The house smelled of wax. The kettle was boiling over. Amid the stark white and the shining silver, the kitchen was dark with only one gas burner glowing. In her black robe she waited, patiently waited, for the boiling pot to vaporize into living colors.

She was a recluse, an enigma in her black shroud. She spoke of light but lived in darkness. She spoke of flight, but lived in her cocoon. In the confines of her imagination she sparked stories with stars and wings.

A canvas of black were her four walls, they moved as she grew. Unlike the others, she had spent many lifetimes spinning away nights and days, black and rays. It seemed an eternity and the seams of her dreams were ready to burst.

Imagine the confines of a black hole ready to give birth to mystery. Imagine what you will, it can spill from any thought. Amid streams of dreams, there are tangible elements that illuminate circumstance. Random truth is the sun that rises and sets. Hidden are the wings and the stars that move us beyond the here and the now. If you believe in miracles, you will believe in the evidence that makes all things evident.

The pot it boiled, it bubbled, it toiled. All the while, she waited to recognize the light that would finally give her flight. The gas burner flamed in yellow, orange, and blue. As she dreamed of sight, her cocoon of spun thoughts grew. A wheel of color blew like a pinwheel in her mind, her beauty grew as she let her body unwind.

Rhyme and verse, she rehearsed for the debut of what she could be. She sputtered and ignited her darkness with the perception of earth’s trees. She clung and she wavered in the mist of all that’s unknown. She was a witness to what makes a thought a home.

The breeze it blew, the flame it grew, and the boiling pot exploded into a thousand thoughts all searching for their own colors. Wrapped in black, she heard the symphonic boom and she found herself outside of her tomb.

She tugged and pulled at all the mystery, and then it came, the colors of a universe’s history. Her body flew open, like a wave upon the wind, and in a flash she could ascend.

Upon the breath of all her inspirations she felt the God that had prepared her for this destination. She propelled her colors into the blooms of a spring day and counted the blessings of all she had learned along the way.

In the shroud of a living Christ, is a revelation that moves us beyond the hopes of falling dice. It is not the boiling pot that gives us our colors, it is the anticipation of knowing what we can do for one another.

Into darkness all light must spill. Recognize the destiny a butterfly will fulfill. In the utter darkness of all we are, are the wings and the stars.

Kathy Paysen 2012