Living in Color: Working with the Difficult Parts of Our Lives

In “Quietness” the Sufi mystic poet Rumi speaks of taking an axe to one’s prison wall and walking out “like someone suddenly born into color” (trans. by Coleman Barks). It’s left me thinking of how many prisons humans build – both literal and metaphorical – and how often they do not serve the purposes of life. I keep coming back to Rumi’s poem as a wonderful image of setting aside unhelpful constraints (e.g., the practice of not talking about mental health) so we can really begin to work with the difficult, confusing, and too-easily-judged parts of our lives and our world.

In the short video below, I’m reflecting on how this metaphor of being “born into color” has played into my new novel, Suddenly Color: A Sacred Grounds Novel Book 2.

Hope you enjoy – Callie