The prayer of the still point: brush, breath, and illumined dust.

A detail of Hildegaard Von Bingen's self portrait from one of her illuminated manuscripts

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.        

My beautiful iconography mentor Ksenia Pokrovsky

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September has arrived.  This brings me at the happy arrival of re-entering into my Russian-Byzantine Iconography mentorship and long-awaited further study with Ksenia Pokrovsky (www.izograph.com) through a NH State Arts Council grant.

I just found this lovely photograph of this most wonderful woman.  This woman who has allowed me into her studio and helped to bridge my desire to become an iconographer with all that means in the slow steady push of entering into the process, the technique, the theology, the beauty.  She holds the promise of all that I need yet to learn. I miss her and the joy of sitting at her icon table as her wild birds sing and swoop overhead (the sound of a babbling brook from the third floor eves of an old Victorian house).  I am ready to be there with her critical eye, her slow and steady encouragement, her smile and "time to take a break", as we would go to her table in the kitchen, and she would feed me goat cheese and crackers and occasionally a strange and wonderful Russian cookie along with black tea.  "But don't iconographers fast while writing icons?"  Not with a baby in the mix, I soon found out, incubating or nursing. When I last left Ksenia's studio (outside of a visit this spring) I was eight months pregnant with my son Soren, and ready to embrace a different intensity of transition into this world for my littlest one.  Soren, who is rapidly approaching two years next month, is my child number five--to which Ksenia, also a mother of five, says is the perfect number of children for a woman. She is living proof that mothers indeed can become master iconographers, even if that speaks of decades of pursuit.

So time has passed and I have tried to do my best on my own in the few moments of time that I find to enter into the most beautiful gift of prayer and paint through the icon inbetween feeding and loving the children at my feet (and those who are taller than me as well as my sixteen year Justin).  But I have missed Ksenia.  And I fail miserably to arrive where my desire propels alone in my studio.  I miss her "scrape!" with the passing of a blade to erase hours of work because it simply was not right.  Honestly, I think she would have me scrape everything I have written (we "write" icons--icons are as Word--liturgy as line and color) in this time away from her eye.  This is why iconography is a living tradition, passed down from iconographer to iconographer and very much needing the direct instruction of a master to pass the gift.  And to discipline the pursuit of beauty.

Ksenia is a remarkable woman.  She began her own pursuit of iconography in the 1960's when iconography was still very much forbidden in Russia.  She started out her adult life in science, studying physics, when she met Father Alexander Men who was to become her spiritual father (a tremendous voice in the Orthodox Church, who was martyred in 1990 ~ www.alexandermen.com).  He encouraged her to follow the path of iconography, to which he proclaimed to her that within several decades, there would be an enormous resurgence of interest in this art.  "You will teach others, " he told her, with a prophetic insight.  

Learning iconography primarily on her own through study, practice and restoration work, she did spend time with renowned iconographer Maria Sokolova (or sister Juliana), observing her at work and in lengthy discussion when they had summer cottages next to one another in the 1970's, learning what she could in the difficult time of not being able to openly practice iconography.  Ksenia has personally shared with me in our breaks from instruction, the struggles of that desire to learn when she first was getting on her feet with writing icons coupled with raising children.  I very much relate to that, and enjoyed hearing of her packing infant in a stroller to wheel down to Maria's cottage so the baby could nap while she could learn--seizing any opportunity to immerse in the art.

By the 1980's, Ksenia had come into her own as an iconographer and as a teacher, and her Izograph Studio was a school where students could receive formal instruction where there had practically been few options outside of monasteries, let alone for women.    It was a special time for Ksenia, who loves to reflect on the collective minds and desires of fellow iconographers concerned with the resurrection of the icon.  I especially love her common concern for traditional materials, namely the natural pigments, for which she used to be a storehouse for as well--bags of ochres, blues from remote places, vermillions---all of which were not readily available to the public as it was still a criminal act to practice iconography.  I wish I had a photo of her pigment jars which sit on a large shelf next to her table and library, hauntingly beautiful (this will come).

For someone who grew up unchurched (but now a Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox at heart) with limited access to icons in the US, it is an enormous priviledge to study under this remarkable woman.  She has made it clear that I am her last student outside of the workshops she leads--www.hexaemeron.org and that too is quite humbling.  And I have so far to go...  Many people don't understand this intense desire to adhere to this tradition that is not about self-expression (I came through art school in my college years), but a direct connective artistic and liturgical thread to Christ himself, to walk through these doors to the Eternal initiated by lines of fellow jouneymen.  It is indeed a beautiful journey.

"A Westerner taking an interest in iconography and studying iconography as either a painter or a scholar almost inevitably arrives at an understanding of one of the essential aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy: the confession of Christ as divine beauty." 

~ Irina Yazykova, from Hidden &  Triumphant  www.paracletepress.com

(I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the underground struggle to save Russian Iconography)  

The confession of Christ as Divine Beauty.  And this is so.  I am struck by the icon deeply as a beauty that takes us not only closer to our Creator, but also as a unifying tradition to the church undivided, and the mystery of the heavenly Jerusalem to which our souls long to be.

So thank you Ksenia, for allowing me to connect with this tradition through your life's dedication, and for taking to heart what father Men instructed you to do.

 

I will try to honor you and Christ through my efforts.

Free fall, flow, wait, mix and enter

Slow stream is bumping me downstream in this makeshift boat of found objects, with an undercurrent that is about to flip everything around in lunar tidal show coinciding with the fork ahead.  Careful now--flow, flow, flow--steadily  pouring us into deep, quick river.  Are we ready?  Soon I will be a fish swimming upstream since steering is near impossible and it is time for shape shifting--I want to jump in now as longing is acute, but it is premature, and I am sure to drown in an imperceptible assurance of ability that has yet to prove itself and move beyond danger. Patience.  Hold me steady and place my hand in yours.  Where to?  Together we can tarry the night and heavy matter that oft holds us fast. If only this rudder was less a ribbon and more a sword, but then again, now we can slide over this drop, sailing freefall to the beauty below of white water and smooth stone.

Embrace the moment, breathe, and hold on.

Sometimes I would like to see the Other in the here and now.  Thinking about dimensions in this world. Shadows being two-dimensional reflections of our three-dimensional world.  And what about the three-dimensional world?  What does it reflect?  3-4-5-6-7...spaces unseen except in musing and a second sense of knowing, tasting, believing. 

It is time.

Time to allow opening up and immersion in holy water and holy fire.  Cleanse and purify.  Make ready.  Become a welcome door post for entry into this room with table set, sweet smell of feasting about...but where are the guests?  Wait. Wait. Wait. They are coming. I mustn't loose hope of my intuition that told me to prepare, make ready, FOR THEY SHALL COME.

How long do we wait?

We must keep everything warm and the lamps burning.

In all this I long to see Tarkovsky's world.  Feeling like I too am here in this house in wait, flowing in and out of time.  Waiting for the physician to come over the field.  Hands passing off gifts, tongues shaping words to linger the mouth and be given, to help steer the next moment.  The next door.

Dust of possibility lies in beautiful cups on my icon table.  The promise of Beauty.  A waiting that I can open.

Now. 

So I shall go and justify the means with an egg.  Yolk of incubation.  And incubation released.

Funny how the alchemy of mixing paint can propel my heart to open wider.  Bringing the two together: this dust and malleability through line, stroke, curve, finding love.  To reflect in pools of color gentle clouds, light, and layer the sounding board of God's promise. 

I can be an instrument.
I can wait.
I can learn to steer this boat.
I can keep warm and ready.
I can open the door.
I can see them coming.
I can feel the dawn breaking on the plains of the Great Cathedral.
I can taste vision.
I can make vermillion.

I can illumine.

And here, now, always,

Sweet hope.
 

Whimsical musings of space

So these are the few initial spaces that help to make me feel that things are obtainable (regarding my musings below--that place we are heading...).  Living sculpture/sculpture for living from The Rural Studio Project: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2008/ruralstudio/particulars.shtml--just a sampling of what these architects can do.  Can't you see modern monasticism for the artist alive and well within these walls?

That place we are heading...

I have been out walking. The morning clouds spilled into rains and yet the two little people and I wanted to encounter its thick fresh air, brush pass the voluptuous ferns along the roadside, and peer over the bridge on the off-chance we might see a trout napping in the shadows. The rains died down, and so the air gathered more a mist, gifting a subtle incubus of space and time, fragrant earth, and sweet sleep for the riders in the stroller.

And my mind stirs to surface the many things that are speaking-- This notion of community, and current lack thereof; the love of God synonymous with love of neighbor; the way that I, as a mother, can make a difference in my children’s lives while pointing the way to a semblance of heaven on earth; collective acts of creativity pooled out to overflowing in waters of collaborative space. The why, the grief, the longing--all beautiful arrows that once and still point to that greater dream and propel me to ask how to form the door that can open to this place. Is it foolish to hope? I know I am not alone—but how to take action and make change. What does it look like? How can it serve? How to form the forgotten dust of Eden to build such a dream? 

What is it this severing? Spliced lives in heavy balance of all the needs of the day. The unity of simplicity lost. The intimacy of spirit, the intimacy of love, the intimacy of simply breaking bread broken down and sitting shelved and mostly forgotten. The ways of this culture wheeling along but broken: from the minimal glories of success to the monumental loss of time to trivial pursuits that keep us from each other and from true intimacy, growth of being, and gifting of self. I question myself and why this longing runs so deep. Not simply a monastic desire, but here in this desired place of New Jerusalem there are families, children, single people committed to another way of day-to-day sustainability and life. Feed my spirit, feed my body, feed my mind and creativity—feed each other. Is this not also where we find God? And true love? And I am one of the blessed few who share deep love and commitment with my spouse. But that too didn’t come without loss, pain, and a severing of a previous attempt at marital love that failed. So what is it? Where is it? How to find it if it has not been discovered, and how to create it if it is yet unknown? 

I want to know.

I know now that I feel like a traveler without home. But the fact that my being yearns, like an older deeper instinct, makes me think it exists, if only yet formless. Perhaps one needs to learn more about the communities that St. Basil set forth—but for artists? Sometimes I am only too acutely aware of all the ways that it is unattainable. To love God is to go further, to take the narrow road that has not even been forged through the wood. But to have enough vision to see it illumined through the darkness, and hear the sound of song from its heart echoing back: to trust, to hope, to follow.

May we be brave enough to try. 

So along with the daily needs of the day we pray for the quickening of the reality of the Abbey. For heaven on earth, for Love that sustains and never fails, for beauty that illumines the Creator, for a place to call home in this passing, dying world.

The photos above are from The Rural Studio Project--innovative architects concerned about the nature of community and the beauty of form. I should have been an architect. They get me excited and thinking.

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)