Creation in Six Swatches

Butter yellow,

the colour of the first word unfurling, photons scattering to form the universe, messengers heralding life. It is the ribbon of a gift: aroha massaged into every atom. Butter yellow. Not sour but soft, tender like Spring, warm like milk and honey cookies, a tapestry of tiny cells, a septillion stars settling in place, delicious sunlight in a garden on a walk with a friend.

Another colour:

Grey,

like ash smeared on the faces of mourners. The colour of betrayal and of withering. Drain water. A shut door. My dead dog. Grey, it’s almost the absence of colour. Smog that clouds vision. The wicked stain of amnesia. It is an endless cemetery, tombstones carved with infinite names, your enemy, your mother, your friend: without vision the people perish.

Indigo,

deep, velvety—even unsure. Tottering between blue and purple and black, like bruises: indigo. Did it fall off the rainbow? Was it too heavy for the sky to hold? It longs, waits; with every tear it aches. Under each word and frail hope, it groans. It is four centuries of silence. It is also a man on his knees in a garden.

Pink, almost orange,

like the contour of clouds at sunset. Like the blushing of shame or the rawness of a hand-marked cheek. It stings, but it also says “stay a while” and “look again”. You do, and you see that it is the colour of compassion, worn on a face once forgotten. A pink that pierces the longer you look. Who is this?, you wonder. And faintly you recall dappled light in the cool of the day.

Green;

it is hard to find a shade of green that is not lurid or neon or false like turf. This green is found in the leaves of the kahikatea as the light illuminates them. Only the sun can create this particular shade. It is earthy. It is local. It is the croak of a voice in the morning, timid, testing, strengthening. It is the now-and-not-yet. The yes-and. The shimmer that speaks of all that has come and all that is yet to be.

Finally,

White,

not crisp like a sheet, but full, saturated, pregnant with every colour, like the opalescence of a butterfly’s wing, the sound of wedding bells. It is forgetting oneself in the chorus that cries “holy”. It is the city lit by her Creator. By this light, every face looks beautiful and every heart delights. Of course, it is not white. Beyond our spectrum, or bumbling descriptions, it is the kaleidoscope, the colour that holds all colours. It is glory, like no eye has seen.

It is to see, untainted. To see all as it is. To see and to say “oh” and “amen”.