ROYGBIV

“When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out – because that’s what’s inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.” ~ Wayne Dyer

R. went to graduate school with me… she was tall and willowy, with flowing dark hair. She had a low quiet voice, and corn-flower blue eyes. She looked like I imagined the historical Mother Mary would, if she stepped out of one of her paintings and into modern clothes.

On the first day of our Art-as-Meditation class, R. wore white… all white for painting.

At the end of the session, I looked up from my own work to see her… she had painted these great, swooping, dancing purple curves – graceful and dynamic – and her whites were still pristine.

As I turned away, I caught a glimpse of my own face in the mirror – somehow, in the throws of creation, I had painted it green… my whole face – GREEN.

It was first grade all over again. In first grade C. was the always perfectly put together epitome of femininity. While I was playing kickball with the boys, and spraining my ankles running in clogs, she was sitting knitting quietly… and her knees socks always stayed up.

Mine were always bagged around my ankles… and now my face was green. Some things never change.

But where my 6 year old self hated C. for her perfection in the face of my… not-ness… I admired R. her ability to create while remaining unmarked; I yearned to discover the secrets of her seeming serenity, her quiet way of moving through the world… she appeared to be the epitome of what we think of as “spiritual.”

And me… well… my personality seemed to constantly be bursting out in fits and spurts, evading all my attempts at stillness and quiet.

I went to school for spirituality in large part because I yearned to connect – to find the peace and calm and surety that would come from directly experiencing mystery.

And so far, by my own measure, I was failing…

I mean, c’mon… my FACE was GREEN…

And then I met Hildegard…

Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th century mystic. Dedicated to the church at a young age, she had always been sickly, but then, suddenly, in her early forties, Hildegard began having visions. Her health miraculously recovered and she experienced a surge of creative vitality. She wrote the earliest musical that we have extant; she painted; she wrote amazing manuscripts on the natural world and its connection to spirit. She even wrote letters to all the higher officials in the Church, including the Pope, telling them how they could better do their jobs…
Hildegard was a force to be reckoned with.

The instructor explained her this way, “When you think of the mystics, you think of those blue- green mystics…. Your Francises of Assisi, your Meister Eckharts… but, Hildgegard… well, Hildegard was an orange mystic.”

It was like a bolt from the blue – the sky opened up, and I saw….

“THAT’S WHAT I AM!” I whooped inside my own head, “I’m an ORANGE MYSTIC… sometimes with CHASER LIGHTS!!!!”

Suddenly, my brand of high energy, enthusiastic, questioning searching had a place – a place that had been part of the fabric of spiritual seeking for at least a thousand years, and most definitely long before.

I didn’t have to repress my passion, or stay above the action, or even keep my socks up in order to place my feet firmly on the path of discovery – I could simply be me, and the right doors would open.

And they have.

The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow. ~ Charles R. Brown

“There is no blue without yellow and without orange.” ~ Vincent van Gogh