St. George and the Dragon, and simple miracles

Slowly, I have loved a piece of wood with marble dust, chalk and warm hide glue.
Polished slowly, to catch the Light, to illumine the approaching shroud of pigments which will disperse like clouds in the formation of creation. Simple water and yolk.
But time laid out in these movements absorbed into my life. Silent and hidden foundation which now--only now--is finding form through curve, arrow, and ink.
And here am I--distilled. Entering. Setting fire to Athonite crystal breath of Our Lady of Iveron saturated in rose floating above my table, slow-motion caught in the light from my Eastern window.
And it is for the quietude and the abandonment of self and the beauty of gifted entrance that I rejoice. The voice is speaking in the hush of the barely audible breath of wind. Time flow. Brush flow. River flow out my window. The will of God in the here and now and always.
And prayer.
These private utterances of sound blowing the inner hut--brushed clean and warm.
Open wide the windows.
There are spring flowers there blooming out my window. They too are reaching East towards that light, bowing and blowing and boldly shifting landscape.
Rejoice! Hell was vanquished, time redeemed, and we must ready ourselves.
O dear saint George, I taste my tears and remember the love you lived.
What dragons do I slay in this my?

Diocletian spilled blood when George loudly renounced the Emperor's edict to kill and sacrifice any Christian soldiers--in front of his fellow soldiers and Tribunes he claimed himself to be a Christian and declared his worship of Jesus Christ. They had a hard time stilling his pulse. And now I find that even Muslims and Jews accepted him as a holy man. There is a shrine to St. George in the village of Beit Jala, beside Bethlehem, which had been frequented by all three of Palestine's religious communities as a place for healing. El Khudder —The Green, as Muslims called him (possibly also naming him the saint of fertility), sometimes confounding him with Elijah, but none the less seeking healing from powerful ailments. All three communities are still visiting the shrine and praying together to this day. Now the love deepens as this becomes a door for ecumenism and solidarity.

We all need healing.

And I now approach the moment of gold, pure and perfect. May heaven aid.

And may this day bring forth joy.


Above: Al-Khadir (right) and companion Zul-Qarnain (Alexander the Great) marvel at the sight of a salted fish that comes back to life when touched by the Water of Life.
Artist unknown

Palm Sunday and the mutability of time

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass" (Zech 9,9)
Again the early rise with my most eager one and a half year old. Exuberance of life as the light has barely permeated this room. And I have been trying to wake most slowly, while grasping the passage of this Lenten stretch and how quickly it is coming to a close. I am perplexed in my awkward interior gaze, having had a rush of time past--links to the me here and now from other Lenten journeys. Such a desire to experience spiritual progress, notable growth, deeper understanding of the mysteries of life, but feeling in some sort of incubation period--the weight of that Everlasting-not-yet. I know there is much work to be done within me. I know I am needing to embrace the absolute of the moment, and unwind this impatient desire to be living the New Jerusalem. But then there are gestures of mercy and encouragement in such simple ways.
We found the tiniest of crocuses blooming right outside the front door--beautiful in pale purple and yellow.
And I see this as a greater affirmation of hope, yes-simple, yet observed too from the interior castle into the world--even small miracles are still miracles not to go unnoticed. Ask and you shall receive. God's hand reveals--in the still and quiet, the small and seemingly insignificant, the barely audible riding on a breath of wind.
And I shall be content in this moment. I shall be patient. I shall gather all the Lenten boughs in my garden and count my blessings. I will learn to appreciate the mutability of time, always changing, always with greater purpose, and trust the path set forth that we are upon.
Time now to place a fond of palm on the ground for welcoming the Innocent--singing and rejoicing and filled with thanksgiving.
And that alone will be sufficient.

And so another shift--my main body of icons are coming home, while new ones are going forth to St. Joseph's Abbey on Holy Saturday. St. George is soon to open (do the Russians use this term in the sense of flowers blooming into the fullness of their color? perhaps...), Our Lady of Guadeloupe will start her journey on my table too as soon as her board is ready. As soon as I get my camera situation secured (in "borrowing" from an offspring), I am starting a place to track visual progress of my icon table. I have wished there was a place to see the process of other iconographers (and there are a few), but many are very impersonal (here I stand as a lone wolf--we are supposed to strip self away altogether, but herein rides a fine line...to make personal without self aggrandissement--and so I shall try...) I want to bring the act of creating--in the realm of writing icons--into a sphere of accessibility, of warmth and approachability for anyone. Mistakes and all. I see this more frightening in laying forth humility--I am constantly learning, correcting myself, and growing. I would like to actually die to self in this execution. So I am prepping A visual record. It just doesn't seem right to include here--I like to segregate the words from the images. So by Easter I hope to have something there.


The early spiritual writer John Cassian (c. 365-435)muses on the entry into Jerusalem (through the Palm Sunday procession)on four different levels:
1. LITERAL--the historic event--Christ riding into Jerusalem in procession acclaimed as King a few days before his crucifixion.
2. ALLEGORICAL--Jerusalem stands for the Church that Christ established by his death & resurrection--united to us through each and every divine service through word and sacrament.
3. MORAL--Jerusalem is the individual human soul that receives Christ.
4. ANALOGICAL--the eternal abode that awaits--The road to heavenly Jerusalem where the kingdom of god will bloom in its fullness.
(lifted through Solrunn Nes's book "the Mystical language of Icons")

'Today He hears the children cry "Hosanna!" while the crowd replies, "O Son of David, make haste to save those whom Thou hast created!"' (Mattins, tone 8)

Andrei Rublev...

A still shared from the masterpiece of Andrei Tarkovsky'sAndrei Rublev (below image as well) gazing at a mandylion icon of Christ.

Mud, pigment, Lent and ashes...

I found the below words recently, written in my own hand some years back and it brought a wave of the familiar longings that preceded my entrance into iconography. Here between musings of the Eternal and a vision of being witness to hope, a tangible path is found to set foot to...here again in the Lenten journey we are about. From the desert to finding our way back to the garden...

There was a time when I would dream about mud. About pounding the earth, a dry and barren earth in a place where the sky runs big and stretches out to embrace this expanse of my dream. Before the exaltation of the empty tomb. A place where light waned, and the sound of solitude permeated deep. Was it grief? Alone I would sit, naked and focused, driving my hands into the crumbled soil over and over until the moisture from my own body would ease itself into my efforts and start shaping the earth into a crude clay. And then the rains came, igniting the parched dust in resistance at first, and washing my humble form with life, with purification after the oils of sweat spilled to the ground. It was in this merciful gesture that I was given sight to know that one's own will can transform the physical. That the potential for renewal is obtainable. Salvation. The alchemy of will. The power of miracles to breathe life, where Life can surmount and overcome.

When I was a young girl, I would hear stories of Native Americans too who had an appreciation for mud and the longings of resurrection. They would seek out the clays to anoint themselves with, and my father, in those rare and cherished moments of storytelling, would dig through a box of incubated memory and pull out a bag that contained a small, dried piece of blue clay, a beautiful and holy clay, given to him years earlier from A Sioux. The promise of life, it held the capability of being brought back to life with the tears of a warrior, to prepare oneself for battle, perhaps to prepare oneself for the next world if that was one's destiny.
It is this inexhaustible potential for rebirth that drives my vision to this symbolic understanding. I am forming this mud within my self and am convinced in the knowing that certain things fallen asleep have the ability to be stirred, breathe, and be formed again. A small still promise that the past rotating through the hand of the present can open and anoint the next door with the sign of the cross.

And it is in this light of ash, mud, clay and pigment that I return. Capturing form and matter stilled, distilled and luminous through water, yolk, tears and prayer stirred and mixed with the Joseph's coat of earth, ground and mixed to dust to be spread free and released with the touch of my hand. To open and cast light upon these windows, these icons from hence we shall find that pointing to salvation, that gaze of healing grace where we shall be cleansed and made whole. There where we can transit to the New Jerusalem washed, pure and gloriously resurrected.

This is Lent in the barren snow, set still upon my icon-table, traveling in heart towards the ripening bough.

King David icon & my son

O happy circumstance. My dear King has spoken to another across the ocean--an art director of a Catholic Italian publishing company who wants this icon for a cover of a new book series--"The Breath of God". The internet does have it's upside with allowing people around the world to find images of what they're looking for...and for reason of the general iconographer mindset of avoiding technology and turning back to ancient tradition, many do not dare blog (!), and some, including the best and most revered iconographer in Russia, Father Zinon, do not even have a website. So far, I do not feel I am breaking rule, although it is important within iconography to deny self and detach from personal identity (thus Iconeye Studio). There is a fine line here, as my own personal mission is to bring icons into contemporary awareness, and this takes a certain acceptance of the internet thing, which perhaps simply because of my semi-isolation in the woods, has its place in my day-to-day life. I am still trying to figure out why my icons are found early in google image page searches, while my mentor's icons are not. Strange these interior engines of cyberspace...

But I am joyful at sharing these images with more people. There is a hopeful difference with an icon of a contemporary iconographer as opposed to an ancient original, in that the new can pull forth a timelessness and make us a part of the experience grounded in the present. As there is a historical implication in the reality of our faith, it is good to make new, and become aware that we are specifically appointed to be God's witness in the here and now, proclaiming Truth, pointing towards Eternity along this road we travel.

And then we travel closer to heart with those whom we love, again sharing Truth. I spent the day driving my eldest three children down to see their father in New York (rendez-vous at a half-way point). My oldest fifteen-year old son Justin sat next to me in the front while the others sat in the back absconded in a movie. And it was so interesting how our conversation went from girlfriend to the issue of pre-marital sex, from abortion to defining one's faith and the person-hood of Christ--all building in passion from his end. He was extremely animated and opinionated in his struggle with these issues and the reality of "who is this man who died for our sins?". He, very much unlike myself, was brought into Christianity since he was born and baptized on his eighth day of life. There is a different reckoning with putting it all together as a young adult, rebellious and wanting to shape the own content of one's life. And what a gift it was even in his skepticism of the audacity of the Cross. He values the importance of faith, of God, but has met a wall with who is this man called Jesus. There it was, like Jacob struggling with the angel, wrestling and shedding tears. No, it is not for us to condemn the unbelievers, the agnostics, the fringe, the imprisoned, the lost, the Hindus and Buddhists, or the Jews for not recognizing the Chosen One... Here it was--love hoping and wanting and banging and shouting and needing for us all in true humanity to be ONE--to overcome differences, pain and suffering from his tender fifteen year old heart. Christ's words are defining, and not so easy. There is a recognition that comes to you as life collects days, that indeed there is a narrow road that we must walk on. A road that goes beyond self-fulfillment to our neighbor--a road that leads right to "Our Father"--not "My". A collective voice of love reaching out to the lost, the wandering, the hungering--the ones who seek to find completion and can in God's most beautiful face who speaks of the Way, the Truth, the Life. We must shine as that face and hands and feet and eyes and mouth. To embrace that freedom of Love where we can make a difference in the world. I deeply feel for Justin in his frustrations of brokenness and yearning to make sense.
I, who am so flawed in my own self through sin, battle daily to overcome that sin of self and become Christ in the world. To recognize Love is the victor, and put it into action. Healing. Working salvation through time within me, and through the opportunities put before us...
I am grateful for God's mercy in my life, for the gifts he has given, for my children and witnessing their own struggle to reckon and come to terms with faith. May our own lives speak forth in this dark and dying world.
May I continue to plant seeds for my own son and my other children whom I love... May I continue to take up brush daily to write icons--a resounding beauty and truth gazing forth to the here and now from the knowing of the beyond.

As King David spoke in his psalm 42:

1 Like as the hart for water-brooks
in thirst doth pant and bray;
So pants my longing soul, O God,
that come to thee I may.

2 My soul for God, the living God,
doth thirst: when shall I near
Unto thy countenance approach,
and in God's sight appear?

3 My tears have unto me been meat,
both in the night and day,
While unto me continually,
Where is thy God? they say.

4 My soul is poured out in me,
when this I think upon;
Because that with the multitude
I heretofore had gone:

With them into God's house I went,
with voice of joy and praise;
Yea, with the multitude that kept
the solemn holy days.

5 O why art thou cast down, my soul?
why in me so dismay'd?
Trust God, for I shall praise him yet,
his count'nance is mine aid.

6 My God, my soul's cast down in me;
thee therefore mind I will
From Jordan's land, the Hermonites,
and ev'n from Mizar hill.

7 At the noise of thy water-spouts
deep unto deep doth call;
Thy breaking waves pass over me,
yea, and thy billows all.

8 His loving-kindness yet the Lord
command will in the day,
His song's with me by night; to God,
by whom I live, I'll pray:

9 And I will say to God my rock,
Why me forgett'st thou so?
Why, for my foes' oppression,
thus mourning do I go?

10 'Tis as a sword within my bones,
when my foes me upbraid;
Ev'n when by them, Where is thy God?
'tis daily to me said.

11 O why art thou cast down, my soul?
why, thus with grief opprest,
Art thou disquieted in me?
in God still hope and rest:

For yet I know I shall him praise,
who graciously to me
The health is of my countenance,
yea, mine own God is he.


Remember me in your prayers.

Encaustic icons, bees, and a pursuit of beauty

Hot wax. Pigmented color gone mad with possibility. So funny how we return to things with childhood fascination. I have always loved wax and candles. There is something so right, so elemental about wax--the lure of the honeycomb, the secret miniature womb for God's sweetness. When I lived in France I ate the stuff, of course ripe with honey, chewy and raw. And therein lay the beauty of plants and animals working in unison to offer a perfect gift. Bees--such perfect, amazing insects. Then there is beeswax in my studio, the wrapping me in this strange sense of hope for some reason. Promise. Transfiguration. Purpose. I have found wax to be a beautiful way to permeate the space around a figurative icon. Ideally, the hand is not to be seen in brushstroke, and the light from the levkas (the gesso layer--"the uncreated light")should allow light to bounce back through. And with this method I am using, it does. Such a delicate veil of color to set the icon within, a gentle hand for this unconventional space. When it is complete, I can polish it to a high shine like glass. Again reflecting light better than gold.
I get lost in the process.
Saturday night I reveled in my quiet house and alchemy of wax. Apply, fuse, wait, scrape, and again--apply, fuse, wait, scrape, until it starts speaking of where it wants to go. And sometimes I am hasty, or miss the turnoff of a layer, and have to find it again. Scrape.
And I won't muse on the nature of life in this echo, but indeed it sits with you in this meditation of color in the balance.
So interesting how process can bring joy in the pursuit of beauty.
I worked so hard on the wax background for St. Gregory Palamas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Palamas)--and I am content with the subtle grey-blue that has graced the surface after many repetitions of layers. Shall the layers build like prayer of the heart? Hopefully Gregory himself would approve.
I am fascinated by the early painters who discovered these catalysts to impregnate the pigment--yolk, wax, oil. And the cave paintings at Lascaux? One can wonder.
Perhaps when I master the process of iconography I will also explore the encaustic on the figures themselves like the famous Christ icon of Mt. Sinai and the Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits. So much to learn...
I will be creating a blog with pictures of my icons. It takes far too long to load on my website, and I can't even upload them freely from home. I would like to share a little process with a visual eye.
Our Lady of Don (a private commission)came out nicely, and now I have to face the reality of my negligence as I did not even photograph it. Nor the completed Resurrection, Elijah in the Wilderness, or St. Anthony. Now I have to find a way to rectify this gap. So interesting how these icons become like friends, and I miss their presence when they leave the studio and go into the world--but it is there where they do their work and speak Truth.
Today I opened (blocked in the initial paint)on St. Gregory--I will be guilding with the italian gold tonight, but I have found I prefer the Russian even though it is thinner.
Learning.
Besides writing and upholding prayer of the heart, St. Gregory Palamas was a celebrated cantor. I leave with his song:
Kontakion (Tone 4)

Now is the time for action!
Judgment Judgment is at the doors!
So let us rise and fast,
offering alms with tears of compunction and crying:
"Our sins are more in number than the sands of the sea;
but forgive us, O Master of All,
so that we may receive the incorruptible crowns."

To what song of hibernation do the bees keep now? Still, dark and silent, waiting for spring--deep inside the catacombs of wax as the snows blow...

icons opening in obedience

"Obedience, taken in itself, is not a "virtue"; it is blind submission, and there is no light in blindness. Only love for God, the absolute object of all love, frees obedience from blindness and makes it the joyful acceptance of what alone is worthy of being accepted. But love without obedience to God is 'the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life' (1 John 2:16), it is the love claimed by Don Juan, which ultimately destroys him. Only obedience to God, the only Lord of Creation, gives love its true direction, makes it fully love.

True obedience is thus true love for God, the true response of Creation to its Creator. Humanity is fully humanity when it is this response to God, when it becomes the movement of total self-giving and obedience to Him."

--Alexander Schmemann, For The Life Of The World, p. 84-85

Embarking on Schmemann for a time.

I have put forth into the world all the icons in my studio as silent yet moving witnesses of the lineage of Truth. For this I am pleased and pray for love to shine forth in this next wave that is about to unfold.

There will be another Theotokos as a commission, a very small Mandylion (face of Christ on a cloth), a Holy Trinity based on Rublev's (and the fluid interpretation of it that Leonid Ouspensky proclaimed) and a Christ in Majesty. This time the majority on beautiful carved panels with a kovcheg that my carpenter neighbor has made. I have carefully hand-stained their edges and backs with a custom oil color in a deep brown with some burnt sienna.

A new chapter in the journey. I will push to simply keep learning and growing as I know progress in skill and vision is being made. And may that never cease.

The very first icon I attempted almost four years ago was one of a portrait of Christ. I had been keeping it as a testament of how far I've come, but the other day I started to see that as a self-oriented perception of this journey. My icons should aspire to be the best always, and so it was almost a sad statement of an imperfect love to Christ allowing it to sit in a corner serving no purpose. The happy end of this realization has been scraping it down, yet saving the extensive gold that I water gilded on the panel, and I am prepared to sketch Christ as all that remains is the gessoed silhouettte. Now to move forward.

So as I share words, a rabbit-skin glue is heating on my stove so I can seal the four new panels. I have to prepare the gesso as well. That is an enormous project, and luckily one that my dear 3-yr. old Emma can assist with while her 1-yr. old little brother Soren can watch perched from my backpack. I am always perplexed at how I can move forward in the icon do-ing with so many laborious, prayerful and time-consuming movements required to complete an icon--being that I have five children. Yet I have never been so disciplined in my life because of that I think. I have my children to thank, and an increasing love of entering the icon and this ever-present sense of gift to be here--here at this precise moment in time, where I can take up brush and proclaim the kingdom of God. It is a miracle. May I never take this for granted.

But so much more to learn... Funny, how I made this shift from looking backwards at my youth and where I have been in terms of creative milestones (or lack thereof), and have now focused on the beauty of days to come, welcomed as I aspire to come into fullness of creative excellence. My body aging in appearance now is daily light to the wonderful place I am heading if I am faithful to the calling of this vocation. Perhaps strange, but a good shift indeed. Why wallow as so many do for youth when wisdom finally and hopefully can emerge. When you pass 40, it is a definite marker--but I think virtue can be obtained. Patience. Life becoming like a gesture of being poured out through a sieve--only the purified and cleansed falling into the basin. So many times I feel as if I really need the span of years to understand so much. But then there is the gift of my husband Aaron who has gifts of philosophical understanding where I do not, and thankfully he helps to pull me up to higher ground (And I hope, I, in other ways I can reciprocate).

Obedience. Patience. Love.

I am going to enter the sunlight pooling in my studio blessed on this beautiful warm day of winter. I am going to rest in thanksgiving. I am going to draw and find those lines to articulate love.

I am glad to be simple. I am glad to be here. I am glad to be immersed in the here and now. I pray the same for you.

Shown at top: Andrei Rublev's icon of Christ in Majesty