Susan Cushman: Praying with Icons

Cushman: Praying with Icons

Guest Writer Susan Cushman

Susan Cushman, Mother of God Directress with Egg Wash

“I have chosen icons because they are created solely to offer access, through the gate of the visible, to the mystery of the invisible. Icons are painted to lead us into the inner room of prayer and to bring us close to the heart of God.”—Henri Nouwen in Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons (Ave Maria Press, 1987).

In the 1980s, Henri Nouwen spent four years at a spiritual retreat in France. Each year, someone placed an icon in the room where he would stay. At the end of these visits, he wrote a book about his experiences with these icons, titled Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons. He gazed at these four icons for hours at a time, and after patient, prayerful stillness, they began to speak to him. As a man who loved the art of Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Marc Chagall, he could have chosen any of these Western treasures for his meditations. But he chose icons.

When I became an Orthodox Christian, I embraced icons as “windows to heaven” and have prayed before them for many years. As an iconographer, I have written many icons—some commissioned, some as gifts, and some that I have kept in our home—and have found the process similar to a prolonged prayer. These images of Christ, the Mother of God, and various saints and angels draw my heart to God in a way nothing else does. In addition to the “set” prayers I pray in the morning and evening, I sometimes pray specific prayers to saints depicted in the icons. Here is one to the Mother of God:

“Forasmuch as thou art a well-spring of tenderness, O Theotokos, make us worthy of compassion; look upon a sinful people; manifest thy power as ever, for hoping on thee we cry aloud unto thee: Hail! As once did Gabriel, Chief Captain of the Bodiless Powers.” —St. John of Damascus, quoted in “Icons Will Save the World” in First Things (12/20/2007) by Susan Cushman.

Susan Cushman, Memphis

An exhibit of icons opens at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church at 5 p.m. tonight.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Catching Rainbows and Searching for Metaphors

Catching Rainbows and Searching for Metaphors

Guest Writer: Isabel Anders

“The heav’ns are not too high,

God’s praise may thither fly;

the earth is not too low,

God’s praises there may grow.”—George Herbert (1593—1633).

We don’t get direct sunlight in our windows every day in the Pacific Northwest. But on days when it streams brilliantly through my den window, my crystal, snowflake-shaped suncatcher turns it into multiple rainbows across my walls. Each one, to me, is a harbinger of hope.

Both sun and rain come to us free of charge—from forces, and perhaps beings—beyond our immediate perception (Matthew 5:45). We, as humans, are not “too low” to receive their bounty (and sometimes their onslaught)—regardless of our deservingness. 

Even though we know there is no “high” or “low” in space as we now perceive it—it is all relational—the ancient images of light and darkness, sun and shadow (and many others) still speak to us on multiple levels. So it troubles me when popular trends co-opt these primordial, long-shared symbols and use them to keep others in or out of favor. We are better off allowing them to reveal to us our inner state of response to Spirit.

In my ongoing informal study of metaphor and religious language (following my graduate school thesis on the subject), I have consistently observed that stumbling upon the right image, analogy, or picture reveals something about how we perceive reality. Perhaps there is also the depth at which a metaphor reaches us.

Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that metaphor helps us grasp the “before unapprehended relations of things” and can deepen our understanding of them. But sometimes metaphor, the language of parables, falls on deaf ears, as it did for many in Jesus’ audience. He explained to his disciples, his serious followers: “It has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 13:11)—implying that people would take his relatable illustrations on whatever level they could.

We don’t need to consciously carry our philosophy with us to catch every rainbow, feel the cleansing wash of summer rain, or dance to whatever music fills our ears with delight. Even as we think we “get” the meaning of the forces around us on earth, there may be surprises when light “dawns” in our hearts—or when rainbows reveal to us shades of meaning and response that earth itself endorses as it receives from the generous Sun.

“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a 

huge ball of flaming gas.” 

“Even in your world, my son, that is not 

what a star is, 

but only what it is made of.”

―C. S. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Isabel Anders is the author of Becoming Flame, Spinning Straw, Weaving Gold, and Sing a Song of Six Birds (Mother Bilbee Tales). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D53LDWQ8?psc=1

Isabel Anders

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Going Deeper: The Journey of the Soul Led by the Spirit

 Going Deeper: The Journey of the Soul Led by the Spirit

“This challenging time we are living through may actually be a spiritual gift for us. Maybe the invitation from the Spirit within us is to see this time as a precious opportunity to go deeper, to discover a rich and wondrous world within us to explore, with the Spirit as our guide.”—Br. Geoffrey Tristram, SSJE, Society of St. John the Evangelist.

We rise early to catch a good view of the pageantry of the sea, waking up at the Gulf of Mexico. We are not disappointed. The ocean is almost motionless, like a sheet of blue-green glass stretching as far as we can see in every direction. Only a few dolphins have been visible since we arrived. They come out in droves this morning. Finally, a huge dolphin from the pod comes too near the water’s edge. We worry he will beach on the sand, but he knows what he is doing. My husband first thinks he is a shark, but alas, he is the majestic black creature from the deep with sonar vision that we now see up close.

Why do I love dolphins so? They live predominantly beneath the surface, then rhythmically glide above the water in a circular dance movement, returning back down. They are the water ballet of the sea. We see them best when the waves are stilled, not choppy, as they are this early morning. 

As I read this morning’s words from Brother Tristram, I realize the dolphins may be a metaphor for our soul’s journey, our path to the unconscious, the ground of our being, as the Spirit leads us to the Christ within us. Our journey is easier to observe when the waters of our lives are calm and still. When the waves are too high and the weather is stormy, the parts of ourselves that show us the path may be less visible.

 We must find a sacred place each day, away from the choppy waters of our lives, where the sea is stilled. We do not necessarily need to be alone. We can find this place in community with spiritual friends. There, we are renewed and then return to the sea for new adventures. We also need to return to this place intermittently, even for brief moments, for renewal throughout the day. We can delve deeper each time, but we must always return to the surface to breathe.

Joanna Seibert  https://www.joannaseibert.com/