About a month ago I needed to spend some time in our monastery infirmary recovering from an accident. Although I have become a more contemplative person over the years, it’s not quite a “lifestyle”, i.e. I still am not used to a lot of “unstructured” time. But for those few days I tried to just relax and reflect. One tool that has been useful for others is coloring, so I got out some old pencils and a coloring book made for adults. Actually, the session went quite well. I read a journal article that had some good points for meditation and then I reflected on that while I colored away, not paying much attention to selecting colors that looked good together, not even coloring in the lines at times.
As I was putting the colored pencils away I began to notice the names of the colors. The “flesh” colored pencil stood out like a flashing sign because, for several years now, I have been focused on issues of racism. In reality, the crayon color was a lot pinker than the flesh of my hand that was holding it, but it reminded me that people with my color of skin were the norm in society when I was growing up –the “norm”, the way things are, the way things are supposed to be. Even children using crayons were receiving this message. Is it any wonder that the children of the 50s and 60s have some built-in understanding of the world? According to my computer browser, in 1992 the Crayola company responded to consumers by adding 8 new colors for skin and now they produce 40 skin tones. And each is beautiful. But think of all those years and all the generations before and after me who accepted the notion that having light pink skin was the criteria for being “one of us”. It’s about time all of us accepted that all of us are “us”.
