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PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 12/20/2003 8:12 AM (GMT -6)

Christ Pantocrator

("Hilander" from Serbia, resides in Sinai)

+

(from Hagia Sophia in Constantinople)

+

(Byzantine)

honorman
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Date Joined Oct 2002
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Posted 12/23/2003 6:28 AM (GMT -6)

Do you know a person becomes an iconographer? And perhaps a picture book on them?

PotOnWheel
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Posted 12/26/2003 4:19 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

Do you know a person becomes an iconographer? And perhaps a picture book on them?

Icon's are a vehicle of worship. So, they are not a matter of opinion or "expression." Their form is not artistically dead/static. But what the form "says" is given boundary (like how creeds boudary/fence-in what is necessary without over-defining.) So, to put it simply, the old tradition of requiring the icons to be blessed by a bishop or the priests/elders in his service is a very, very good one. That way visual "heresy" and just plain bad art gets trashed.

As per books, I remember reading "Feastal Icons for the Christian Year" by an Anglican named John Baggley. Not probably all on target, but a useful design of a book that sought to explain the place each Feastal icon plays in that Feast. And THAt is important. Icons and liturgy go together -- not apart.

But if YOU wanted to become an iconographer, first you would have to become Orthodox. If you don't worship like an Orthodox how would you understand what goes into that form of visual liturgy? Make sense?

OTHER BOOKS:

“Iconostasis” by Pavel Florensky SVSP

"For the Life of the World" by Alexander Schmemann (about worship) SVSP

I see THIS recommended: "THE RESURRECTION AND THE ICON," by Nichel Quenot, Trs by Michael Breck SVSP

I see THIS recommended too: "THE ICON: WINDOW ON THE KINGDOM," by Nichel Quenot, Trs by a Carthusian Monk SVSP

"An Iconographer's Pattern book" by The Stroganov Tradition SVSP

.......CLASSIC........ "THE MEANING OF ICONS" by Ospensky & Lossky SVSP

.......CLASSIC........ "THE THEOLOGY OF THE IDON, VOL 1&2" by Ospensky SVSP

PotOnWheel
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Posted 12/26/2003 4:25 PM (GMT -6)

Here's a guy who learned... The teacher he mentioned was my sister-in-law's H.S. art teacher in Penna. Small world.

www.comeandseeicons.com/ferencz.htm

Icon's are supposed to be unsigned. You wouldn't "sign" John 3:16 if you wrote it out in calligraphy -- right?

BTW -- people like to say that one "writes" icons instead of painting them. In greek you "paint" letters too. Much ado about a "nothing." Sophmorisms.

honorman
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Posted 12/26/2003 8:20 PM (GMT -6)

POW: thanks again for the information. No, I'm not interested in being either Orthodox (which I have WAY too many theological problems with) nor an iconographer (some of which seems to me to be bad art, perhaps in the same way that scripture can seem boring sometimes). I am just interested in why Orthodox believers are so "hung up" with icons. Just trying to get a picture of it, is all.

honorman
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Total Posts : 1137

Posted 12/26/2003 8:22 PM (GMT -6)

I would ask this question: how can icons NOT be a matter of opinion? Someone has to make a decision on whether or not it should be an icon (a bishop, for instance), and his tastes would factor into that.

honorman
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Total Posts : 1137

Posted 12/26/2003 8:24 PM (GMT -6)

Actually I've seen calligraphers who do scripture and sign their name. Don't you think Paul signed his name at the end of scripture? At the rate, I can understand why they wouldn't. Want to have the maxium effect to the icon's holiness.

honorman
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Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 12/26/2003 8:29 PM (GMT -6)

As an aside (and from a purely "outside" standpoint), POW, I am beginning, in all honesty to get pretty bored with the pictures themselves. They seem very repetitive and, to great extent, lacking in artistic imagination. They are all the same, basically. But I have found a few I like and have gotten copies of them. But I've looked at so many that they are losing their uniqueness to me. So I've just been reading up on them and avoiding going over any other then the couple I really like. Oh well...I suppose I'm too western Approve

Mayflower
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Total Posts : 445

Posted 12/27/2003 6:56 AM (GMT -6)

Honorman, if you find the artwork to be "boring" -- perhaps you could simply choose to avoid this entire thread??
i.e., I have greatly enjoyed the "NATIVITY - describable and indescribable" thread.
Thus -- even if you (personally) find the pictures to be "very repetitive" and/or, "lacking in artistic imagination" -- other people may enjoy having the opportunity to view the artwork.

Thank-you for your patience, Brother....

Peace & blessings,

<><

Honorman wrote:

quote:
As an aside (and from a purely "outside" standpoint), POW, I am beginning, in all honesty to get pretty bored with the pictures themselves.
They seem very repetitive and, to great extent, lacking in artistic imagination. They are all the same, basically.

Mayflower
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Total Posts : 445

Posted 12/27/2003 7:11 AM (GMT -6)

Honorman wrote:

quote:
Oh well...I suppose I'm too western

Aren't we all?
Blush

Peace & blessings,
<><

honorman
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Total Posts : 1137

Posted 12/27/2003 5:35 PM (GMT -6)

May flower, I was not commenting on the art on THIS site right at the moment, but just on icons in particular(the nature of the art itself. Perhaps you should go back and read what I wrote. In context it is apparent that I am talking about what I am studying and has nothing to do with the particular pictures POW has posted). If I did find these pictures boring, I probably wouldn't post, but that wasn't even why i was posting. Regardless, POW has the right to post pictures.

PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890

Posted 12/27/2003 6:22 PM (GMT -6)

My dear friend Honorman:

Now I think I have a better grasp of where you are and where you are coming from. Up till now I was only guessing, and trying to stay a step ahead. Sorry for not knowing what you were thinking. Maybe I can offer a thought or two that might not be too far off. Hope so.

You arrive at saying that you are "not interested in being...an iconographer." I was concerned that you might want to be, and tried to fence off the wrong reasons from the right. But that's mute now. Instead you sum up with "I am just interested in why Orthodox believers are so "hung up" with icons. Just trying to get a picture of it, is all." Glad to have that picture. We can go from there.

You asked an important question, and one that is highly relevant to this site when you posed this: "how can icons NOT be a matter of opinion?" Especially here so much is just "opinion." Maximus contrasts "theory" and "revelation." That cuts to the core of the issue in all of faith, and iconography too. "Art" is opinion, experiement, even theory at times, and "inspiration" in a humanistic sense. And I love art. But ICONS come to us with a claim attached--by those who didn't even make the pictures--that they are revelations. And what is that all about? Revelation means in the sense of how something seemingly banal in the OT ends up being seen in its true light in the NT as so pivotal or foundational -- to those "with the eyes to see." A Catholic Theologian wrote a wonderful book (who's the author) just on meditations on Rublev's "Trinity." That one picture has a lineage of picturings of Abram and Sarai and the three angels. But in Rublev comes the revelation of something "unseen" that it was the Trinity that are the inner meaning of that OT event. Seems to me that such a "revelation" is open to arguement. Paul probably never thought of that. But what is "revealed" is that such revelations as to make Abraham from Abram and to begin the long road to the Gospel is the work of the entire Trinity. It is the personal grace of God. With "eyes to see" Rublev painted a picture that goes beyond paint.

That is why there are so many different kinds of paints of Christ Jesus: "In the Land of the Living" holding the Gospel Book and hand raised in blessing (the Sinai icon you liked!); as a face in the "Icon made without hands", I think, created from Veronica's cloth when Jesus face was wiped of sweat and dirt on the road to Calvary. Anyways, its significance at least begins with the material fact that God himself suffered and tread a path that should be ours. These two pictures are both essential to our faith, and neither can replace the other in some frugality! Consider also the "Extreme Humility" of the unliteral image of Christ standing inside a coffin holding a king's staff, but eyes closed dead with wounds showing. (I think I got that right.) He emptied himself.

These images belong to all us Christians. Not just to those who are "eastern" or speak certain languages. Right?

You get down to "brass tacks" when you ask: "how can icons NOT be a matter of opinion? Someone has to make a decision on whether or not it should be an icon (a bishop, for instance), and his tastes would factor into that."

Judgement, Yes. But "taste" is such a big word. Do we have a taste for seeing Christ "emptied." (If we do, is it genuine, or have we become humanistic and associated certain feelings with and substituted for genuine repentance and awe? It can happen! I'd say, instead, that those who are spiritually mature (The dead in Christ get a vote in this too.) help in judging what is in accordance with faith. Same as those lovely hymns people sang, some of which got quoted in the NT Epistles... I'd conjecture that a change or something entirely new is unussual. Variations are to be expected, and those of the "same spirit" are all approved dispite and probably especially with individual traits -- just like people are!!!

.
You caught my mind wandering when you noticed and said: "Actually I've seen calligraphers who do scripture and sign their name." Of course. And you said well: "At the rate, I can understand why they wouldn't. Want to have the maxium effect to the icon's holiness." My own example didn't work. Ooops.
.

Now, I completely understand your next part: "As an aside (and from a purely "outside" standpoint), POW, I am beginning, in all honesty to get pretty bored with the pictures themselves. They seem very repetitive and, to great extent, lacking in artistic imagination. They are all the same, basically."

I thought about that, and here are some thoughts. Icons exist for use in action and space. You've seen them in neither. Even a run of the mill icon of the navity is better than no icon at all (ussually) when "used" in context of liturgy. Eastern liturgy of nativity melds the passion of Christ right in there with the cute stuff. And in the icon is seen the first washing of Christ after birth--which points to his baptism and ours. And the manger looks like a coffin. Hmmm.... And picture and words taken together, and obsorbed and interacted with over the course of the liturgy and in time and space, with movement and direction, is entirely different than seeing pictures in a book or computer screen.

We need LOTS of different kinds of pictures. Not just Icons, of course. The "And you were there" sort of Rembrandt and Giotto (Madeline L'Engel's book "The Glorious Impossible" has Giotto's pictures.) shows the wonderful usefulness of Nominalist recording and dramatization. Details make there own mark on our psychi and imagination. Wonderful. But they can't do some of the things that icons can.

And not all "icons" are pictures. People are icons. And the light and darkness used in the "Tenabre" service at our Christian Reformed Church are too. The "Christ Candel" that leaves, signifying Christ's death and passion for our sins, and the darkeness that results when it goes out the door, paining us with loneliness.... These are icons of sorts.

ONLY PAY ATTENTION TO ICONS THAT ARE BEING USED -- SO AS NOT TO BURN OUT ON ANY!!!!!!

Honorman: "I suppose I'm too western."

PoW: Who said that icons aren't western?

FINALI!
======

Surely part of icons comes from culture, and the need to fill the void left when paganism fled with culture that was transformed by the Gospel. But more significant than this is that when the battle over icons was waged in the early centuries it was not about pictures but about the very humanity and deity of Christ. Pictures were picked on as a possible weak point from which to wedge the truth out of the Gospel. Christ fully man and fully human. That was at stake. One of the Trinity died. God became man. Heaven descended that man could ascend to heaven. And so pictures of the divine Son incarnate CAN and MUST be made. The Gospel is "for God so loved the world that he gave his onlybegotten Son..."

And icons of feasts are of feasts that themselves, while maybe not set on historical dates (Christmas for instance...) do lay claim to BOTH the historical truth AND the soteriological significance and essential significance of the whole of Christ's work, or God's Grace, of the Spirit's presence.

And icons of saints, while derivative in a way, in a way aren't too. They are not historical portaits. Not cameo's, deathmasks. They grow out of the utilitarian Egyptian custom of painting the image of a living sitter as if departed yet not deteriorated. They were both general and specific. It is the "spirit" of the living sitter the painter hoped for, and not that morning's shaving cut. Transfered to departed saints, it is the Spirit's work crafted in them that the picture points to. The invisibility of the Spirit is made present in the life of the saint, and ultimately seem best in hindsight. Life's battles won the victory is lauded as God's. Reverence paid to their life is ultimately directed, in awe, to God. And all Christians, Protestant, Charismatic, Catholic and Orthodox know and do this -- with our without a picture, but about those in whom the Spirit has shown forth the Light of Christ!!!!!!!

honorman
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Total Posts : 1137

Posted 12/27/2003 8:17 PM (GMT -6)

Do icons belong to all Christians? No, only the Christians that are inspired by them and draw closer to God by them. You seem to be drawing a line that they are "revelations,' in the same sense that scripture is. Yet Scripture (for the most part, or at least the NT), is universally agree upon by the Christian church. Icons are not. They are an orthodox church belief. So I would not say they are for all Christians, but for those who would benefit from them.

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 12/30/2003 9:16 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

Do icons belong to all Christians? No, only the Christians that are inspired by them and draw closer to God by them. You seem to be drawing a line that they are "revelations,' in the same sense that scripture is. Yet Scripture (for the most part, or at least the NT), is universally agree upon by the Christian church. Icons are not. They are an orthodox church belief. So I would not say they are for all Christians, but for those who would benefit from them.

1. In a liturgical setting, say, in a Baptist Church, if we say to each other "The Lord be with you" and respond with "And also with you." we are committing an iconic act. I am blessing Christ in you and you blessing in me. If we love one another, we are committing an iconic act.

2. Didn't you get that I make a differentiation between a revelation (not implying new) of truth in an application sense (the choosing of Stephen, for instance) as opposed to the sort of revelation of the Word that scripture is. Didn't you read me saying that "icons" strictly follow scripture, and AVOID adding things that are not revealed in scripture (as pictyures that are imaginative or inspirational, or historical might)? You should have.

I'm on vacation.

PotOnWheel
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Posted 1/1/2004 10:54 AM (GMT -6)

ICONS.

Sunday is an icon of the Resurrection. The eighth day.

honorman
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Total Posts : 1137

Posted 1/1/2004 2:38 PM (GMT -6)

I disagree, POW, for I believe you are taking a definition of "icon" beyond what it means. Regardless, icons, as in pictures, are not for everyone, but are specifically an Orthodox belief. So, no, they are not for everyone. It sounds to mean that you are taking a belief you hold highly and trying to apply it to the Christian church as a whole.
Icons do not add to the role of Mary...please...so far much of what I have seen of icons is imaginary.

PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890

Posted 1/1/2004 5:56 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

I disagree, POW, for I believe you are taking a definition of "icon" beyond what it means. Regardless, icons, as in pictures, are not for everyone, but are specifically an Orthodox belief. So, no, they are not for everyone. It sounds to mean that you are taking a belief you hold highly and trying to apply it to the Christian church as a whole.
Icons do not add to the role of Mary...please...so far much of what I have seen of icons is imaginary.

honorman, one working definition of an icon is something that "makes visible the invisible." I gave you a few examples that defied the imlication of certain of your words, that an East/West divid would excuse us Baptists from attention to icons. Since Christianity is not Gnostic we cannot -- any of us -- avoid icons. I gave you the example of Christians who bear the invisible Kingdom within themselves, and who constitute the Kingdom in their worship -- which can only be seen by faith when witnessed, and not measured scientifically. (Sounds like an icon to me.) I also provided the example of Sunday, the Lord's Day, the Day of the Resurrection. Further, I mentioned the evening as witness -- to those with eyes of faith -- of the victory of Christ. In all these cases ANYONE can miss the witness. But icons "make visible the invisible" to those with eyes of faith.

Baptists have crosses; but I know some Reformed who refrain from putting a cross in a church sanctuary -- something that I consider inexplainably "odd." My own home church (BGC) had three crosses: a big one in the center, and two others placed "higher" and "lower" as witness to the two theives and their decisions -- EXACTLY the meaning of the three-barred Russian cross with its tilted lower bar (the bars thus have "meaning" for those with "eyes to see" while their literal purpose is merely to have the sign "King of the Jews" and the foot rest of the cross.)

That's enough examples.

Thanks, Its been fun.

Mayflower
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Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 445

Posted 1/1/2004 6:16 PM (GMT -6)

We're very appreciative that you posted the artwork here -- so others might have the opportunity to view it, as well.

Thank you...

Peace & blessings,

<><

quote:
POW wrote:
Revelation means in the sense of how something seemingly banal in the OT ends up being seen in its true light in the NT as so pivotal or foundational -- to those "with the eyes to see."

honorman
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Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137

Posted 1/1/2004 7:45 PM (GMT -6)

POW: Yeah, its been fun. It is obvious we totally disagree on this subject...as well, as many others... Eyebrow

honorman
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Total Posts : 1137

Posted 1/1/2004 7:47 PM (GMT -6)

BTW, thank you too, to you Mayflower, for apologizing for misinterpreting what I wrote.

PotOnWheel
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Posted 1/2/2004 6:39 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by Mayflower

We're very appreciative that you posted the artwork here -- so others might have the opportunity to view it, as well.

Thank you...

Peace & blessings,

<><

quote:
POW wrote:
Revelation means in the sense of how something seemingly banal in the OT ends up being seen in its true light in the NT as so pivotal or foundational -- to those "with the eyes to see."

.

www.st-george-church.org/StGeorgeFestalCycle.htm
SEE THE FULL CYCLE OF FESTIVALS.

PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890

Posted 1/10/2004 12:47 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by PotOnWheel

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

I disagree, POW, for I believe you are taking a definition of "icon" beyond what it means. Regardless, icons, as in pictures, are not for everyone, but are specifically an Orthodox belief. So, no, they are not for everyone. It sounds to mean that you are taking a belief you hold highly and trying to apply it to the Christian church as a whole.
Icons do not add to the role of Mary...please...so far much of what I have seen of icons is imaginary.

I'll take honorman's criticism seriously. What it seems he's saying is that since I'm not "Orthodox" I must be making things up about how they view the world of God's and God and our place in that world, and what faithful Christianity (worship and repentance) is. Well, maybe. Who am I to judge myself--that's not objective.

So, let this here stand. Quotes by actual Orthodox" as defining instances of what an ICON is, can be, etc.

OK?

quote:
This grass is an icon; this stone is an icon; and I can kiss it, venerate it, because it is filled with God's grace. The world is not for us to take things from, but a place where we cast off our passions and desires.

-- Father Paissios, Mt Athos

* * *

"All of us who are human beings are in the image of God. But to be in his likeness belongs only to those who by great love have attached their freedom to God." -- St. Diadochus of Photike

(cited in Olivier Clement's book, "The Roots of Christian Mysticism")

www.incommunion.org/quotes.htm

PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890

Posted 1/10/2004 1:10 PM (GMT -6)

from the same quote source as that above...

quote:
The Incarnation of the Son of God] requires of us to remember and hold in sacred honor the fact that we are born of God; and if we have sullied and trampled upon this birthright with our sins, we must restore it by washing it with tears of repentance; we must restore and renew within us the image of God which has fallen and the union with God of blessedness, truth, and holiness which has been destroyed. The incarnation of God requires of us, above all, mutual love, humility, that we help and serve one another; for how can we not love one another when we see the love that God has towards us?

St. John of Kronstadt "The Feast of Renewal: Teaching on the Weeks preceding Nativity"

PotOnWheel
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Total Posts : 9890

Posted 1/12/2004 12:02 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

No, POW that is NOT what I am saying. What I am saying is that YOU are redefining the term "icon," to include anything within the CHristian church that is a symbol, even if it is not used the way Orthodox believers use icons and you are redefining it knowing full well that when I am asking you about information on icons I am using it in a certain way, using it in the sense that Orthodox believers use it. In other words, YOU are being disingenious in how you are dealing with me. As such, I will not be asking you questions on anything again.

Bad day?

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 1/12/2004 5:13 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

No, POW that is NOT what I am saying. What I am saying is that YOU are redefining the term "icon," to include anything within the Christian church that is a symbol, even if it is not used the way Orthodox believers use icons...

Hmmm....

Honorman. But didn't I post some instances where what is an "icon" is at least a little bit surprising (surprised me) compared to what you or I would think "they" would say--and hense how they would use the word? I think so. That is why I put them on here for you and all to see. I posted those examples for myself, and any others to examine. I hoped to surpise you as much as I have been surprised. I thought it was time for all of us to S-T-R-E--T--C---H!

Consider again: "This grass is an icon; this stone is an icon; and I can kiss it, venerate it, because it is filled with God's grace. The world is not for us to take things from, but a place where we cast off our passions and desires." (Father Paissios, from Mt Athos) Or: "All of us who are human beings are in the image of God. But to be in his likeness belongs only to those who by great love have attached their freedom to God." (St. Diadochus of Photike) How much more "Orthodox" does it have to get? Its not me making it up, being evasive, or "disingenuous."

I won't presume what your particular thoughts will be, honorman. (Can't. I don't really frequent this board anymore--I just came here because you asked me.) Rather, what I did was toconsider how the issue of "icons" affects me, genuinely. (And writing about "it," and answering questions -- to whatever level of my ability/disabliity is a good way for me to make myself think.) Also helpful in making me think and critique my thoughts is considering how what is posted might be read and interacted by ANY person who reads here. (305-plus "reads.")

More thoughts when I read more of what you wrote...

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

... and you are redefining it knowing full well that when I am asking you about information on icons I am using it in a certain way, using it in the sense that Orthodox believers use it.

I do get a sense of who you want to use it, and in that way want to confine its definition to just what you decide. But since it has been my very honest thought that your definition is NOT "using it in the sense that Orthodox believers use it" it has been interesting trying to knock you out of your comfort-zone.

Actually, honorman, several things I've written that I know to be very important (drawn from what the local Orthodox priest/iconographer said) have seemed to be disregarded and trodden over by your reading of my posts. (That's my take.) So, in all things I've tried to represent as best as I can what that priest, or my brother&sister-in-laws would say. They can tell me that Christians are considered "icons" in Orthodoxy. But when the Priest "senses" the faithful laity that proves the same thing. I see two sources to "buy" what's being said. So I trust it.

When the idea comes into my head to compare myself to those who "live with icons" and for whom their active prayer-life is just ongoing, and for whom there seems to be a very thin veil between earth and heaven...I'm saddened of heart. I'm so small. But I am also equally challenged, and find instruction in the accounts of monks who appreciate the whole world as belonging to God. Who weep at the sufferings of animals. I'm not signing up for that job; but it does seem to indicate that when we think of "icons" that we shouldn't let the sacralization of the Post-Constantinian church (which affirmed that the Earth is the Lord's, but could be misinterpreted as saying that God rules only in holy places...) distract us from the central thing that made icons a "front-and-center" issue in the early centuries. Interestingly, the two intimidating examples that make me feel so small kind of balance each other, to my benefit.
together they shake me up from pointing to either one of them, and that leaves only pointing to God. That's what is the whole point.

I DON'T CARE WHAT IDEA YOU THINK "ICONS" IS LIMITED TO. I ONLY CARE THAT ICONS AND THE INCARNATION ARE INTERTWINED!!!

Theodore the Studite had to say: "the Incorporeal enters into a body. . .Therefore, He is describable and indescribable." That was the first post of the thread. What is "describable and indescribable?" Pair that with the Orthodox contention that: "This grass is an icon." and what do you get. At least something to think about. I'm up for thinking.

What comes to my mind is what Maximus the Confessor said about there being three (3) incarnations of the Word of God: (1) The Creation -- "by whom and in whom and to whom..."; (2) The Revealed Word, which is Scripture; and (3) Jesus Christ, God incarnate. What's that got to do with grass having the potential of being an icon?

quote:
Originally posted by honorman

... In other words, YOU are being disingenious in how you are dealing with me.

No, I'm not. I'm answering the question -- at its center as best as I can locate that center.

When the monk venerates some grass as an icon of the Word -- the Creator of all -- he is of course worshiping ONLY God; not the blades of grass.

quote:
For a precise Orthodox definition of the cult of images we turn to the writings of St. John of Damascus and, especially, those writings of St. Theodore the Studite. The image, essentially distinct from the original, is an object of relative veneration or honor, while worship is reserved for God alone and can in no way be addressed to images. The religious action is addressed to the prototype, and then becomes adoration. Thus the same action is veneration insofar as it concerns the image of Christ, the Theotokos, and the Saints, and adoration or worship insofar as it is addressed to God.
www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/church_history/barrow_iconoclastic_crisis.htm

Grass and bugs are part of the Creation. Psalms tells us that all creation sings his praises. The monk rightly joined in. The monk was not confined to that one moment's grass when he recognized in it his own Creator. Nor did he see it only as a generality of grass/grassness. Neither Platonic nor Nominalized he recognized the Word in that and every. Both the that and the every are preserved. And in "religious action is addressed to the prototype" he "addressed worship...to God."

I've been thinking about this IN BOTH Dutch Reformed and in Orthodox settings. And pondering it to both Byzanine Liturgies and Old Time Hynms. Here's a thought...

The barrest cross in a Protestant Church has a story to tell about the relatedness of "icons" and the incarnation. Seeing that Cross can be a blank stare. But it can also accompany thoughts about Christ and his sacrifice for us on that one cross of Calvary. Religious action (prayer, confession, awe, worship, praise, thanksgiving, etc.) looking at a bare cross is not worship directed at that bare cross. It is specifically "worship directed to God."

That the one cross of Calvary, that the one death of Christ on the "tree" is the reality of Christ's salvation for us is tied up in the "Immanuel" of the incarnation. True God and true man. Icon's of Christ Jesus are NOT, the Orthodox rightly tell us, merely pictures of the humanity-only of Christ. Christ was NOT God on the inside only. The presence of God IN THE WORLD was real; and the presence of man in heaven is as completely and fully real now. Meditation and reverence of a bare cross is not located merely in the room the cross is in. "Through the Cross joy came into the world." Christ's humbing, life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension -- seems to me (*humbly*) seem all tied up in the cross. Christ WILLINGLY died, and had the power to take up his life again. Meidation on and veneration of the Cross seem to encompass both Christ's act in saving me AND my being saved. The cross is both an object awe -- where Christ died for me -- and also an object of joy, as it is through the Cross that I am saved.

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What I tried to encourage you in, honorman, is to ponder deeeeeply how liturgy and icons go together. (I wrote: ". . . when "used" in context of liturgy . . . picture and words taken together, and obsorbed and interacted with over the course of the liturgy and in time and space, with movement and direction, is entirely different than seeing pictures in a book or computer screen.")

.

But don't spend you time thinking about icons.

Spend your time meditating on the Incarnation. In Creation. In the revealed Word. In Christ Jesus.

-pow-

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