I think my mother slipped a book in my bag before I left the house and it happens to be entitled "The Sound of Colors." It's an incredible picture book written in free-verse of a woman navigating through the city without color but this realization that our sight does not provide color but our hearts provide the color. Our heart navigates what colors are translated into our own life. 

There are beautiful lines written within this book, and it isn't just a book for those who cannot see-it's for everyone walking around in this world who are so busy they are ignoring the colors, or who continue to see without their heart. Navigating the subway in this story I think is a metaphor for navigating the downs and ups in life when sometimes you cannot even tell which way you are going but you trust through faith. And that faith walk is the colorful butterfly that floats throughout every page floating ahead of you, always present but presence never always felt depending on whether or not you choose to act on faith because that's up to you. The colors we see are enhanced by our heart and our ears because the colors of life require a certain feel and a certain touch in order to appreciate the colors more fully. 

Like I remember probably the darkest year of my life-my first year of college-actually walking around and feeling and seeing a monochromatic world. And sometimes that happens when your heart becomes so numb to the sounds and the whispers of the world that other colors seems unimaginable and so they aren't imagined-vanishing quickly from your paintbox. 

But we recover from moments such as this when we don't actually see the colors but pretend to. My favorite illustration of this story is at the end of the book the world transforms into a mural. I think when our hearts are seeing colors the way we are meant to see the colors of the world-and I mean truly see them- that is what our hearts look like. I've always wondered why I was so drawn to the murals I witnessed during the Mission District this summer, and I think it was because when I was walking down that street, my heart felt most alive. Because it reminded me of all the good things in the world. The things I love. The things I stand for and hope for and so faith was of the essence, and I would hope that if I ever were to be blindfolded it would not inhibit my ability to hear the colors of the world and see out that unknown journey through colorful walks of faith. For every mural of life should be felt, looking through our heart at all that is possible. And all the dreams that could be.