The Subtle Shifting of Gender

When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.

(Genesis 9:14-15 NRSVCE)

After the massive flood which Noah survived by building an ark, God promised their anger would not burn so hot so as to result in total annihilation again. The symbol they created for that promise is a rainbow.

The LGBTQI+ movement chose the rainbow to illustrate the concept of spectrum and variety. Flags and posters include vivid, contrasting stripes. But in God’s rainbows, there are no distinct demarcations between violet, indigo, blue, and green. The colors gradually shift from one to the next without our ability to detect where one ends and the next begins. The shift between hues is dissolving and soft.

We sometimes hear the phrase “all the colors of the rainbow,” but our ability to perceive color is a tiny subset of the hues which other creatures’ eyes can see. Human retinas are limited in their cones and rods, and human minds are just as limited.

Maybe even more so.

The magic of light contains color that no creature can see, not even those with the most complex and specialized visual systems. The Creator alone is witness to the full majesty of the spectrum.

God’s palette of shifting hues is vast, subtle, and beyond our comprehension. We humans are like those colors. Subtle, shifting, unique. Non-binary. Unable to be labeled or singled out.

Beautiful and one-of-a-kind, and seen by God’s eyes alone.

The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow. Take your own color in the pattern and be just that.

Charles R. Brown