COLORS OF MY SOUL - Before Dawn

SUNRISE Colors of My Soul I
photos & collage by Joy Krauthammer ©

COLORS OF MY SOUL

Before Dawn

- Joy Krauthammer

I have been to the Sahara Desert celebrating on my 50th birthday, travelling miles in the too hot dryness in strange land with dusk's roaring sandy winds slapping my face. On my birthday morning, following millions of bright stars strewn visible in the night sky with nothing to hide them, in the tiny tent for one by the tall large sand dune with pointy top edges, which I shall climb, and next to the still palm tree, my camel sleeping, alone I awakened. My senses have stirred. My soul knows the colors of the desert.

Joy's Tent View, Sahara, Morocco
© Joy Krauthammer

Here in my garden, the early morning firmament is now turning from darkness to dawn's colors of the gentle desert, stretching across the horizon, revealing golds and oranges, and steel grayish blue. My heart feels the joy of the colors.

In my garden are layers and layers of desert colors, uneven like you would create in a multi-colored, many layered sand filled bottle you can fill at a county faire. The lowest level at the wide horizon is lit up, starting to glow from the awakening sun.

Joy's Garden View, Porter Ranch, CA

© Joy Krauthammer

As their slight bulges are more evident, puffing as clouds breath emerges, I can see, feel, that if I were still a potter in Oneness kneading my precious clay, this is as it would appear if I had engobes of colored clay in my hands. Rolls of moistened layered earth tenderly in my hands as I deeply fold and push and pull and stretch and life emerges expansively from my fingers into shapes unknown. Ceramic vessels are born.

Or if I were still weaving with colors as in Jacob's coat (but sorrow prevailed), layers of woven material, hues and shadings of embraceable soft fabrics growing from threads of color, spreading out within my fingers fondling, as I attentively, silently work the yarns in the rattling loom, controlling the weft from edge to edge, interlacing across the horizon, through the warp, shuttling side to side with emerging patterns of scintillating sensations. My feet have lifted the heavy harnesses. I have woven the desert's sunrise! I am in ecstasy. Heavenly feet of fabrics folded waiting to be cut and sewn, transformed into artistic wearables in the desert.

I have layered G*d's fruits for the truffle dessert. Multi-colored rainbow layers of reds, oranges, yellows, purples, blue, green, visible through the clear glass crystal bowl. The container, a wedding gift thirty one years ago. Today the vessel filled with layers of a taste of visibly delicious nourishment to share.

Shekhinah giving birth to newness each moment, each day, from within the sky's desert colors, peeking through the heavens with little baby blue colored lips opening up, waters breaking in birthing, filling my heart with joy and hope and awe at the aliveness that is ours. I need the morning. I am grateful for a new day.

As I am a percussionist, I can hear the soft sounds emanating from the spaces between the folds and layers, the dark spaces needing light. The sounds of spirit coming to prayer and the congregation rises to sing their song. As the voices grow stronger, the lowest level of color gains more strength and shines in glorious brightness with the breaking of morning and the rising sun.

Colors are glowing as if just taken from the hot kiln, embers fueling the fire, and the brightness is piercing and burning. Look in amazement for a moment, don't touch. Ouch! Colors on the ribbons are being celebrated on my morning's woven tallit as I sing and dance and chant my prayers. I raise my multi-colored ribboned timbrel. She has travelled the world with me, sharing sacred space, song and blesSings. Colors are vibrating; raising their call to Shekhinah, from the sound of my chimes, and cymbals and drums, shakers, and ting shas, and jingling tambourines. Sounds of spirit. Miriyahm HaNeviah / the Prophetess in the desert is with us. We stand joined as layers in all colors in prayer and healing hope and love. HalleluYAH!!!!

As a photographer, I record for memory, the layers of dawn's colors emblazoned in my neshama / my soul. I layer the photos together, collaging them, framed to enjoy.

I take colored markers and paints and brushes and feathers, sequins and sparkles and create layers and layers of colors of light on the black velvet card and beyond the borders on the blank white canvas. It is a birthing painting of expressed joy, of the Temple, of Ohr / light in the darkness.

I write the colors of the dawn so that I can capture and share them. Others want to know from where my strength comes. My strength comes from G*d greeting me in the early morning --dawn.

Yes, my last days (and years) have been hellish with layers and layers of sadness, pain, grief, torment, disappointments, desperation, delays, and fatigue, dealing with the disaster of a human being needing medical attention (and compassion) and relief is not yet found as my husband lays on life-support-- breathing and feeding, and emptying him, in yet another ICU.

Joy's Garden View, Porter Ranch, CA

© Joy Krauthammer

Yet with the sun's arrival, I know it is a new day, a new beginning, and I can face it with strength and courage, as I always do. It is harder for me when the clouds block the morning light from my neshama / my soul. A warrior I am. A Caregiver Angel Warrior! My weapons of war are the colors and layers and hope of each new morning's Dawn.

Modah ani l'fanecha Melech chai v'kayahm. Shehechezarta bi nishmati b'chemlah rabah emunatecha.

I am grateful to You, living, enduring Source of All BlesSings, for restoring my soul to me in compassion. You are faithful beyond measure.

One love, shalom and abundant blessings of health and joy to you,
Joy Krauthammer
Serve G*d With Joy
"Ivdu Et HaShem B'Simcha"

December 20th, 2005
.

Post Script
My husband, z'l, died 17 Tevet, exactly four weeks after I wrote this, following six months of artificial life-support.
May his memory be for a blesSing. Amayn



PPS
12/18/2010  5771
Five years ago, this Hebrew week of 17 Tevet, my husband, z'l, died. In his zechut / merit, today I created two photo collages; my very first in this Picasa 'scatter' style. Marcel was a computer maven. I was a photographer. These photos represent the Divine inspiration that I received while a Caregiver Angel Warrior, in order to do my service to the Holy One. Baruch Hashem.

PPPS
12/18/2010
In response to G*d's paintings which I record,
my spiritual Jerusalem Chareidi, Reb Yosef Ben Shlomo Hakohen, wrote to me:

The colors of your soul are beautiful, my dear sister.

May Marcel's neshamah have an aliyah, and may we experience the final stage of human history, when Hashem will restore the departed souls to their healed and whole bodies.

Shavua Tov!

Yosef

SUNRISE Colors of My Soul II
photos & collage by Joy Krauthammer ©

All photos ~ Joy's Garden View, Porter Ranch, CA ©  Joy Krauthammer
As dawn breaks I go outside in my bare feet to feel the earth, and climb more than a dozen feet up the steep dirt slope to get a better unobstructed Eastern view of the Divine One's painting. (I guess it is like a giant Mizrach pointing toward Jerusalem.) A fig tree branch along the way, helps to support me both up and down the slippery slope, especially if there are squishy fallen figs.

I am pleased to learn from Arunesh, in New Delhi, that the Sanskrit word 'arunesh' translates to the 'first rays of the sun'.
The photos above are of the first rays of the sun.
May arunesh shower us with blesSings.

.
More colors:
http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2013/01/glory-and-joy.html
.