The Color Purple

This weekend I got the chance to read the book and watch the movie that were based on "The Color Purple." I sobbed. I was rather expecting to though. I had been warned.

It did not help that the first image of the movie is the two sisters playing hand games in a field. It reminded me so much of my sister and I that I almost started the cry before knowing what the movie was supposed to be about. It's almost like the Renoir painting that never fails to touch a chord deep within me. The two girls sitting at the piano playing together. One is blond and the other is a brunnette. So much like my sister and I.

The story of the Color Purple was so tragic from the very beginning that I couldn't help but be sucked in and made to care. It's a story about real life, real love and real forgiveness. It isn't a book that makes life seem easy or friendships uncomplicated. Nothing is simple in the early 20th century deep south just as nothing is as simple as we want it to be now.

The characters all have their own brand of spunk and one of them, Shug, makes a statement that reached me on a level to remind me of how muchy I don't pay attention to anymore. She says "I think it pisses God off when people don't pay no mind to the color purple." She also has the belief that the people who go to church to find God aren't going to find Him. The only God she ever found in church was the God that she brought in with her. Church isn't a place to find God, but it is a place to share God. I think that is one of the best perceptions of church that I've heard in a long time. So many people come looking for something and then are annoyed when they don't find it. That's not what church is about though. It's a group of people who want to share what they have found, in the world with other people.

Her other observation was that so many people look for the God that they will find in the "white man's" Bible. They think that God is a huge white man with a big beard who sits on a throne and judges us. Shug makes the comment that God doesn't have to be found simply on those terms. He is found in the trees and the flowers and eventually when we can find in Him in all of the places around us is when we are truly able to recognize Him in ourselves and others. There is more than just one word of truth in that. But for me, I think right now I'll remember the color purple, how incredibly beautiful and unique it is and how I need to stop and pay attention to it so that I don't piss God off.