The Color of Together: : Mixed Metaphors of Connectedness

"We lose our vocabulary for gratitude when fear becomes our common vernacular. We lose the words that matter most, and, as a result, we lose part of our humanity." -From The Color of Together Milton Brasher-Cunningham has written a book that speaks to one of the greatest challenges facing us today: How do we live together when so much seems bent on driving us apart? "The chance we have to find strains of grace and hope and love-even gratitude," Milton writes, "comes in solidarity and the sharing of our stories, not in the measuring of them one against the other." When his father died, Milton learned that grief was a primary color of life. That truth is as old as the human story but was new to him. The Color of Together explores the metaphor more fully, looking at the primary colors of life, which he names as grief, grace, and gratitude, and then expanding the palette to describe some of the other hues that make us human. "Where grace matters most is in the daily details, the quotidian encounters where we have a chance to step into the contagion that ripples through the grief of our lives, where we pass grace hand to hand to make meaning together," Milton writes. The book is a conversation between Milton's personal stories, authors who have been mentors from the page, biblical accounts, and a variety of metaphors that allow us to see the colors of life in different lights and contexts. This is a story that started in grief and continues in hope.