The sky greeted me and Penelope this morning with an overcast canopy of melancholy white. I sat in the swing and she sat in her little pen and we watched the sun try to burn the cloud cover away. Ever so often the sky would peek its blue self through the cloud cover. It’s amazing to see all the colors in an overcast sky when you have time to gaze up up into the heavens and ponder.

There are just as many shades of white as there are shades of other colors. We usually think of the color white as pure and crisp, like a starched white oxford cloth shirt. I held the white color chart up to the sky mid-day to see if I could see several colors of white. I found seven sky white colors that matched the color chart perfectly — porcelain, daisy, powder, rice, chiffon, snow, alabaster. Some of the other white shades had interesting names — honey dew, sea shell, old lace, whisper white. Never thought about the colors of the color white till today. Research says there are 150,000 shades of white paint on the market! Jeez!! The Lord, Mother Nature, and Father Sky have myriads of magnificent paint shades to color their Earth but I don’t think we can find their glorious watercolors in a paint store.

Around three this afternoon the bright sun burst through the cloud cover and slapped me on the face with her hot rays. I was nodding off in the swing and the heat hitting my face instantly shocked me back to reality. Now I was seeing the beautiful azure blue fall sky filled with fluffy white clouds coloring themselves gray with rain. We need the rain but those clouds, with fat little gray bellies, were floating swiftly across the sky. Don’t think they are planning to drop any rain on my neck of the woods. Had a brief wind that set the bamboo to dancing but their rain dance didn’t produce any rain drops.

Oldest brother stopped for a visit this afternoon and sat in the porch swing for a while. We had an enjoyable conversation about birds and his need for a new stove. His hair is white and so shiny in the sunshine. I was actually trying to match his hair to the white color chart, thinking his hair was just a regular “white,” and he laughed and said he told the beautician not to cut off any black hair and she said, “Don’t worry, I don’t see any!” We got a good chuckle about that. I think people are so handsome when they age gracefully. I’ll be white headed soon. I’m using the “purple”shampoo now on my salt and pepper locks.

God and his angels are always depicted dressed in white. White is symbolically associated with purity. When we go to God with prayer, asking forgiveness for our sins, he washes us clean, fills us with the white pureness of his love. When we think about the fires of hell we see red and when we think of the beauty of heaven we see white.

I think heaven will be in glorious colors like the tail feathers of a peacock — gleaming whites and golds and deep dark purples and burgundies, vivid blues and emerald greens. The azure blue of a fall sky makes me thing of how the sky will look in heaven. God describes heaven as a garden so I know its full of glorious colors and song birds singing heavenly hymns.

Chief always said heaven was just an extension of Earth and we’d carry on in our eternal life with our loved ones just like we did while living on Earth. One of my college friends described heaven to her young son as a large front porch, everybody sitting around in big wooden rocking chairs talking and laughing, reminiscing about happy memories. My oldest grandson sees his grandfather in heaven “hanging out with Aunt Rosie, sitting with Georgia (their dog), and seeing everybody up there.”

The prospect of seeing my family, who have entered heaven ahead of me, gives me comfort and peace to know they will welcome me to heaven.

“Meet me at heaven’s gate, when my time is through, until you whisper my name, my heart will always ache for you,” — Unknown.