Slowing pulse. Silence. Here within the room the air is thick with the promise of all that can come in the slow and steady approach. The moon is rising out my window off my left shoulder with its light hitting the white barn down the road. The stillness of it all settles.
Here and now the echo chamber of sound removes itself, with all its overlapping burden, that had run into the wire of my still point.
Now it is time to journey into this advance of process, of action, of defining love. This too is the clarity of the moon grown full wound around my hand, grasping a slowly moving brush. Slower still I move, sculpting this movement into this other land--juncture of the land of the living and of the Everlasting-not-yet that hovers on the pool of shifting light between shadow and form, here and now.
But I want to pull closer into this sacred space, this place that illumines my heart and drives my hunger for more.
This is all a reassurance, a promise of things to come. This smell, this taste in the air, the subtle weight of the pigments and their smooth density on my brush, and the means to achieve an end. Can I discard the other weight of the invisible stones tied on my back? The things of this world that meet my own sin and prevent fullness of beauty? And so they prepare to fall. They must.
Breathe deeper still.
How to pool color like clouds of Genesis on the uncreated Light of Being...round and round with French yellow ochre and white floating with the bare yolk of this emulsion and pure holy water caught from the font at Lourdes while I was pregnant.
What is liberation? I am nothing.
The burdens, the rocks, the shadows: the fears, the cacophany of intrusion, sin, death.
"Be still and know that I am God."
The weight slides like one wandering in a desert stripped bare, no bodily provision but faith. No why. Attentive to the wind, the light, the dust of Eden upon the feet. Not even survival, but being. The promise of the moment and the timeless that ensues like a victor of death.
Prepare the space for the Holy One.
The stars and sky wait outside the panes of this Northern window, pale moon cast blue on the surface of the illumined snow.
Slowly and with purpose, the brush exposes flesh and space and absorbs time in the determined layer after layer, transparent and pure.
This is but one movement:
Breathing in Lord Jesus Christ, Son of The Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
Distilling the mud from gifted hue, original in their incarnate unfolding, there the Beauty of The Savior's face opens through image on simple plank. Pigmented shadows, yet I see the imprint of the foundation: the yolked clay in place, ready to become the light of the Resurrection in its next movement, while exhaling have mercy on me and on the whole world.
This shall dry and saturate, fuse and mark passage.
Is this why it is called "opening" an icon?
Every tone in its place, harmonizing the next movement, transitioning to the victory of Life over death. Still the moon travels, slower in the latent hours, rising higher to pass peak and prepare for its descent, the coming of dawn, the light of life to come.
And at this juncture, closure.
Have mercy on me and on the whole world.
Have mercy on me and on the whole world.
Have mercy on me and on the whole world.
Echoing into my rise to now make haste to the breath of sleep.
Full of thanks.
Ready.
