping it will get us off the hook or end our discomfort.
Personal growth really only happens when we ask why. May your green weeks of ordinary time be a time of why?!
~ ~ ~
But in symbology green is also the color of hope, the second of the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope and Charity. Faith acknowledges and bows before an invisible world: "and so with angels and archangels and all the hosts of heaven we say, holy, holy, holy."
Hope is not to be confused with wishing: "I sure hope there's no traffic...I hope rain doesn't ruin my vacation...I hope this recipe turns out..." Rather, hope means, I entrust myself, my little world and all of creation to God who I trust will act.
And I allow for God to be God ~ and to act as and where and when God will act. It is a very beautiful virtue keeping us from becoming cynics. You can't please a cynic, for whom everything pushes down.
