Complimentary Colors

Blue and orange are complimnentary colors. That means that they are opposite from each other on the color wheel...opposite ends of a circle that connects all the colors. It also means that when they are mixed together - i.e. as in blending paint - they dull each other. However, if they are placedside by side in their pure forms, they intensify each other.

One of the hardest things to paint well is the sky, and one of the hardest skies to paint is a sunset sky. Last night, I was on a ferry traversing Puget Sound in Northwest Washington. As the dark mounded islands slipped by, the sun was setting. Blue and orange, held suspended together, seemingly blended, yet brilliant and distinguishable in both their pure colors oflight fading to evening gray.
Nature can do that. Hold the opposites in perfectly balanced and mingled harmony...distinct, yet intimately blended. It's an astounding feat.

As I watched the sky, I was mindful of having just finished a week visiting one side of my family, and being headed toward another week of visiting the other side of my family. Two sides...as different as blue and orange. I fit into them both. The trick always is to stay autonomous enough to compliment and brighten the effects of being togehter...and not so blended and enmeshed as to dull ourselves or each other. It indeed is an astounding feat if we can pull it off. Sometimes I'm blue in an orange family, sometimes I'm orange...and vice versa. Sometimes we get a smattering of purple in there, and even green.

I think we've gotten better at it over the years. Sometimes we lapse into a hazy gray, or even a darkening thunderstorm of heat and high pressure, and sometimes we glow in a unified sunny day. But, if, when we are all together, we can manage a sunset of closely mingled, yet not completely mixed, complimentary blues and oranges, purples and yellows, red and greens...it is quite simply... asounding. A gift. A blessing.

Coming into Focus

There's an exercise that I have my watercolor students do in mid-session that I use for an illustration of INSIGHT. They find a magazine photo of their choice, crumple it up, glue it on the center of a piece of watercolor paper. Then, employing the various techniques that they've learned so far in our class, they extend the picture out from the photo onto the rest of the paper.

It's an exercise that helps train their eyes to see a scene from a perspective of "how can I get that effect in watercolor?" When they finish, often they have a better sense of how to employ the new techniques. It also can produce a final product that creates an illusion of moving from blurriness to being in focus. So, as they have painted from the inner photo outward...the final piece draws the viewer's eye from outward to inward focus.

One of my students very wisely observed that we often need to be "crumpled up" before we can gain insight! I definately can relate!

I'm in Day 5 of my True Color rediscovery and reshaping...my food plan has been good so far. I've managed to stay away from white processed foods, and eaten varieties of color. I'm also trying to use color (since I love it so much!) as a substitute "palette." Rather than the sense of taste and the palette of my mouth...I'm trying to use my eyes and what pleases my aestetic sensibilities.

I'm trying to find ways to "come into focus" in the center of my life, so I can extend that focus outward...like the watercolor paintings. I hope the result will be for others to look with me, and find their blurry ambiguities can become more focused as well.

Technicolor

My second day of my living my True Colors began again with a plunge into the aqua blue of the pool. I found an exception to my colorful food, and that is the white of some dairy. Oh well. True Colors look more intense and pleasing when contrasted with some neutrals. Other than that, the food colors were good. Lots more greens, oranges, reds of fruits and vegetables today.

I spent much of the day working on a sermon series based on the 1939 classic movie Wizard of Oz. As I poured over clips to the movie, I watched the transitions from the dusty sepia tones of tornado-ravaged Kansas, to the moment Dorothy opens the old farmhouse door on the intensely-saturated colors of Munchkin Land in the merry old land of Oz. Technicolor was progressing, and was later enhanced by modern digital processes.

Moving from the shadowy contrasts of blacks and grays and whites to vivid technicolor is what I'm hoping for in life right now. I feel as though I've been asleep or in a lethargic fog for a while...able to function alright...but dealing with life in the darks and lights of the sepia tones. I want to wake up and open my front door to a world of technicolor. In a black-and-white world, you may be able to see the Yellow Brick Road enough to follow it...but what would really be the point? It's just a whitish spiral on the ground. But, in Technicolor, it stands out. It invites us to journey, to adventure, to a hopeful fulfillment of our dreams and aspirations.

In past recent years, my life adopted the cyclone-swept tones of movie Kansas. It's time to rediscover and recreate the Technicolor!

The Plunge

I'm starting today...again. Restarting. Taking the Plunge. I'm visioning my True Colors. I'm going to stop thinking about weight and pounds...losing or gaining...and think about True Colors. Am I being my best and truest self? Truly who I want to be?

For some reason, over the last number of years, my body has decided that it needs to be bigger. I don't know why...yet, I have been powerless to stop it. I'm topping 240 lbs, and I think this really has to be big enough. In fact, it's not serving me very well, hence, today, I take the plunge to begin the reshaping process. But, I know this has to be a different process than it ever has been. Whatever the old tried and true was, no longer works. So, I thought of blogging.

My True Colors do not include being a compulsive slave to my food. So, today, I am letting go of the foods I am addicted to. Sugar and refined flour. These things have no color in them. They are devoid of color, and therefore not true for me at all. Hmm...A very interesting thought. What if I were to give up all foods with no color? I'll call it my True Color food plan.

So, I know what my True Colors are NOT...now, what ARE they?



I swam this morning. It was the first time I had exercised in quite awhile. Swimming is my favorite exercise. Actually it is the only form of exercise that I'm even halfway interested in. I love to swim. I think it's probably the weightlessness of it. I grew up swimming in pools and lakes. So, swimming reminds me of many, many happy places and times.

Now, it is a way I can get my heart rate up without feeling like I'm dying of heat, or exertion, or racking my joints. When I swim, I befriend my body. I can feel how it likes to move, to stretch, to
work out the tightness of muscles. My body can tell me what it needs. I can be serious with doing laps, or I can be playful.

Swimming is definately a True Color for me. Aqua blue, of course.

Searching for True Colors

I’m keeping it short. That will be the challenge, but that was the advice. I tend to get long-winded when I write, but I also have trouble getting started and keeping going. I stall out somewhere in the middle, never to be heard from again.

I’m an overweight, middle-aged, menopausal woman. I am a minister in the midst of a multiple-year midlife crisis. Not a crisis really, rather a muddle -- a midlife muddle. I am also a cultivator of mystery. All of this means that presently, I don’t really know if I am coming or going, but wherever I’m going I’m moving slower than I should with more aches than I use to have, and I’m doubtful I really will find any answers yet I still have some semblance of faith in it all. I am searching for my true colors. I had them, but I lost them somewhere along the way. Or, maybe they simply changed hue and now I don’t recognize them. I’ve always been able to best discover myself in writing…so I’ll try again at rediscovery.