Deep purple reminds me of Easter Week in my Catholic upbringing. During Lent the church was shrouded in purple cloth. Deep purple is symbolic of the pain and suffering that leads to purification and the resurrection according to Catholic tradition. I loved the color, it seemed so royal and majestic and I loved the way the light glimmered off the purple satin as it came through the stained glass on Sunday morning. I was just reading about Mardi Gras AKA Carnival and learned that the word “carnival” is from the Latin phrase meaning “removal of meat”. This made me think of eggplant since eggplant parmesan is one of my favorite vegetarian dishes. Interconnection or coincidence?
I love how I can relax into writing and find the path that clearly is where I need to be, though I had no clue where I was headed when I sat down to begin. If I think too long or hard I seem to veer off the path and end up going back again to get in the flow. The flow of what, you might ask? Is it my brain firing off random synapses sparking paths that ignite long lost thoughts and memories as a result of my caffeine jag? My son, the cognitive neuroscientist, would actually say something much more elaborately scientific. Is it my mind, which my son is not sure is a function of the brain and can not prove empirically to be in existence though he believes it is? Is it inspiration, divine or otherwise? I really don’t have answers. I just loved that without knowing how or why the word eggplant started me down a path that went from purple eggplant to Easter in the Catholic church to Carnival and Latin phrases suggesting meatless eating which took me back to eggplant.
Coming back to the true path now as I realize that I had veered away trying too hard to stay on what I thought I “Should” be writing about instead of following the path of the moment to its conclusion. I started this piece yesterday. The morning had been moving along well when I derailed the train. I tried ever so hard to pin the derailment on my unsuspecting husband. Alas, being the wise man he is, he backed away and gave me space to go through the pain and suffering of the train wreckage until I could reach the spot of purification and resurrection for myself.
I started this writing in an attempt to escape the wreckage. It worked but only ever so briefly. I escaped from my distorted anger long enough to write about eggplant and find pain and suffering pop up in my face and the purification and resurrection that were to follow. I refused to see at first that it was I that needed to go through the pain and suffering to reach the purification on the other side. I kept writing about various food and eggplant items that I knew were not right but pushed on anyway. Food has long been how I coped with pain and suffering. When I finally erased all the extraneous stuff I saw that indeed it was my insistence, that the sky had to be blue and cloudless or the world would end, that had thrown me off the track. I got out my purple dress and went looking for the wise old man that hangs around these parts so I could apologize for being so intransigent. He forgave me and we had eggplant for dinner.
It is all about staying on the path as it is directed within our hearts and in the present moment. Discernment and judgment are required to see that you have not veered off trying to avert some unpleasantness or to seek out some self gratification. The inner sense of peace and ease, regardless of the circumstance of the moment or the color of your raiment, make the true path of the heart clear to those who seek it and help keep the eggplant off your face!
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