Icons

St Gregory's Monastery.                                                                                   March, 1st 2013

A few days ago it began with a downpour, followed by freezing rain, and finally snow which came down in big clumps. Ann Arbor rush hour was a mess. The next morning I peered out the front door.  The air was filled with moist fog. Six inches of heavy white snow deadened almost all the sounds. Here at the monastery all that is left is a shiny, crusty layer of snow, pock-marked with deer trails. The squirrels glide over the top leaving no trace of their passing presence. 

There is a library of 11,000 books at St Gregory’s. It is a warm and inviting place during these winter months. At the beginning of each visit I wander down the aisles wondering what will strike my fancy. This time I noticed a whole shelf of books about Orthodox Christian icons. In the eastern tradition, icons are consecrated objects, a divine channel for grace. They are venerated for their redeeming mystery. 

According to Pasha, a peasant woman, in a small Russian village, '"Yes, it, (the icon) ceased to wander. It stayed until the church was closed for good. People worshipped it and said their most beautiful prayers to it. Well (it is) beautiful, too. There has never been such beauty." I was struck by Pasha's phrase "mercilessly beautiful". She had meant, no doubt, to refer to the "Merciful Virgin", but had gotten confused in her expression. Yet, I reflected, all beauty is power-an absolute indestructible power-which throws you at its feet or lifts you up to itself and therefore is merciless.  Yes such beauty as never was on earth'. Vladimir Soloukhin. Searching for Icons in Russia. Harcourt Press, 1972

This icon had the habit of wandering, hence its name the Wandering Icon. Three times it was found stuck in the mud near a stream. Only when the whole village processed her back to the church did she finally settle. 

In the West we are more prosaic about our icons. They are beautiful and edifying. But do we let them shatter us, throw us down or lift us up? I don’t think so. We pride ourselves with being more sensible, less superstitious than Russian peasants. Maybe in our sophistication we have lost something. Certainly an opening to prayer. 

I was 18 when I saw the black and white flickering television images of the earth rising over the moon. Our planet is a blue planet, a blue pearl glistening in glory, hanging in an endless black void. And she has risen for billions of years over that desolate lunar landscape. Something happened to me on that day, July 29th 1969.  Perhaps it was like the first time my infant son recognized the face in the mirror as his. He appeared thunderstruck and then broke into giggles, watching the mirror images change as he wiggled and waved his hands in excitement. His body was suffused with the pleasure of discovery.

I knew that millions were watching these images of earth along with me. It was like a global awakening to a new image of ourselves and our home. Our home is beautiful. She is vulnerable and she is alive. I clipped out the color photos of the Earth Rising from Life Magazine. They hung  on my  bedroom walls for a long time. I wish I still had them.

The earth rising was a shattering moment for me. Dazzling beauty, unimaginable science, and  indomitable human spirit all combined into an image burned into my heart. This is the function of icons. They break through the numbness of the familiar and reveal a transcendent truth. This earth has been rising over the moon for billions and billions of years, waiting to be known by us. Imagined perhaps by poets and astronomers but never before seen. Looking back I can see how this moment and those images from space carved a trajectory in my life. 

Here I am back at my monastery over forty years later reliving these images in the silence of the landscape. This winter blue sky, dappled with clouds that I see through the library windows, is membrane of air, a mere 60 miles thick-- the distance from Ann Arbor to Detroit. This is all that separates me, everyone and everything I love from certain extinction. This membrane of air is daily threatened by our voracious appetite for carbon fuels. Many of us have learned to give up smoking. It kills. We live with such vulnerability, like the human soul, this bubble of precious consciousness that   writes these words. Do we know this? Can we dare to know this preciousness. We are in peril if we do not.

A friend sent me this link to a video called the Overview Effect. Images from the lunar module and from the space shuttle:  http://vimeo.com/55073825