ALL the Colors Of the Wind

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One of my favorite random memories of Austria involves their Museum of Fine Arts. Elder Dodge and I were more interested in the paintings than some of the others with us and ended up on our own in an outlying gallery. Dressed in suits, fluent in other languages besides English, and confident in our gait, people would stop and ask us questions. I guess they thought we worked there.

What makes a great work of art? Well, that depends a lot on the education and taste of the critic, but there are some common themes. Art is generally a mixture of elements. You won't, for example, find much in the way of pieces with names like "Arrangement in Red and Grey" that are simply a couple of colors on canvas. Most of the great painters did much more than that.

Like the art critic, we look for meaning in what we see. Frequently, we see out of a situation only the part that we wish to see. We focus on the negative elements of the situations in which we find ourselves while we idealize the good parts of a situation that is held from us. The troubles of our present loom real and large because they are ever present, and that other world looks so much more appealing. Young people do not understand that life, like the creation of art, takes work, repetitive and boring work. Much of that minutiae is boring, but at least it's a new boring, and they think that would be more fun.

Some among us think that life would be so much better if it was only filled with pleasant pictures. They would have perpetual spring, only bright happy warm hues, and a steady state of bliss. People want the canvas of their lives painted only with the happy, garish colors, and let all the rest stay on the painter's pallete. What they forget is that great works of art, like life, are best built with shadows, contrast, and depth some of which only come when the canvas is touched by the dark.

The good times in our lives come into their proper light when we go through tougher times. We appreciate our health when we come down with a severe sickness. We appreciate our wealth best when we fall on hard economic times. We appreciate family when our friends, coworkers, or even romantic partners forsake or betray us. It is easy to take for granted what has never been taken from you.

I wrote earlier this week about gold and God. I quote Brigham Young again because his words are prescient:

When this people are blessed so much that they consider their blessings a burden and a drudge to them, you may always calculate on a cricket war,a grasshopper war, a drought, too much rain, or something else to make the scales preponderate the other way. This people have been blessed too much,so that they have not known what to do with their blessings.

Frequently we do not notice our blessings. We become used to them. Only then do we sometimes recognize and appreciate them and see through the contrast and shadow that there are good things on our canvas too.


The life of the Savior was one of privation and struggle. Even before he was born, his parents struggled to find a place of sufficient conditions to comfort his mother for the delivery. His father was a carpenter, and his friends were fishermen. He was hated because of what he said, taken before an illegal tribunal, tried, convicted, and crucified, but not until after he was flogged with faggots. In the end, he gave men new life, new hope, and a new testament that God loves the world, a picture and portrait that inspires millions today. If we would follow him, we must expect to trod the path he trod and face at least some of the same scourges. In order to paint a life that makes of us a Christian, dark colors make the difference. It is by them that we recognize the value and perspective of pretty pictures.