Carpet Swatches and Paint Chips
(“You must turn away from evil and do good; you must strive for peace with all your heart.” 1 Peter 3:11)I heard
the thunder in the late afternoon which is
unusual
for us in the Pacific Northwest. It just rains but
rarely sends lightning across the sky.
I guess I
wouldn’t argue with someone whose
experience is different than mine. Not worth it of course.
I heard
the arguments that went late after the
board
meeting about a net result of nothing. It is just a
few minds thinking they know it best and the best must
be implemented soon and perfect.
Evil
approaches to darken the beauty that comes out
of the light.
Evil tries to erase the artistic soul full of words,
or colors, or shapes, or falling waters. We spend
so little time
letting even a single petal from a rose make our
breathing hurried in awe and reverence.
We would
rather have our way pushed through like
a bulldozer building a dollhouse. We decide that
carpet samples
and color swatches
are chosen by majority vote. Which is what happened,
because a quorum had showed up. But one of those
who stayed home
kicked over the five-gallon pails of pain on the unvarnished
floor the next. A tantrum over a shade too soon.
We could not
call for a new meeting; the walls were half-painted
before he
decided to throw his weight around. Peace was
interrupted like
an improvised explosive device. Invisible shrapnel
struck everyone gathered and nothing was ever quite
the same.
It seemed
insane for a scrimmage to balloon for such
a simple tune. But we agreed, after piercing words had
already met their marks, to wait for the moon to cover
the night
and the sun
to dry the mud and then
we would look at the paint on the walls again.
With empty
paint cans strewn across the long floor,
we saw the walls and their adobe pigment in a brand new
light.
Even the naysayers, heads hanging down, agreed the hue
was perfect and said nothing else.
We prayed
the dissolution would not linger. But
sometimes you cannot head off the storm. Sometimes
evil breaks down the artistic impulse and insists
an exact pigment exists, a perfect reflection of hue and
light.
But some phone calls just never did sit right.
