By: Curt Williams
It’s my favorite color. I have no idea why it’s not everyone’s favorite color. Arguably, it’s God’s favorite color, right up there with maybe blue.
Throughout the winter months of dull greys and browns, nature exists in a low-grade tension, held in waiting by the frigid cold as new life in restrained. Then, as Springtime arrives, the tiny buds of green ease from brittle boughs and fresh sap runs like blood through once dead veins. Life is green. It is new leaves. New grass. New life. It is summer, baseball fields, fresh lawns and the silent scream of raging photosynthesis.
It’s not by chance that my bedroom is painted green, and my living room, a slightly varied shade of green. So that even in the winter I feel the life of green.
Blue is cold. Red is angry. Orange is hot. Purple is haughty. Yellow is blinding….but green is life.
In traffic, green says that we may go. We may proceed and we are set free. On the other hand, red is constraining. Red stops us. It takes away the freedom, while green says to us, “Go, explore, accelerate.” I will always prefer green.
I have a green motorcycle. The color is described as “sagebrush smoke” but it is a matte olive, and I may have bought the bike especially for its specific shade of green. It makes me smile.
Yet green is it’s most beautiful in the hue I see in my wife’s eyes.
Back in 1970, a songwriter named Jerry Corbetta, of the band Sugarloaf, wrote the song Green-Eyed Lady for his girlfriend Kathy. The lyrics go like this:
Green eyed lady lovely lady
Strolling slowly, towards the sun
Green eyed lady, ocean lady
Soothing every raging wave that comes
Green eyed lady, passion’s lady
Dressed in love, she lives for life to be
Green eyed lady feels like I never see
Setting suns and lonely lovers free
Green eyed lady windswept lady
Moves the night, the waves, the sand
Green eyed lady ocean lady
Child of nature, friend of man
Green eyed lady passion’s lady
Dressed in love, she lives for life to be
Green eyed lady feels life I never see
Setting suns and lonely lovers free
I could have written that song, as these words so perfectly describe my Shelley. In the terminology of the ancient mariners, the sea was referred to as the “green eyed lady”. Few people are drawn to the ocean as my Shelley.
You see, green eyes are rare. In all the world, brown eyes are by far the most common, followed by blue, but the green eyed among us are the rarest of all. Shelley’s eyes sparkle like opaque emeralds. Not only does she have a rare eye color, but she’s one of those rare individuals who has eyes that smile. They convey wonder, beauty and compassion. They occasionally shed tears of deep empathy and often of sweet joy. I love green. I often find myself staring at her when she’s not aware; lost in the hazy green of those amazing eyes.
When the Father first dipped into His infinite palette and drew out the hues of green, I like to believe that He had me in mind.
That one day, eons from His first creative stroke, I would look out at a summer cornfield bursting in all the pulsing shimmers of green, and say, “Wow God. Thank you for that.” And when glancing over at my wife’s eyes as she laughs, I’d take a moment to recognize the perfect green that He placed there for just that moment, just for me.
I do love green.
