Pay Attention to the Green

The Easter Season is ended with its overflow feasts of Pentecost, Trinity and Corpus Christi, and the Church returns to Ordinary Time. Its liturgical color is green. St. Victor said simply in the 12th century, "Green is the most beautiful of all colors." Perhaps he had in mind the enormous variety of green shades. And the 13th century Bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne said, "Green is halfway between white, which dilates the eyes, and black, which makes them contract, creating a calm sensation, especially when viewed in great expanse." 

Well, much of nature's green "great expanse" has been chopped down, clawed up and paved over — so we must catch the green wherever we still might see it. Crawling along in traffic and looking left or right for a moment, we might see a tree that remains alive and lovely in its calming green.

Today, a green light means GO! Perhaps the Church is telling us — now go and do something wonderful with all of the prayers, songs, sermons, sights and sounds you've encountered these weeks since Easter Sunday. GO!

Green also symbolizes hope. The little person's voice at the end of the St. Jude's Hospital for Children ad says: "Hope means never, ever giving up."  We don't have to be Christian to have hope, but knowing Christ's bright, Easter rising suggests (as opposed to being cynics) we ought to be a people who are good at living in hope. 

The Medievalists said of green, it is the color which symbolizes rebirth, life, nature, spring and eternal life. Come September, October, and most of November, I may be tempted to boredom with all the green weeks. But green, of many kinds (look at the detail of the antique vestment here) is packed with many meanings. It's an invitation to thoughtful awareness. 

Green Means Grow

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.

Returning to the Green Time

IT WILL BE A GOOD WHILE YET before we see green like this, nevertheless, the Church returns to the Green Time now that the Feasts of Christmas, Holy Family, Epiphany and the Lord's Baptism are passed. Green is the symbol of freshness. We can all understand that - we see the sixteen wheeler with "Delivering Farm Fresh Produce" proclaimed on the side. Each school semester invites a fresh start. A couple setting out together after a time of hurt understands fresh start as well.

A problem for religion is when its rituals, vocabulary and theology becomes stale or even dead - when the culture hasn't got a clue what the religion is talking about because the religion has lost its freshness. Say the word Nativity to too many Americans under the age of sixty and it's clear they have no idea what's being referenced. Believe it!

Kathleen Norris addresses this in her book, Amazing Grace, where she re-articulates the meanings of many dozens of spiritual-religious words that have become alienating of spirit-deadening jargon. One of those words is salvation. What's that? Just that I'll go to heaven (what's that?) if I'm good, obedient and have claimed "Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior" (more jargon!)

For the Christian, green is the color of hope for salvation. Hope is a noun but it is also a verb - it's an action word meaning to trust that God will act - will act for my salvation. Kathleen Norris reminds us that the Hebrew origin of salvation means to make wide: that I can find myself in scary, tight places where I'm in inner danger, where I can't be productive, where I'm devolving or inhibited, silenced by fears, compromised..... Salvation is coming to the wider place where I am able to be more fully human and alive, as God made me to be.

A boy who had done very bad things and who lived in a very dark place tapped his forehead in front of me once and said, "Father, this is my neighborhood and it's a bad neighborhood to go in to." If he said that with a sense of having to get out of that narrow, dangerous inner neighborhood, then salvation has started in him.

I need to get out of this angry mindset.

I need to get away from this dangerous company.

I need to avoid that troublesome person.

I need to get free of this life and joy-stealing addiction.

I need to unburden myself of  this energy-wasting resentment.

I need help with this depression.

I need advice with this nagging problem.

I need to find a happier path.

I need to observe the speed limit.

I need to listen more carefully ~ make time for my children.

I need to lose some weight.

I need to get honest.

So this Sunday, if you go to a church that features liturgical colors and you see the green - consider the meaning of salvation - finding the wider way.

P.S. Jesus' injunction to enter through the narrow gate is another conversation.