I remember reading the Color Purple years ago. I was stunned at the violent and dismal life Celie was enduring, as revealed in her letters to God. She’d been abused by her father, birthing two babies by him who are mysteriously disappeared. She saves her sister Nettie from a disastrous marriage by marrying the man herself. Her husband treats her appallingly, though ironically the best thing he does is install his mistress, the beautiful night club singer, Shug Avery, into the household.
By the time Shug and Celie are obviously coupling, I remember I was just relieved that someone loved this woman at last. Shug is a woman of the world and she educates Celie on many things. It is through Shug that Celie discovers her husband has been for years been hiding letters written to her by her sister who is now a missionary in Africa.
I’m writing about this because today I came across a quote from the book in an old order of service which I’d used as the contemporary reading for my last service at St Andrew’s on The Terrace in November 2019
When I first read the book, back in the 1980’s, just after my relief that Shug had turned up to love Celie, I came across this chapter. Practically in the centre of the book, it is mostly a long discussion between the two women which morphs into talk about God. Celie is no longer writing her letters to God after she had discovered her husband’s betrayal. Shug is shocked Celie has given up on God. Celie is equally shocked a reprobate like Shug cares about God. Shug’s beautiful, wide view of what and who God is and isn’t follows. Part of that description includes the title of the book. “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” I remember all those years ago stopping reading with a sense of shock. if this is the only place in the book where it title appears and this chapter is about God, was the whole book about God?
The quote I re-discovered today suggests that yes, it was, because Alice Walker’s view is that God is in and through everything, not only in the color purple in the field but also all through ourselves. Shug says:
“…Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you are looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord. Feeling like shit. It? I ask. Yeah. It. God ain’t a he or a she but a It. But what does it look like? I ask. Don’t look like nothing, she say. It ain’t a picture show. It ain’t something you can look at apart from anything else, including yourself. I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever saw or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found it.
Alice Walker, The Color Purple p. 176
I look at quotes like this and think, why did I need a whole book to explain this conviction of mine? Alice Walker does it in one paragraph. “God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it.” So simple and yet so profound.
The comment about coming into the world with God reminds me of a fragment of Wordsworth’s ‘Ode to Immortality’ which stuck with me as a fourteen year old in English class.
… Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home: …
I love the ‘Not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter nakedness but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home.’ bit. At the time it was a new concept to me. Heaven had been drummed into me as the place we were headed for, but no one had ever discussed where we might have come from. Of course, coming from God trailing clouds of glory didn’t gel well with Augustine’s wonderful (not) invention of Original Sin! This image jibes better with Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing. In Wordworth’s ode, he mourns the way this consciousness of God, these trailing clouds, fade away as we are birthed, grounded and grow into ‘well-socialised’ children and later adults. For some reason, it makes me think of the amazing Creation painting in the Sistine Chapel ceiling though when I looked it up there are no clouds about.
I’ve had a sweep through the internet images for a cherub trailing clouds of glory, but all the images are impossibly sentimental and trying too hard to be cute to match the inner image which has been firmly in my head since I was fourteen! I’ll stick with this beautiful image of a lavender farm at sunset – the color purple and the glory!
Why don’t you follow this blog by email? I blog only about once a week so your inbox won’t be flooded. In between reflective pieces like this you’ll hear about the trilogy’s progress. The latest comment which made me smile was from my gym trainer who says that the book for him reads ‘as smoothly as a mochaccino’!
Check out the book details on ‘A book is born!’ and ‘Out into the world!’ posted a few weeks ago. Email me on jones.rs@xtra.co.nz for banking and postage details and to give me your address if you’d like a read as smooth as mochaccino! Or not! It’s your choice.
Susan
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