4. ALL THE COLORS IN WHITE

"Where is the gray?"

The woman seated behind me asked, without raising her hand.

“I need there to be gray. I’m losing my children in the black and white.”

I don’t even recall the specific topic of discussion, though I do know it was religious.

We sat there, a collection of diverse artists, tied in one knotted weekend by a baptismal thread, discussing how it works and doesn’t work to be an artist with faith; more specifically, Latter-day faith.

I felt the heat of her breath as it floated from behind and settled on my shoulders. There was a mournful tone of desperation mixed with resignation in her voice. I eased my head to the side, trying not to be obvious, and watched her in my periphery. Her hair was dark, and graying at the roots, with wistful silver whisps framing her face. 

This was years ago. I can’t recall what answers might have come of it, though I know that there was peace in the end, so at least there’s that. But the question keeps bouncing around in my head, even now. The irony was not lost to me, such a black and white question in a room where color was so prominent, with movers of paint and weavers of words and makers of songs and tellers of colorful stories all gathered. The question rises up like gas from a newly fed baby, bubbling out of my brain at unexpected places in unlikely times.

Where is the gray?When I was a teen my sister and I travelled to the Carnegie Museum of Art every Saturday to learn how to make art from Mr. Fitzpatrick. He taught us more than I remember. I hope one day it will come back to me. But one thing I do recall is how to gray down the color in my paint. “Take the complement, and add just a bit.”  By that, he meant that by applying a touch of the opposite to my color of choice, I could tone down the hue and the intensity. 

The complementary color is found on the classic color wheel. Complementary tones make for beautiful, loud statements in painting. The complement of red is green. Green beside red makes it pop. (Think Christmas.) But if you want to gray down the green, don’t just add black, add some red. Try it next time you’re playing with paint, or dying Easter eggs. 

Truth is, there’s plenty of gray in the church. It comes not from the black and the white, but from the mix of colors. Plenty of chartreuse and cayenne red and flamboyant yellow, we just forgot to see it somewhere along the road. We thought, mistakenly, that color might be a bit too irreverent. So we tried to tone it down. We put on our dark navy dress jackets and our black dresses with just a pop of turquoise in the necklace so as to not overwhelm the spirit.

But we were mistaken. There is plenty of room in the chapel for color: bright or muted or mixed, and lots of grays. 

"Jesus Said Love Everyone"
by my friend, J Kirk Richards
(as inclusive a soul as ever there was)

Once or twice, when I was very young and my father was still part of our family portrait, Dad came to church with us. I remember the feeling of my hand reaching up to his as we walked through the glass doors of that teeny church in Pittsburgh. It’s as close to pride as I felt at that young age. I was just so pleased to have a dad, to fill a pew with the traditional recipe. I never noticed the scent of stale cigarette smoke that enveloped him, like dust around Pig Pen in the Peanuts cartoons. I suppose I was just used to it. Thinking back on it, I wonder what the glances of the “faithful” may have done to him. All I could see was how handsome he was, and that he was ours, and for one sweet Sunday it wasn’t just poor Afton and her brood of kids. 

And now I’m getting old. And gray. I feel the change. I feel the light peeking through our cracked surfaces, and it is warm and welcome. Light, with all its glorious colors!

I hear you, my colorful friends whose stifled screams have finally burst out. I feel your frustration and disappointment, your anger and your angst and resentment, as if someone tricked you into being good. And I hear, too, the whimper of those who weep at the loss of something they once thought they loved. I take my tiny bottle of pray sanitizer and wash away the mud we created when me forgot to set the colors beside each other rather than smearing them up in one dark glob. I remain, even with my own doubts and question, armed and willing to clean the chapel.

Here’s a thing: Before Mr. Fitzpatrick taught me about color, I thought black was the presence of all color, the way we make mud of mixing paint, the way I made the bark of a tree in second grade art, when there was no brown crayon available. Smash all that pigment together. 

And likewise, I once thought white was the absence of color, like the blank piece of canvas stretched tight across a frame. 

Not so. 

Black, true black, is the absence of color and the absence of light.

And white? It’s the presence of all color. All color, with the proper amount of light. All color, with all light. That’s white.

That’s what shines in the dark night sky when I’m driving home on I-15. Brilliant white, filled with light, piercing the night sky on the hillside of Bountiful. I’ve visited there, even with my questions and doubts, worthy  - with my questions and doubts, wearing nothing but white, and the colorful light my first Father gave me.

All the colors in white.

There is room for all of it in the seat beside me. And there is room beside you as well.

The Relief Society pin I wear in church.