Category Archives: quotes

White is a Cloud Dancer.

art, beauty, quotes, , , ,

I ran across the news that Pantone’s choice for Color of the Year 2026 is WHITE! No, not just white, of course, but “Cloud Dancer” white. This is the first time they have chosen a shade of white as the color of the year. I’ve never heard about this practice before, in the 25 years that the company has done it, but that’s because the colors I am interested in are in my garden or my clothes closet, not in a lab.

I personally wouldn’t want to take too much time thinking about one shade of one color, because God has generously given us so many, all day every day, unless we are living in the Arctic. White is a color many of you are seeing a lot of already right now, and not on your walls. Have you thought about giving names to the different shades of snow you are shoveling, or watching fall outside your window?

It’s not because of my lack of snow that I take the trouble to post about this, but because of G.K. Chesterton. He probably wouldn’t think much of someone choosing a Color of the Year, but he did himself write about one color in particular, without regard to style or global trends. For him, it was not merely about things seen, but things unseen, the Cosmos and the Kingdom of God:

“White is a colour. It is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars.

“And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a colour. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc.

“In a word, God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.”

-G.K. Chesterton, “A Piece of Chalk,” in Tremendous Trifles

 

Here is the key to the power.

music, prayer, Psalms, quotes, , , , ,
From the Psalter of St. Louis and Blanche of Castile, 13th c.

“…how did the monks train? By singing the psalms. Here is the key to the power, such as it is, of medieval communal prayer: it was focused on the psalms. And why on the psalms? Because, as every medieval Christian knew, they are focused on Christ the Lord, the Word who is with God and who is God, through whom everything was made (John 1), who set his tabernacle in the sun and came forth as a bridegroom from his wedding chamber (Ps. 18:6), the king of glory mighty in battle (Ps. 23:8) who entered into his temple (Heb.) to rescue his people from their sins (Ps. 21).

“Religion, properly speaking, is about worship, and it is the object of worship that defines the community. If the community worships itself (as a city, nation, or empire) then its religion is about belonging to the group (see, pagan Rome, and its opposition to Christians). But a community worshiping Christ is defined by Him—and its individual members have strength to stand up against other communities who define themselves by something other than Christ.”

-Rachel Fulton Brown, interview

And every stone shall cry.

Christmas, poetry, quotes,
Model of the Second Temple at the time of Christ.

Anthony Esolen features this poem by Richard Wilbur on his site Word & Song; here is a clip from his introduction:

“Wilbur takes his inspiration from the words of Jesus, when he was entering Jerusalem at the beginning of that fateful and sacred week, and the people hailed him, laying palm branches before him and crying out, ‘Blessed be the king who comes in the name of the Lord!’ Then the Pharisees appealed to Jesus, asking him to make the people be quiet, but Jesus said, ‘I tell you, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.’ And we may remember, too, that when the disciples tried to play the tour guide with Jesus, remarking upon the grandeur of the Temple and its precincts, Jesus, who loved the Temple dearly from when he was a boy, said that there would soon come a time when not one stone would be left upon a stone.”

A CHRISTMAS HYMN

A stable lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

-Richard Wilbur