The Color of Splakna

If “splakna” sounds like a made-up word, it is. The Greeks made it up thousands of years ago. Uncomfortable, a bit splattery, a bit rocky. But more on that later.

Last Christmas Eve as we were preparing food, Ginger entertained Mama with The Piano Guys video clips. Such excellent and creative musicians! Two songs that I love are “Peponi”, an African-language version of Cold Play’s “Paradise”, and “We Could’ve Had It All”, The Piano Guys’ rendition of Adel’s hit single.

The songs are very different in message, but startlingly the same in feeling. “Peponi” strains forward, clutching a vision of a better day, whereas “We Could’ve Had It All” looks backward with the writhing sting of lost love.

I was stirring a sauce, so without the visual aid of the videos I used my ears and heart more than my eyes and head. What struck me was the emotional intensity of both songs. I said to Ginger, “If those songs were two separate stews they would share a lot of the same spices.” Yes, I felt that in my bones, but “What spices?” I mulled it over, and it became clear; the shared ingredients are wistfulness and yearning, intensely wistful yearning.

Splakna! Gut-churning, burning, drive. Here’s what inspirational film producer Stew Redwine says about splakna. “This ancient Greek word evolved from referring to the nobler entrails used in sacrifice… [The word came] to describe the seat of the affections in humans. Literally the guts, viscera, [it] became gut level compassion, visceral feelings. Splakna is at the very core of our humanity. Splakna is that feeling in our guts when something really stirs us.”

How strange that the ardent straining towards paradise and the agonized grieving of lost love could put the same intensity of wistful yearning in our guts, or at least in our songs!

Then I remembered Ginger’s short art lesson given to me years ago. She said an art teacher of hers had explained that a skilled artist will choose a color to tie the whole painting together. If it is ochre, then ochre in varying amounts is mixed into every color on the pallet. It gives the painting an integrity, a unity in appearance. You may not detect the ochre in the blues, whites, and greens of the painting, but it’s there pulling the piece together.

In that same way, the color of our existence seems to be wistful yearning. All our moments are tinged with it. It is sharply apparent when love fails us and when our souls strain towards “a better land.” But it is also there in our times of joy, spilling over even into our pools of peace. Gently we understand that nothing gets to be truly perfect here. No one is faultless. No moment is without blemish. To one degree or another we are always in the shadow of “if only.”

While wistful yearning is the ubiquitous spice of our lives, the very color of our guts, there is joy in this: Grace calls us to the wistfulness of eager anticipation, and mercy lifts us from the sour yearning of regret.