We move steadily towards Good Friday, and it seems fitting that I sit here with drying tightening glue on my fingers after fixing cheesecloth to my birch panels for future icons. Time to dry, time to hold sleeping Emma, time to prepare the heart and spirit for our symbolic Passover seder approaching. And then perhaps later tonight, when the children are asleep, to apply the gesso or levkas to my board--many fluid layers building up to symbolically represent the uncreated Light of God upon which the icons will be written.
Why does this world lay such burdens at our feet? Why do we not press harder towards the goal? One wants to take the perfumed oil and pour it lovingly on the feet of Christ. To gaze upon the Face that knows what is to be suffered and anoints with boundless love. How to make each moment gifted for God, even when enfolded in the mundane, how to love the sinner and cast the sin back where it belongs, how to live a life ripe with fruits of God's grace--to shine with the transfigured light of our Lord? To not fall asleep or fall short of that which we are called... Deepen my interior prayer as I focus and settle upon the breathing in of Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, exhaling have mercy on me and on the whole world.
I want to be a better Christian.
More prayer. More sacrifice. More love.
Love--love the cleansing of dirty feet, love the gift of making visible the invisible in the process of writing icons, love the process of motherhood and gift of life within, love the sacramental marriage to the man I love who is such a gift to me. Love that I have been pulled across the chasm to a new land to help to build a New Jerusalem.
I am off now to put another coat of terra verte green with a touch of ultramarine to the background of my Theotokos. I am hoping to gracefully reinstate the lines of my drawing to make it as beautiful as possible. Last week I almost finished my Theotokos with Ksenia, and I am needing to practice it again. And again, and again and so on. Little by little we start to see and find the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment