Complementary colors

The liturgical color for Easter is white, but my color of the day is yellow. On my way to the garage this morning, headed for church, I turned to look back at the house and at the sky, the sun, the angular evergreen next to the basketball hoop, and the two forsythia bushes, singing of springtime and resurrection. In the evening, there was lemon meringue pie for dessert, lemon-yellow to sight and tastebuds.

My sister filled a vase with forsythia branches and daffodils for the center of her Easter dinner table, all cut from her yard. There were also purple Japanese irises from the store. Purple and yellow being complementary colors, they each made the other zing.

Purple is the color of Lent. Yellow may not be the official liturgical color of Easter, but it's there in church for Easter, in the white and gold and yellow banners, in the golden yellow threads that give the white vestments their elegance and Easter formality.

Here comes the metaphor.

Yellow is all the more intense when paired with purple. Lent brings focus to Easter. The repent and turn of the past six weeks, all the purple passion, prepare wintry spirits for the blazing splendor of the empty tomb, the sweetness of the risen Savior.

It's raining now. Will those yellow blossoms be on the ground in the morning?

Still the yellow and the purple are pressed into my brain. And I am still wearing the white linen shirt of Easter.

Christ is risen, alleluia.