Elijah in the wilderness, love, and an abiding hope

Sunday was beautiful. Finally after weeks of flu, pneumonia and other inhibitors, we made it back to father Andrew’s church. I felt like a child with such excitement to go—sometimes I wonder about my building desire and longing to be there. Is it out of proportion with reality in my present life with the drive and children and the austere commitment which goes so much further…? But it has been persistant and thoughts of this spin perpetually in my daily existence. Making me ask questions. Making me confront myself. Taking pause.
I had a bit of an epiphany at my icon table before. Here I am, finally gearing up for wholeheartedly working with father Andrew, as all of the previous icons (except for my large Resurrection piece and a small portrait of St. George) are oiled, sealed and currently on a missionary sojourn in Vermont. And so I proceed with drawing several icons. Taking the prototype as inspiration, and it was there in that process that I was most significantly moved. So interesting when all of a sudden things start to make sense—connection of lines in the iconographic space, the greater connection of life laid forth like a map. It’s as if the aperture has opened on a camera and light has flooded my vision. But it wasn’t just a singular understanding, it was the culmination of many things pointed to and landing in this moment.
First, gratefulness. I couldn’t sleep last night, being woken with this overwhelming sense of Love. And how to respond to “how can I be Loved so much?” when I in my earthly self am so small and sinful and far from resting at the Eternal door? But it was Love. Big Love. The kind of Love where the incarnation fleshes out and sits beside you. My innermost desires and prayers heard? My flashes of seeing the future perhaps not just my solitary musings but of a bigger pool of collective possibilities that definitively were glimpsed. And what does this mean this Love? This means that we need not ever worry about the future. We need not linger in a place of doubt when anything and everything is possible. Time opens up, Eternity opens up and we too can be there, making a significant difference in the hand of Heaven. All things appointed in its right time—each moment a calling to fulfill. I know the Spirit is moving in significant ways in our lives--even in the stillness. And this is what is markedly different for me in the here and now. Perhaps it is a basket of patience given, but in the basket were the most beautiful ripe fruits. Ones that must be eaten now, or at least the time is coming soon. My small prayers are heard. This makes me loved. And this reality of this is overwhelming me in joy.
Joy that indeed one day, both on and off the icon table, perhaps I will be able to imprint all these prototypes of icons on my heart and truly live the Love proclaimed in my day-to-day workings. That my gifts may truly be used. Even in my unworthiness. Even in the mountains yet to climb to get there. That souls will repent and see the glory of God. I know sitting with the icons and writing them has profound influence in my inner stirrings. I know that I can be a better person for it, if I die to self and doubt. If I allow myself to be used in the gentle hand of the Spirit. And in all this was another aspect of this Love that came to me.
That of Aaron. His appointed calling. In his steering of our ship, the navigation of waters unknown to places unseen but known, I can totally rest on God’s hand and Spirit upon him to give him guide. Even in my bouts of impatience, when I feel stagnant, or unmoving, or walking in slow motion, or ineffectual, or too small to matter--as if I am not making a difference, or impatient with not seeing around the next bend in our lives, or not feeling connected, that God indeed is working-- making our breath worthy, our place in this world and our lives full of hope. How can one’s faith oft be so lacking in trust unless we SEE? I have centered myself back into the miracle of the unseen hand—and then it played out in my sketching of Elijah in the desert. A prototype of the Novgorodian school again, from the 15th century (although unfound to share on this page).
Elijah (in Hebrew, meaning “strength of the Lord”), was a worthy prophet, in this icon depicted hiding in the desert, being fed by ravens, calmly reaching out his right hand to accept heavenly gifts to sustain him so he did not die of hunger. The very laws of nature can change according to the will of God. So quiet and most like a birthing from the cave, the lines move with my hand in a beautiful lyric play of form and shape, allowing one to enter in. Was it that I asked for guidance more? Was it that I, in gratefulness, felt the Love and allowed the opening up of Elijah in the act of drawing?
I don’t know. I don’t need to know. I need to do. I will be obedient. I will be grateful. I will be hopeful in the unseen promises of the moment. And of the past which will catapult us to the future—to the fullness of time.
And if you read this, pray for my hands that they may carry out the will of the Father. I want to draw and draw and draw making lines that dance and ignite with holy fire, lines that speak as with prophet Elijah on Mt. Horeb:
“Behold, the Lord will pass by. And, behold, a great and strong wind rending the mountains, and crushing the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake, fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire the voice of a gentle breeze, and the Lord was there.” (1Kings 19, 11-12).
May we be attentive to The Voice. The manifestation of God in the world.
Elijah was able to open and close the heavens—filled with inner fire for the zeal of God. Elijah was a daring preacher. And I pray this too for my husband: a reminder that in answer to the burning love of God the natural order of things is changed by the Divine Will. St. Basil knows how to answer this. Are we not also in a desert of sorts? The prophet needs to be alone and pray in his new cave on the third floor of a building. To ponder, to discern, to act with inner fire.
And to remember that provision of this life’s journey is abiding hope in God.

"I do not make an icon of the invisible Godhead, but I make an icon of the visible flesh of God." –St. John of Damascus

I consider it to be no small miracle that I am here, brush in hand, making life-long pilgrimage as a defender and creator of Holy Images.
I know from seeing, from loving, from entering into icons, in all that I know and in what little I do know, it is indeed possible to enter in through prayer—yielding a transformation touched upon by the Holy Spirit through SEEING and witnessing that which IS through a still point, a breaking choir-sung silence where conversation initiates once that threshold has been passed through. Diving through time, connecting with Eternity through those who have walked before us, there is a means to intimacy and a sweet fullness and vulnerability of laying out our spiritual selves through the icon. It is there, here, now, always--through the slow, steady and meditative process of being with an icon, of being in that two-fold prayer with God’s Cloud of Witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), that the reality of God’s plan on earth can speak into our lives, through us, and point us toward Eternity.
This is a true spiritual gift of line, light, form and matter. In the Orthodox understanding, we iconographers “write” icons, for the icon itself is liturgy, the word made flesh through captured line and color on wood, and transforms even the matter to become something other. And the incarnation for Christians is the high point of our visible understanding of God. Man himself was originally intended to be the icon of God (Genesis 1:27), but when God deemed it necessary to become incarnate, He became fully manifest in human terms as His Perfect Icon, the Incarnate Christ, the New Adam.
O for the long journey that takes one to the road we are happy to travel. I think I have been graced with mercy in my search and recent arrival at a means in which to use my creative talents through my spiritual yearnings. Interesting to look back over the years since childhood and find signposts that led me here. In my early years, nature played an enormous part of my artistic curiosity as with many children—gathering clay from the mudbank, finding plant specimens to press and collage into visual forms, making my own paint from berries and glue, carving images into the trees that grew around my home, building small stick homes and villages—these experiences were my favorite and as an only child, I strangely never felt alone, although I grew up without a formal introduction to God. The notion of Church, perhaps being denied access, became something beautifully mysterious and grew into a quiet hunger in my further years to find out. Although I can markedly say that I did feel I always knew the Other…
Our trip to France as a young adult brought on an appreciation with beauty told through the ancient architecture of medieval Europe—especially in the small forgotten churches in the southern countryside around Sarlat in La Dordogne, where we lived. The Black Madonna of Rocamodour being a marked passage to greater internal desire and hunger to know more. And so I fell in love with early Christian art—raw and sometimes brute (certainly not the Renaissance approach) but it moved me, it was authentic story, added with knowing that the incense and candles burning were a continuum of a human gesture to some kind of Love played out since its inception. I returned in College (going to Art school in Paris), feeling God was pursuing me. Chartres Cathedral, and hours, amounting to days spent at the Louvre museum looking for signs of that Other pointing the way. It was on this road that that mysterious thing of salvation was found. And I am eternally grateful. Truth speaks out of the rubble of our lives and pushes its way to the surface so that we can be born anew in Love. First a Protestant, now a Catholic who has an Orthodox heart (with labels melting in an ecumenical shout for Oneness), I desperately want to see Christians and those questing for God to seek to use the tools that God has given and find our way to the foot of the Cross. To look upon the Holy Face, and the holy faces given to us through time-- to stop, hold, even kiss a tangible image passed down from iconographer to iconographer, since St. Luke initiated this journey through time in the play of Eternity.

Speechless be the lips of impious ones,
Those who do not reverence
Your great icon, the sacred one
Which is called Directress,
And was depicted for us
By one of the apostles,
Luke the Evangelist.

Through the icon I have found a home. I have been told it takes fifteen years to truly become an iconographer, but I am on my way (with five babes afoot). I have spent several years working with master Russian iconographer Ksenia Pokrovsky outside of Boston, and as I write this, I am making myself ready to shift to working with Father Andrew Tregubov of Holy Ressurrection Russian Orthodox Church in Claremont, New Hampshire. I am very much looking forward to my next mentorship—Father Andrew studied in-depth the icons of Gregory Kroug (who in turn pulled his inspiration from Andrei Rublev) in France and stresses the importance of Light in the work of the iconographer. Light is held suspended through the lives of the person depicted, but also literally through the pigments or colors used on the icon board. Marianna Fortunato, a French iconographer said, "...each icon is the name of God pronounced in line and color." Thus the line rendered must be full of love, alive, and reverberating of God’s inspiration. It is in aspiring to this that I hope to fill a full cup of beauty, and be found worthy of my effort.
May you be graced with the ability to enter in through my humble and sincere efforts, witnessing by sight the fullness of God’s Word.


Our faith is stronger than death, our philosophy is firmer than flesh, and the spread of the Kingdom of God upon the earth is more sublime and more compelling. –Dorothy Day

It has been strange this feeling of completion. There is something so final, a bit like death. Not a bad thing, but a definitive end to a phase of my learning. Time to move on. These icons I have lived with for the past two years are ready to enter the world. To speak, to interact with souls whom I don't even know. And I like that. I am happy to have been a means for creative and spiritual life to come into the world. And now they are.
How can there be such an enormous pause? I feel as if I have let a long exhale--all breath out. In my mind I am very eager for the inhale which will be deep. This time with Father Andrew. As of Friday, icons will be placed, and I will be able to start in to this next phase. I am hungry to go there. It is time.
Soren is one today. I still cannot remember where this past year has gone--time sliding so quickly. I am grateful for this little life so joyous and full with love. Amazing little one, with so much to give. Most beautiful living icon, Soren Basil Wiederspahn.
Just a brief moment to reflect and breathe again.
So all saints anointed with oil. Only my large Mandylion of Christ left to be oiled and finished.
Aaron's birthday coming as well.
And the trees are almost bare.
I give thanks to good things in my life--the gift of love. The simplicity of line and purpose.
Full and whole.
Overflowing.

The icon above is one I just found--attributed to Rublev. I haven't seen it before, and even through the darkening is captivating. Off to find more.

The gaze of heaven

Saturday morning, October 10th, 5:45am

Darkness pools outside in pre-dawn silence. Shadowy forms of trees moving with the wind. And I wait. And I hunger for the light to rise and my mind to wake.

Soren sits here oblivious to the fact that it is so very early--although when I took him to the window he said in a small mysterious voice:"daaaarrk" and then looked at me and smiled.

So here we are. I welcome the little chatter and play at my feet.

I have been thinking much about Light. And darkness.
The play of God's hand with the pull of the morning sun is a beautiful movement of time to witness. No wonder the cloistered and monastic rise in the dark to collaboratively bring on the day with voices of praise for this gift of Light, replayed each day as if it were the first. And here it comes. Out my window catching like a fire on the maple with the red-veined leaves that is soaked in its already crowned brilliance of gold and crimson. And so soon to pass on, leaving bare branch and the hope of a spring to come. I show Soren, and he speaks not a word, taking it in. And then he starts to sing...

How can one not sing? This gradual, natural perfectly timed sequencing of light, and the emergence of form. And I do think of Rublev's Christ which so silently glows off the board on which it was painted--it too quietly emerges. Like a breath hovering in mid-air. The board falls away and we are left with this apparition. And more so with Christ, His gaze. He who is. Penetrating to a slow, steady interior hum summoned as if by magnetic force to engage and enter into this conversation.

The first icon was that of the Mandylion (meaning cloth in Greek--also called "the icon not made by human hands")--when King Abgarus of Edessa, stricken with leprosy and too sick to travel, called his court painter Ananias and ordered him, along with a beautiful letter of plea to Jesus, to go and capture a likeness of Christ in hopes of healing. The painter went and struggled to capture his essence when it was near impossible to get close enough because of the crowds, and Ananias was frustrated in his attempts. Because he did not want to return empty-handed to the king, he climbed onto a high rock thinking he could get a better view, and then realized that it was not only the distance proving it hard to see Christ, but he could not reproduce his features because of the radience coming from his face. It was then that Christ himself saw the man and was moved in compassion-- and came to help him. He told Ananias he was unable to travel to Edessa, but would later send a disciple to visit the king. He then asked for a cloth and a bucket of water, wrung out the cloth and covered his face with it. Ananias was to take it back to the king--it was what he sought. When the King opened the cloth, he was instantly healed--an image of Christ's holy face had been transferred to the cloth--an image "not made by human hands"and the cloth was hung on the gates to the city of Edessa as a holy relic, and was thus reproduced by others throughout the ages.

A divine sign with healing powers.

I am so close to completion of writing my Mandylion icon. It is a very intimate thing to spend time writing the face of He who is, transferred in incarnational beauty. A gift to be rendered in pigment and line. Simplicity. The initiation of dialogue. The word that speaks. And yet I ponder too Our lady of Guadeloupe--and how sad it is that she has never been written in the Byzantine style because of the schism. Because she revealed herself in a Catholic context, and the severing of iconographic lineage has rendered silence in the West. This Light too needs to break dawn.

But spend time contemplating Rublev's Christ.
Rest quiet, still, certain in His Is-ness, his perfect being.
It is in the eye, the gaze that penetrates.
And so I am off to start the day.
To lift the lamp of self and be Christ's hands and eyes and feet
and mouth--body in this shadowy world. And to love this little man who has had less than a year of dawns in this world--he who is perfect innocent life. He who is the spring and the hope of bigger light to come, and who reaches out with small fingers and takes my hand.
And for this miracle I give thanks.

"We bless you now, O my Christ, word of God, Light of Light without beginning, bestower of the Spirit. We bless you, three-fold light of undivided glory. You have vanquished the darkness and brought forth the Light, to create everything in it."
--St. Gregory Nazianzen (Dogmatic poems, Patrologia Graeca)

This space of time, this place of heart, this tree of Paradise

Slowly, surely I stand and look at the cloud patterns on approach. Time patterns as a quiet fool sometimes, and I am the one who stirs the pot, watches the sky and cloaks my shoulders with shawl. Down spins the first leaf speckled with ochre and sienna, crimson and worm-hole.
Where to in these moments? Holding on to small little hands, we find that place of comfort. Soft, still and sweet, I too remember the familiar smell of wood burn, tart apples and hand-spun wool tight and pressed against a cheek with a glass of cold milk.

Little kisses from those who trust me with all they are.

Icons are moving their lips to smile.

I must admit, the movement of imminent goal of sharing my attempts of icon-writing with others quickens my blood. I want to get better. I want to find my way. And I am happy to share that journey with little hands grasping on to table-side, if that's what it takes.

Aaron's birthday will mark the delivery of eight or so of my icons to a gallery in Brattleboro, Vermont. To share, to mark a new phase in time in which to create.

Seraphine, the recent french film we saw last weekend, was an enormous encouragement to me--a beautiful and haunting portrait of a woman driven to create as an intimate and sacred love letter to the Other. A conversation with the divine, spoken through hand-made pigments ripped from the earth and other matter--distilled in a love and intimacy that channelled through her own unique brush. Tree of Paradise. Not without encouragement. Not without misunderstanding. Often and almost always alone and with interior conviction, and exterior semblance of a sort of madness. Who are we who create for the Creator? Holy fools?

I still fill with tears contemplating her grand gesture, wedding gown and bare feet trailing the cobblestones of her village, knocking on doors announcing the Feast. The here, now, always. Image bearers, the light of the Incarnation flooding it all. The mystery of the why spilling over canvas as blood on sacred ground--an echo to Love, a voice singing in the beauty and pain of life. The patterns of creation through fruit and leaf, limb and light. Colors that annunciate and speak of an intimate and most profound language.

Remember you are blest. See this film, spend time with her paintings, and kiss the crimson leaf you find at your feet.

The earth of Philokalia

It is all pushing. Time and space and brushing the dust of Eden off my feet. Where is this boat heading? I want to be lost in the timeless creation of creation, like the white levakas painted in layers on my board. A symbol of light, beginning, and that which simply is. Where is that mystical flow that can sweep one up and into shape? What is this my shape? How am I to enter in? And I do know. That prayer is carrying me along....Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Mercy.
Grace.
And joy.
So much dust these days to shake off. To reflect outwards that inner light, and not to let it stay cloaked. More light, more hunger, more thirst.
This time is a bit like temptation in the desert. We walk bearing the assumption of lost, we are indeed nothing, and there are shadows of the Other stalking. But I see the shadows, I feel my way, I bear the Light, and I know this too shall pass.
If only I could know for certain this was all for refinement. Certainty is too scientific, too full of itself. I will learn to be content. I will learn to yearn without restraint--to pool myself and be as a drink of water. Filled and giving. Moistening the tongue parched from the desert dust.
Show me the tree. I know the bird can find refuge there.
Quiet, still, true.
o let me fly.
an apparition of light breaks on wing
washing skies that slowly
diffuse
and lift my feet,
this clayborne heart,
and scatter fields
of unyolked promises
for a mile of mercy
stripped
and sweated
sweet
and full.

I'm sorry I am spiraling a bit. My head is needing to rest. I need to paint. My tree seems appropriate to share. It is where I want to be. It is where I am.

Bear with me heart as I ache...

Time flowing in an orbit all its own. Last week we received word of my little 2 yr. old cousin Mason's accidental drowning in his backyard pool. My heart threw itself into a panic as I tried and still try to comprehend the reality of this meaning. The silent whisper of why floats by and forces me to stand firm on the ground of rooting in the moment. How can we not, pulling along our fragile skin with lives balanced in an obtuse world? All is transient. All is passing. When- how- why? Eyes on the Eternal, I think about this thing called mortality and lay stripped, feeling like I need warm rain to fall on me and turn the soil of my being into a moist clay--able to be shaped into whatever it is called to--whatever it is named.

Love. Poured forth. Needing the cup to catch every drop. How to live life to the fullest? How to live love without obstacles? Caring for little lives that depend on us to show the way, to carve a mark on the heart--this is the easiest most beautiful and natural thing to do in the world and also the most difficult with the weight of life and the sin of the world and the ever-present reality of our bodily limits. How do we do it? How can we capture some of that love and place it in a jar to behold, as small children stare in awe as with fireflies caught? To summon beauty and truth forth and find a way even in the most simple and ordinary places to allow them to illuminate life, casting back the dark of the night. Casting back the wages of sin. Light. Light. Light. Time moving forward with deep undercurrents racing back in the gesture ahead. We can love. More. Now.

Aaron found this quote that put it in its place-- the unknowing of death...

"To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?" - Socrates

I had to make a painting of Mason. No way to travel the whole of us there, and yet aching with grief. No way to imagine the pain felt in the loss for Jen and Paul. And yet it can happen to any of us, any time. It made sense to me why the human inclination is to depict the loved especially if they have passed. And photographs that suspend time cannot do this the way the hand can mystically transport out of time, beyond time. I am still in awe of the process of forming image--especially in human depiction. What is it to paint with love if we want to live with love? What is passion in our creative outlays of pursuit? It is all love from beginning to end.

And the halo came so easily, so quick...

I am going to pray now. Little night breath steadily blowing in and out. Life. Beautiful little lives gifted for a time together here, then eternity there. Now. Steady. Breath movement as in a linear line moving through time. Peace. My children. God's children.

And again love...

Onwards and new things...

So here is a replacement photo of my finished St. George slaying the dragon being that it is the first that truly feels complete (and totally made without my dear mentor Ksenia around). I am excited to dive in to the next which are two resurrection icons along with more miniatures of the Holy Face. This is good.

Today I will meet with Father Andrew of Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Claremont about doing a week-long workshop for a group in August in Keene. This meeting coincides with my first experience of an Orthodox service. Needless to say, I am of little words today, feeling very much excited for this initial opening. Praying for my heart that my excitement can remain in check.

It is indeed good. And all shall be well....

Interior renovation

I have been wanting to share this image for awhile. I find it strangely provocative and a bit pictorially symbolic of the healing needed in one's spiritual life. I speak of myself. Broken, sometimes feeling like caving in, but still resounding of mystery and the ability to enter in and make beautiful.

How is it that time slips so quickly through the cycles of life? Lent again. Denial of self and gifting of self--trying to break old patterns and make strong and new. I can open that door to the Spirit to rework. O interior castle may there not be too many layers of grime to wash clean...

All I want is to have vibrant love and live it out wholeheartedly. I am realizing my ignorance of theology, of philosophy, of life... What are the vestments of faith and how are they worn? Things I once accepted without questioning are being questioned. How to live? How to live that vibrant love? How do we dive deep into God and listen to all He has to say?

Two little ones to juggle along with the other three. Wanting to go into the studio, and yet wanting to gift little people with all the good things they need now with basic love and exploring life. So I opt for the love of the littles, to the littles and being in the moment with them. This is good. Realizing it is ok to want to write icons, but I don't do it for me. I want to grow in knowledge--in things of interior life. And learn how to live.

Finally I will go to an Orthodox service this week. I am more than excited with all that I have been reading and looking and already living out in prayer through the icon. We want to be in community. Where will this be? Change has to happen.

Kiss the icon--and enter in.