And a new day

Finally the cooler air has lifted and the world sings of warmth and newness. Sun, light, and a new day...

And so to contemplate things of the Spirit and the gifts and tools that God has freely given us to help us in our journey, I am encouraged. "Man moves in images... " said St. Augustine, and knowing " God created man in his own image" (Gen 1:27), I rest (today) in looking at icons of Christ in the here and now. Moving the first icon I have ever made this Lent--(the one of Christ above) to clean, I am reminded of a very definate sense of calling. Partly knowing the experience of executing process, and tasting the beauty of the process (barely tapped), I know here I can be stripped bare and known, but at the same time beautifully unknown as one who joins in with the echoing of a tradition dating back centuries to Christ himself and those who knew him--liturgy of image right alongside logos. This for me defining a full extention of the true creative process, where all artists of faith strive to be. Pouring ourselves into the Spirit. Losing ourselves... Lifting Light up to the world silently and medatatively(or with loud mountaintop exultations!)--being witness to the reality. The here and now, past and everlasting.

Christ is the image of the Father, fully God and fully man. And it is here, in Him and through Him, the tarnished image of man recovers its initial beauty. Now we are able to become one with God through grace, through communion in the death and Ressurection of Christ because God became one flesh with man by nature through the Incarnation of Christ.

The icon proclaims God, and reveals the New Man and the New Creation. The icon lives through faith of those who contemplate it. Especially as we live encumbered by a chaotic world, striving and yearning for the New Jerusalem, the icon anticipates our coming face to face with God as a ladder raised up to encounter divine mystery--and it is here that we become opened up to the Holy Spirit.

"Engrave Christ, whenever it is appropriate, as the one who lives within your heart, that by reading about Him or seeing Him in an icon, you may know Him by the two means of knowledge...and that you learn to see with your eyes that which you learned through words..." --Theodore the Studite

And what of moving icons?

We keep moving through time...