I have noticed over the years (I bet we all have) that most color images of God end up emphasizing light and even whiteness. The whiteness business may be racist, or at least ethnocentric, but I am reluctant to ascribe the lightness theme to that cause, first because many of the biblical authors who came up with these images were at least olive skinned, and perhaps darker, and second because even in Africa it is possible to find color images of the divine that hearken to the theme of light and even white. I think rather this tendency comes from being a diurnal species whose primary way of relating to the world is through vision, which requires light to work effectively, and often the more the better. Moreover, we have an inordinate attachment to our brains. We gain mastery over our environment first by understanding it, and then by inventing fantastic gizmos which turn that understanding into control. It makes perfect sense therefore that we conflate those two facts about us into color metaphors for God that equate relationship with understanding, and understanding with sight. So, God comes out as pure light, and often pure white.
But ask an owl what color image it most associates with God and I bet euros to field mice that you get something dark, maybe even black. Owls are nocturnal creatures and even though they have excellent eyesight they relate to the world, especially when hunting, more by hearing than vision. So it isn’t much of a guess to suggest that for them God would be the color of the enfolding night that covers, protects and sustains them as they make their way in the world.
I finally admitted to myself a couple of weeks ago as I sang a hymn in church which goes in part: “In Him there is no darkness at all” that I am with owls. I just don’t like that image of God with no darkness. It doesn’t even sound mentally or spiritually healthy to me, though I realize that I have to misinterpret the text in order to conclude that. Certainly light is fine, but too much of it feels Las Vegas strip garish, or more, it feels sterile, cold, even polar to me. Since I long ago gave up trying to understand God – which to me is like an ameba trying to understand a human – the notion of needing enough light to “see” is no longer for me all that relevant a metaphor. The color metaphor that works for me is dark, inky, even black, the deep dark blue of the late summer sky after sunset in those few minutes before the very last bit of light fades, the color of rich black soil whose fecundity you can not only smell and feel, but see. It is precisely the enfolding darkness, the womb-like darkness that doesn’t just surround, but truly envelopes you, that to me is the color of God.
I realize that I am in a very small minority in imagining God in this way; a few mystics maybe and that is about it. But I do wonder how many people are really happy with that “light perpetual” thing. So here is a question, what color is God for you?
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Hi Bill–
Thanks for this post–
I too am ‘with the owls’…one of my favorite books a few years back was "Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna" by China Galland. It traces the black goddess theme in a real-life story of leaving religious roots and traveling, both in outer and inner geography, to return to the mystical roots (in this case, of Christianity).
This post seems related to your first blog post: "Eyes of the World" about your opening to Celtic…earth-based Christian experience of the world. Earth is nigredo, dense, fertile, loamy, rooted.
How are you seeing this earthiness at play in your daily life? In your ministry? It feels like soulfulness from here–how about there?
I will be delighted to post this piece to the upcoming carnival on engaged spirituality. Thank you for ‘thinking out loud’ on your blog, Bill.
Beth, VTH Host
Certainly, darkness, night, and even agnosticism (or what I would prefer to call "Holy Agnosis") are essential strands of the apophatic tradition, exemplified by such visionaries as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, John of the Cross, and the anonymous author of "The Cloud of Unknowing." For me, the contemplative journey is about learning to listen for the whispers of the Divine Lover in both the light and the dark. In doing so, we are brought to the mysterious beauty of each.
Thanks for your comments. Mccolman is of course right, that a healthy spirituality "listens" – a metaphor that emphasizes the owl-way- for God in both the light and the dark. But my path has meandered around to the point where I my spirutality is increasingly apophatic. "taste and touch and vision, to discern thee fail" is not quite my mantra, but I think it true.
Beth, you have given me a new book to read. I must find it soon and get started. The way this is all playing out in my life is my increasingly strong sense that if I want to find God, I best be about discovering my own true humanity, and be about as well the business of honoring the humanity of all those about me. Which is essentially what Ira Progroff says about the essential message of "The Cloud of the Unknowing" in his introduction to it in the edition I have.
Hi Bill–I sent you an email with info about the book ‘Longing for Darkness". Your post also reminded me of another small but powerful true narrative, "I Heard the Owl Call My Name" by Margaret Craven. It is a graceful homage to a vanishing way of life. It is the story of a young vicar named Mark, sent to a remote Kwakiutl village in the 1930′s I think, not knowing he has less than three years to live. In the village, Mark comes to understand the Kwakiutl Indians around him and sees how their traditions are being destroyed through the influence of white culture. The selflessness of the Kwakiutls and the beauty of running salmon, tall trees, and tribal festivals are remarkable. Mark becomes a part of the Kwakiutl world, learning its language and ways, until finally "Time had lost its contours. He seemed to see it as the raven or the bald eagle, flying high over the village, must see the part of the river that had passed the village, that had not yet reached the village, one and the same." The owl is, of course, also the symbol for being called by death. And that’s part of the story as well. I think it’s a story that will touch your heart and quicken your humanity…
I’m going to have to also vote for the China Galland book. Wow… what a travelogue into the black interior of God. I was blessed to have been given it as a gift and have since loaned it out to another seeker of the heart of God.
Bill, you talk about owls and how they relate more to the world through their sense of hearing… thank you so much for that piece. It’s a reminder that we tend to conceptualize God through visualizing. We talk about seeing the face of God, or seeing Christ in one another. And although that may be a metaphor, it’s not a particularly helpful one when you’re an owl. I have a feeling an owl doesn’t visualize much of anything.
I know people who enjoy getting up in the morning… although they have always confused me. The night has always worked better for me… you stop looking because you simply cannot see, and you start listening. The hush of the night (which isn’t silence) is where I experience God the most.
We started out this life in darkness… in the womb. And my particular understanding of human development tells me that we experienced God in that darkness… so it makes sense that we would want to go back to darkness to experience God.
Carnival on Engaged Spirituality! When I thought about hosting the first Engaged Spirituality Carnival,
In my experience the color of God is a “black and white” issue. God is both the absence of color and the reflection of all colors and we give both conditions names that artists use. I say, “in my experience” because one night while trying to get to sleep during a third descent into personal pain (darkness, blackness) I told God that despite all my attempts to do right, nothing I did worked and I was giving up and dumping everything into His lap. He “told me,” “It’s about time!” A light appeared in my dark bedroom and it was frightening enough that I couldn’t open my eyes (I am saying that it was as if someone had turned the room light on with a rheostat). And then the light went away (as if the rheostat was turned down), leaving me in my dark (colorless) bedroom. I opened my eyes, turned the light on, looked around, turned the light off, and experienced a peace that surpasses my ability to understand.
This was not a dream. I was not asleep. It could have been the result of the body chemistry associated with stress and pain. It is way over my head and pay-grade to understand the origins of such things, but I can tell you that the light was as visible as the darkness, and the peace was physical: I slept. The “Color” was “black and white.”
Hi Ken–
Thanks for sharing your liminal experience…it reminds me of what I remember about Bill Wilson’s experience (founder of Alcoholics Anonymous).
"My depression deepened unbearably, and finally it seemed to me as though I were at the bottom of a pit. I still gagged badly at the notion of a Power greater than myself, but finally, just for the moment, the vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, ‘If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything, anything!’ Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, ‘So this is the God of the preachers!’ A great peace stole over me and I thought, ‘No matter how wrong things seem to be, they are right. Things are all right with God and His world.’"
So…that’s not a color…but it brought about the most powerful blue book in the history of books, and this experience has helped millions of otherwise hopeless humans believe…just a little, just enough.
Thanks for sharing your ‘colorful’ story, Ken…
Beth
Thanks, Ken, very much for your offering of that experience. As is often the case, your statement is more powerful than the blog that elicited it.