Weekend Update 6/12

Life is Messy

We thought we’d start with a little Christian-sourced post-grunge because it’s a really good introduction to an important point that Baker Galloway made in his interview with John Bell.

Baker is one of the Master Iconographers who will be adorning our new temple; John Bell is a seminary student in our parish. These guys have known each other for years, and so the conversation they had for Come See Something Beautiful is worth several readings: Interviewing the Iconographers: Baker Galloway.

A good example of the sort of insight you’ll find is this exchange:

John Bell: You talked about stillness and capaciousness as being important to you. Is there anything else, any other reality that you hold in mind as the highest possibility for your finished work?

Baker Galloway: There are always specific things I’m trying to do, something particular with a green color on this one, or trying something different with gilding on that one. But with the depiction itself, I’m often flooded with an awareness of different anxieties and sinful habits, both on my part and the part of the person commissioning the icon if I know anything about them — if the icon is connected to a grief they have, a memorial, a pain close to them, there’s a sort of an intercessory aspect to the making.

It’s something like what happens in the Divine Liturgy during the Great Entrance, when the priests and deacons go through and everybody reaches out to touch the priest’s garment. We put everything into it. We’re asking this icon to hold all of it. In that sense, the capaciousness is an exploration of how much more the Lord can have mercy on, how many more worries He can stand. It’s a laying-on of burdens, a kind of confessing - challenging this image to hold all the mess.

“…to hold all the mess”

That’s a wonderful thought because there’s not a single one of us who hasn’t, as the boys in the band put it, “made a mess of me”.

And, it’s true: during the Great Entrance, the folks in our parish really make a point of touching the vestments of the passing priests, because that’s a very tactile and tangible way to give the me-mess to our Lord and Master and to ask him to hold all of it.

That’s Why our Icons are Messy…

But, in Holy Orthodoxy, there is also another concrete and corporeal way to practice that “laying-on of burdens”. There’s another way to ask Christ Jesus to heal “the sickness [that] is myself”.

We can reverence the Holy Icons.

There are lots of ways to do that. Some folks will touch their fingers to their lips and then touch the image. Some people will kiss the frame of the icon. Some folks will place their forehead on the image. Some will kneel or make a prostration in front of the icon.

Of course, any contact with the image is going to leave a mark: sometimes, it’s just a smudge; sometimes, it’s a fingerprint; sometimes, you get the full lip imprint.

Which is why a lot of parishes don’t allow folks to get anywhere close to the icons or the iconostasis. There are communities that keep the icons behind glass, and then there are communities that put a lot of space or a lot of liturgical equipment (or both) between the front pews and the iconostasis, and, while no one we know has ever seen an actual sign that states—‘Don’t Touch the Icons’—the point is clear: these images are off limits.

Thankfully, that’s not how our Iconographers look at all this. Baker Galloway, Martin Earle, and Seraphim O’Keefe have each insisted that they want the images they produce to be physically accessible to people. That means that our icons will need to be cleaned on a regular basis—that may also mean that, from time to time, an image will need to be repaired or restored.

But that is a small price to pay for the blessing of being able to know—with our very hands and foreheads and knees and lips—that there is no limit to how much of our fear and stress and sorrow and sin that Christ Jesus and His saints can hold on to and heal.

And that’s why, in our new temple, there won’t be any obstacles or barriers or distance (or signs) to keep folks away from the icons on the iconostasis.

…Because They are Capacious

Yeah, after we read the interview Baker did with John Bell, we had to look that word up, too.

But what it means is that, through the mercy of the Most Holy Trinity, we can use the iconography of the Church to off-load the messes we’ve made. And we can go back, again and again, until the whole load is lifted.

We’ve got some great music for that unloading process, but, before we get to that, we’re going to ask you to help us build the temple in which that kind of process can take place.

The most efficacious thing you can do (while we had the dictionary out, we looked that word up, as well) is join us in offering the Akathist for a New Temple each week (PDF/video).

But you can also restack this post, share it with everyone you know, and take out a paid subscription. You can buy everyone you know a Come See Something Beautiful T-shirt. You can arrange to have an image of a beloved pet in the Calming Room of our new temple, and you can always make a direct donation to our Building Fund.

And we’ll let The Mighty Clouds of Joy accompany you as you “get rid of [your] heavy load”.