Azul

As I walked out of the Basilica this tiny girl in a beautiful blue dress walked in. She seems old for Baptism and young for Confirmation? I'm not sure what the occasion was but it appears to be some sort of rite of passage. Looking at the photo now, the color and ruffles of her dress bring to mind my grandmother's blue glass bowl, and how the letter in my dream written in Spanish.

Blue. Rites of Passage. A flooding of images and connections. I remembered learning how the seven Sacraments of the Catholic church correspond, symbolically, to the seven chakras. The chakras are subtle centers that align along the central nervous sytem of the human body. Shaped like a wheel or flower, they radiate and receive life force energy that affects our physical, mental, and emotional health.

The third chakra connects us with our sense of personal power in the world, where we step away from tribal belief into what makes us uniquely who we are. Located in the solar plexus, its element is fire and its color yellow, with petals as blue as the center of a hot flame. It corresponds with sayings like "Go with your gut" and "The fire inside." The third chakra is "All of who you are." The Sacrament of Confirmation, performed at the age of reason, is an act of moving from Baptism to making an individual, mature commitment to the Catholic church. Symbolically, it is an act of stepping into what you believe.

The Sacrament of Confession was originally meant to make you conscious of your decisions. Giving voice to your actions, confession allowed you to see where you were out alignment with your Higher Self, so you could call your energy back. The fifth chakra represents giving voice to our beliefs, communicating our truth to the world. It's where we surrender our will to our Higher Self in order to express who we truly are. Located in the throat, it gives rise to phrases like, "Choking on my words" or "Finding your true voice." It's element is ether, the element of the sky. Its color is blue.

The fifth chakra, called Vishuddha in Sanskrit, translates into English as "Purity." The third chakra, called Manipura, translates as "lustrous gem" or "city of jewels." My journey of collecting gems, sparkling longings, gathered together to become whole, filled like Fatima's tiny treasure chest.

The courage to live a story, the courage to tell the story, with blue glass appearing at just the right times, like lanterns of reassurance, along the way.