True Colors of Faith: Blue

Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
Well I don't think so
But I'm gonna take a look around it though
Blue, I love you

I've mentioned before that I often have hymns running as the background sound track to my life. It isn't quite as frequent as it once was, but it is often there, and making itself known. But when I started thinking about the color blue, "Come, Labor On" had to give way to one of my favorite divas of the Sixties and Seventies fame: Joni Mitchell and her song, "Blue".



The searching of the self does involve a lot of blue. At least it has for me. When I receive massage, blue is often the color that predominates the kaleidoscope visions that I have. And the blue has spoken to me as a representation of whatever might be melancholy in my life. Or it has been the insight into one of my own core issues: communication. Odd, maybe, to think that someone who was a public radio reporter for as long as I was would have trouble with communication. It's not that I have trouble as much as it is the tendancy in the past to have my fifth chakra, the throat chakra, close down and prevent me from speaking my truth.

Speaking one's truth is never, ever easy. Because too often, the hearer isn't interested in "the truth". How many times have you answered the question, "How are you?" with a smile and "Oh, fine."? Secretly, though, you are anything but fine. Maybe you're angry, or frustrated, or nervous, or just tired. Regardless, "fine" ain't what you are, and yet that's how you've answered the question. Often times, I think we say "Fine" because we don't want to have to explain the rest.

But to those of us who are LGBT, how many times did we answer questions about our lives where we deliberately hid the truth? Or how many times did we see the truth of ourselves right before our eyes, and deliberately shoved it under to prevent dealing with it? And at what personal cost to ourselves and our friends and family?
How many times did we or do we continue to answer that we're "fine"?

The prophets in the Old Testament are great teachers to us of what it takes to speak your truth... or rather... the truth of God. The story of Nathan dressing down King David for setting up the death of Uriah so he could have his wife Bathsheba to himself comes to mind. It takes some guts to tell the King, the handsome King, that he's been a no-good philandering jackass (OK, that's not how Nathan said it, but he might have done it that way if he lived today). Many of the prophets, worried about how to speak, found that God gifted them by putting the words in their mouths.

Thinking on blue, think of how God could use a few more in the world communicating the message that this Love is for real. And it really, truly is free... and it really, truly, absolutely includes all comers... no matter their race, gender, creed, religion, or sexual orientation. And then speak your truth!