Note: I kept the British spelling of colors in the title because that’s how how Yvonne Aburrow spelled it in the list of prompts. For the rest of this post, I will be a good little rebellious U.S. citizen and spell it properly. 😝

This past Sunday, it was Pride week at Gracepointe Church in Nashville, whose services I attend online. During the children’s moment (what other churches might call a “children’s sermon”), Tiffany spoke with the children about pride and the rainbow and started asking what aspects or traits of God each color and the rainbow might represent. It led to a few funny moments, as many of the children had watched Inside Out and their answers reflected that. So they started suggesting emotions like anxiety and jealousy. Part of me is tempted to launch into an exploration of a theology that acknowledged a Divine being that encompassed such traits.

Instead, I want to focus on this as just one more example of how important color is to those of (or at least those of us who can see colors) and how common it is to associate our colors with various things, such as concepts, emotions, and energies. Many of these systems don’t always agree with one another, but they all exist. And I think many of them are useful, even those that are not consistent with one another.

At a more basic level, I think the important thing to take away from how we view colors and associations with these various things is how complicated and nuanced the world we find ourselves in. We do not live in a monochromatic world where things can be reduced to simple dualities and dichotomies.

And just like a rainbow, that “many-hued” world is beautiful.

(This post is part of #ChangingPathsChallenge2024. For more information about the challenge and a list of topics, please see Yvonne Aburrow’s post about it.