often comfortable and clueless... snuggled safe in soft fuzzy whiteness...

I forget that most people on this planet are not. And that that is to their disadvantage. I will never understand the weight people carry in shouldering the burden of a different color.
I ask myself WHY... not expecting the comforting answer that a worried child receives from his or her all-knowing all-powerful universe-balancing mother (or father). I don't expect to receive an answer at all. I can't erase my color, nor anyone else's. We were painted with a stuff more water resistant than oil paint, more stubborn than the ink of a sharpie... Indeed, the hand of God is stronger than these. What I receive in exchange for my unanswerable WHY is another question. HOW will I wear my color? And maybe, WHAT other colors will I add to my palette. White is awfully boring, just sitting on the palette all by itself...


So... if I had to choose ONE book (from the plethora of books I've read this past year) that has reached its hands deepest into my heart and leaving the deepest impressions, like strong fingers in soft wet clay, this book would be it. The heart of Maya Angelou. And in some ways, the heart of every woman, even if it's just a chamber, a muscle strand, a blood vessel, a cell membrane. She has most definitely left her impression deep in me... most definitely plucked my heart-strings, making me laugh and cry, shout and dance, fume in anger and sit quietly in self-reflection. She more deeply cultivated my love of being a woman and more violently sparked my wonderment of how it would be to be a skin color other than white. She challenged me intellectually, globally, ethically, spiritually... in so many ways that I haven't yet discovered how to untangle and lay out. And she challenged me as a woman.