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)