Holy Week immersion

Snow is still everywhere, as Emma and I sit locked in this never-changing incubated winter that most hopefully is coming to an end. I don't think I have ever felt so forcefully contained indoors before with temperature and ice preventing a breath of fresh air. Time for the re-greening of spring, for a new page to be turned and this little girl napping in my lap to run in the grass. Resurrection, melting, new life. Soon.

And we have entered Holy Week. It almost seems too early, except for this long-feeling lent spent in arctic tundra instead of arid desert.

Am I being tested?
--God give me patience.

I am happy that my icon of St. Paul is finally complete. I am going to remove those old pictures I have of my embarrassing earlier attempts at icon-writing. Thank God for Ksenia's instruction, without that I would be lost--or most surely working outside tradition. And I want the confines of this living tradition to shape me on my path. So much to learn. To find the beauty in the path back through time, and make it new.

A question was posed to me the other day: What first got me interested in icons--especially as there is little emphasis or connection to real icons in the Catholic Church?

I have always been drawn towards icons since I was quite young--most probably it was the year spent in France when I was 15 that marked my experience. Many of the old churches in the South of France date back quite some time, most were Medieval, and definitely pre-Renaissance. There was a purity in the artwork even if not coming from recognizable space (I didn't realize the iconographic space was their starting point). It seemed that early Christian art had a sincere mark of passion, even if not that beautiful. Why was I stirred this way? Growing up and pursuing art professionally I always struggled with the vast majority who point to the achievements of the Renaissance as the ideal. I always loved artists like Giotto and Fra Angelico and yes, the austere beauty of Andrei Rublev's icons which held me and transported me to a more pure expression. I then prayed before a very simple icon of the angel with the golden hair (very old with very large eyes) and had a profound experience. It was a window to the eternal--a tool that God gave us to accompany us on our journey through this world. It is only now, convicted interiorly of having to pursue icon-writing, I am starting to understand. Going back in history to the thoughts and writings of St. John of Damascus, and exploring the earlier significance of icons, reading of the iconoclasts and the schism between East and West, I can see that the Western Church lost so much. The icon is essential to preserving beauty and truth. A return to this form of Christian expression is needed especially in today's media-driven world that is too quick to label icons as archaic and crude. And within our Church that doesn't even place value on the integrity of images. So I will make whatever small contribution I can with my efforts towards pointing back to the authentic, simple and true.
I count it a blessing to spend such time with the angels, saints, our Lady and Christ himself. I want to hold up windows of beauty and proclaim truth through these images. This is a joy...even if it will be a long road to do it well.

Slowly, I am learning to walk in this iconographic world.