Embracing the orange…

I have lived my life in the deep comfort of black and gray. Perhaps that is what spoke to my

spirit about the Pacific Northwest. There was a strange sense of belonging that emerged when embraced by thick blankets of fog or rain which perhaps mimicked my own inner landscape.

That landscape was formed in the Salinas Valley where I was bussed from the proverbial “wrong side of the tracks” to the high school populated by the sons and daughters of the small town movers and shakers. To further alienate myself, I wore some version of gray and black my whole freshman year.

Even now, over five decades later, on the rare occasion I actually go clothing shopping, I often announce to helpful clerks, “Do not let me purchase anything in black or gray,” as it litters my meager closet in many forms.

But we are leaving the Northwest now for a desert climate, having sold our home of thirty five years. This had led to scanning homes daily until one showed up worthy of an offer, which was recently accepted.

I loved everything we saw in the pictures of our soon to be new home except one thing… the orange accent wall in the kitchen- an accent wall to further highlight a small row of equally orange and lime green trim tiles in the open design kitchen.

A real estate agent explained that perhaps the effect of the tiles could be mitigated by painting over the orange wall with a tan or beige, minimizing the visual impact. And yet, as I further studied the pictures, I began to wonder if there was a lesson to be learned in keeping the orange wall.

All my life, I have embraced colors that blend well in the background. While blacks and grays can symbolize elegance and mystery, for me these tones have reflected the bleakness and lifelong low level of depression that have colored my inner landscape all these decades.

Black and gray…colors that avoid attention.

But now, the orange loomed on the horizon. What to do? Paint over the wall ? Replace the row of accent tiles?

Or, what if I simply let myself be open to the unfamiliar and unsettling orange.

Curious, I looked up the symbolism of color and was surprised to discover this:

Orange is the color of enthusiasm and emotion.

Orange exudes warmth and joy providing emotional strength.

Orange is optimistic and uplifting and adds spontaneity and positivity. Orange encourages social communication and creativity.

Orange is youthful and energetic.

Looking at the list, I began to wonder: What if, in making peace with the orange wall, I would be embracing my truer self?

In my heart, I knew the answer.

I want to be the orange girl…

Not the girl who hides in the shadows…

Not the girl trying to be small and unseen so as not to be hurt again.

Not the girl with the constant inner voice of despair and retreat.

No…I want to be the orange girl…

The one who steps fearlessly into the bright light of a desert sun.

The one who views the sparse desert landscape and calls it beautiful.

The one willing to slough off her shadowed self and, grow, like the desert inhabitants, into life in a new skin.

I want to be the orange girl…

Released from the sea…

In July of 1974, the Adventuress greeted me at the dock at Shilshole Marina, along with a troop of Girl Scouts with whom I had traveled by bus from Colorado for a weeklong sail from Seattle to Victoria. She was then a 60 year old, 133 foot double masted schooner, whose claim to fame was having the tallest mast on a schooner in the United States.

Had it not been for leading music at an event at my Colorado hometown I would not have been there, being a broke college graduate, but the sponsor of the event paid my way if I agreed to bring my guitar. And so, I found myself boarding her gleaming wood decks and settling in with the scouts to be her crew on the open Salish Sea.

One week later, we returned to the dock and within two weeks, I had quit my job and moved to Seattle with no job and no place to stay, accompanied by my immigrant mother who celebrated busting into new adventures. She left me with an old car and about $200 to get me started on my new life.

I had been thinking about The Adventuress these last five days as I walked the marina near our hotel in Everett, where we have been staying while potential buyers perused our home to see if they could imagine themselves there.

The first morning, a particular ship caught my attention. Her name was emblazoned on her vintage hull: Arabesque. I must admit when I first noticed the giant capital A on the hull, my heart skipped a beat as I imagined this was the ship that lured me here. I dismissed the thought, though, for if the Adventuress were still sea worthy, she would be in Seattle or on Lake Washington.

But it did not keep me from my hope…

oh, that I could see her one more time.

On our last day before returning home, my husband accompanied me on my morning walk in the brisk air. As we neared the waterfront mall about a mile from our hotel, the sidewalk was blocked by construction. We had gone far enough, I thought, and then felt compelled to go around the blockage and head a different way to where the ships floated against the docks.

We rounded the corner. There she was…the Arabesque.

And then I noticed a gaggle of teenagers on the deck of a new ship moored behind the Arabesque - one that was larger, double masted, with a majestic bow sprit.

Could it be?

We approached and tears started to flow. On the hull, in its original writing, was the ship’s name: The Adventuress. She was here. She had come to say goodbye.

I approached one of the crew members who introduced me to Peter, the director, after she heard my story. “She sailed this ship in ‘74,” she called out.

I told Peter, as some teens eavesdropped, that a week on that ship had caused me to return home, quit my job, and move to Seattle to be near that sea we had sailed. He turned to address the teenagers near him.

“The Adventuress changes people,” he said.

That schooner embraced me 48 years ago and trapped me in her spell. I sat on her deck in the evening and learned to tie knots that would hold against pressure. I slept under the stars on the deck serenaded by the lull of the waves and the whispers of night skies. I sang my sorrows into the sea, and I survived jumping off the ship into the frigid waters just to prove I could. And in the rolling seas, I sat on that bow sprit and became a wave cowgirl, hoping the net beneath me would hold if I were bucked off.

The Adventuress embraced me and changed my life’s course that summer in 1974. And these last five days as I wandered the marina, my heart’s cry had become to see her one more time… without knowing why.

And then today, in ways that defy reason, she found a way to say goodbye. She was placed in this slip, on this marina, in this unexpected place, on this day, at this precise time, as she was being readied to set sail.

She was waiting for me.

This now 109 year old sailing schooner could not let me leave these shores without giving me one last gift…the gift of letting go…of saying goodbye and doing what all adventurers must do…

…leave a certain shore and plunge headlong into unknown waters.

.

Saturday becomes holy….

Saturday by the sea began inauspiciously. Our lives disrupted during a home sale, we had taken refuge in a local waterfront restaurant.

“The call of Holy Saturday is to practice remaining.”

As we approached the hostess, the air grew cold and hard and distracted. We seemed like an annoyance to the young woman about to seat us and noted when she left to see what seats were available that her spirit seemed downcast. She returned and briskly took us to our table, and as she set down the menu, I asked about an unusual nose ring. As she told the story, her face softened and joy began to leak out. She sought and held eye contact and exuded warmth. Her step was light as she stepped away.

In her place a waitress appeared, and we both sensed her tiredness underneath her professional pleasantness. We paused to give full attention and to ask, sincerely, about her well being. Though others were there, we noticed she began to linger in her visits back as we continued conversation. As we prepared to pay our bill and leave, she stopped to make sure I noted the bill. On it she had written “Thank you” and her name. She pointed to the words again and got eye contact. “Really,” she said emphatically, “Thank you.”

“To remain with pain, to bear witness to wounds. This is central to the work of redemption.”

Spontaneously, we booked a whale watch tour a short walk away on the marina. The wind was bitter and hard, and as we waited in line, I noticed a young woman bundled up expertly against the cold and engaged her in conversation. As we entered the cabin, I asked if my husband and I could join her at her table as she seemed alone. We wandered through pleasantries until she ceased sharing about her job and family.

She said she didn’t want to make us uncomfortable, but she had her sister’s ashes with her and had planned to scatter some in the sea on the journey today. She pulled out a small wood box, and we shared stories of ashes, as over the years, we had been taking my mom’s with us to places she loved, leaving a little of her at each place.

“Witness and with-ness are practices of new life, practices opening new possibilities, practices of resurrection. Holy Saturday reminds us that redemption is encountered not in victory over death, but through remaining with death in a way that honors both life and loss, gift and grief, fear and wonder.”

Intermittently throughout the journey we connected and shared a bit of our life stories, until, at docking, I looked her in the eye and let her know that I knew how hard this must be, and that I knew she would be successful in her undertakings. I had wanted to ask her to join us for dinner but lost her in the crowd shuffling down the ramp and on to dry land. Suddenly we caught a glimpse of her ahead of us going a different way. She smiled and fought against the current of people headed with her. Approaching us quickly, she simply wrapped her arms tightly around me and then around my husband enveloping each of us in a deep hug. And then she was gone.

“No,easy answers. No quick fixes. No superficial attitudes. God meets us in deep, complicated and messy ways; God dwells in deep complicated, and messy places.”

Headed to dinner where we started our morning, another waitress approached us and I commented on her beautiful pearl bracelet. She smiled, “It’s not a bracelet. It’s a necklace I double over and wear on my wrist. It belonged to my sister who died. I play with the pearls and it reminds me of her.”

“To remain with pain, to bear witness to wounds. This is central to the work of redemption.”

This was a Holy Saturday not of our own making. At the front of our consciousness was the history of this dark day before Easter, so we nestled close to our Hope, and we opened ourselves to the whispers of a broken world around us. And a peace that truly passes our understanding settled in our bones and guided our words and attention.

And I was left with this reminder…..

Maybe our life’s purpose is simply this:

To be interruptible.

To be present.

To notice.

To be willing to ask the deeper questions.

To listen with all of our senses to the heart’s cries below the veneer of life.

To experience the Holy in the ordinary.