The Image Not Made By Human Hand

The Image Not Made By Human Hand

I got this photo yesterday and it brought a wave of emotions and memories. This is the first icon that I made in glass. This is the one that got it all started. I carried this image in my mind for years.
It’s a very strong icon, strength being a spiritual quality primarily, and aesthetic one when it come to icons.

I remember being taken over by something larger than life itself from the very start. The only way to describe the creative process that was happening is to call it mystical: time expanded and stopped, eternity took over, glass seamlessly flowed into place, all the while I existed in a state of profound peace.

When it was done, my husband and other practical voices around me strongly advised me to put a price tag on it and put it out on the market. Instead, again in that same state of peace and quiet, I brought it to a friend’s house-a friend who happened to be an Augustinian priest. His house was filled with monks and nuns that day, something was celebrated when they looked at it, their faces changed and there was quiet in the room. My husband knew what I had known from the start-this was not for sale, neither was is for keeps.

The icon now is the sole image in the office of that priest, who is now the Head of the Augustinian Order of the Eastern Hemisphere, in Villanova, PA. Everyone walking into his office sees it. He told me, ” I sit them in front of it, and leave them for a few minutes alone, and half of their problems go away. ” Those that do not, acquire a different taste, a different perspective.

I sometimes get asked, why did I let that one, the first one go, without even taking a picture? Well, not taking a picture was silly, I agree but letting it go was not. It was an act of reciprocity, what I received – I shared. And in giving it away- I came alive, and continued on creating, or as iconographers say — co-creating.

The icons travel. Sometimes, when there is a place for an icon out there, and in a strange mystical way, spirit (what they call inspiration in the art world) finds an iconographer somewhere and besieges him to create. And create he does, not knowing where the icon will go, not knowing why. But trusting, trusting fully, listening, following on the subtlest of hints, and then letting go.

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” This is what goes on happening to each mind- you long for something, it will happen, but be the time it happens you will see that you are still discontent. Something else is creating misery now.
This is something to be understood- if your desire is not fulfilled, you are frustrated; if it is fulfilled, then too you are frustrated. THat is the misery of desire. Fulfilled, you are not fulfilled. SUddenly many new things arise.
…
Unless a person is happy, simply happy for no reason at all, unless a person is mad enough to be happy without any reason, the person is not going to be happy ever. You will always find something destroying your happiness. You will always find something missing, something absent. And the ” missing” will become your daydream again. “
From Osho, Joy: The Happiness That Comes From Within

“We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves. We are the world. In the deepest ground of our being we remain in metaphysical contact with the whole of that creation in which we are only small parts. Through our senses and our minds, our loves, needs, and desires, we are implicated, without possibility of evasion, in this world of matter and of men, of things and of persons, which not only affect us and change our lives but are also affected and changed by us…The question, then, is not to speculate about how we are to contact the world – as if we were somehow in outer space – but how to validate our relationship, give it a fully honest and human significance, and make it truly productive and worthwhile for our world.“ – Thomas Merton, Love and Living

Mary

Annunciation

I looked at Mary today as if I saw her for the first time,
and I did see something – I saw the way Mary held her hands! Her left holds a spindle (in some versions of this icon she holds a book, presumably holy scriptures, but not here) – the spindle stands for earthy life, practical aspects of existence, make thread-make cloth- make stuff for living body. Now her right hand is extended slightly over to the archangel, and the palm is open – it’s receptivity, she is open to what the archangel has brought.
It seems so simple, I know, however until now I saw her primarily as a channel, she ‘channels’ the divine, the invisible into earthly visible form. And now- I see that she also stands for a link, a connection between the two worlds- between the visible and the invisible, the divine and the earthly, the ineffable and the flesh and blood. She connects the two. Think about it- archangels and angels are of divine nature, and for the most part they are invisible to most of us- except for those (fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your point of view) in whose life they intrude with visions and messages and tasks. The majority of folk walking around are not seeing winged creatures. To connect the godly and earthly- that is Mary’s quiet yet very active endeavor. She is not just placid, receptive and passive ; she is also active in the transformation of all those energies into shape and form, flesh and blood; and not only by virtue of bearing a child- she herself embodies that connection and keeps it alive.
There is also a matter of height of her hands’ position-
in old pictorial representation height represent the hierarchy of importance. Here we have her left hand holding the spindle pointing down towards the ground, the earth, and it is much lower than her right-
her right is up, open towards Gabriel, open to heaven. Her priorities are set.

Sometimes I feel like I am making doors. I know it’s more common to refer to icons as ‘windows’, but I think that’s making it sound too pretty, people get wrapped up in a metaphor. I like doors, they are never closed, not here.
It’s as if I am on this side, and divine is on the other side- (though there are no sides, really)- and the place we meet, we co-create, and this work comes into being. It’s always there, it has been there before I even started it, my completing it and putting it on view is so secondary, not even secondary, it’s so down the list. The pulsating energy is there, the presence is there, it comes into form and shape of its own volition. I know I am a part of it, but most of the time I feel like a bystander, a witness, an apprentice, the flow of life is so strong, I just keep putting piece by piece down.

Mary

Annunciation, detail- Mary's hand

Mary

While I meditated on, or rather with, Gabriel-
I went back to Mary-

Annunciation, detail- Mary

“Most of the luxuries, and many so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind… Man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can do without.”
Walden, Henry Thoreau

Sometimes I think people exist in various stages of sleepiness and wakefulness; including myself-
there are periods of incredible lightness and bliss and the whole world seems to be buzz with love, and then the disconnect sets in- I sometimes think that is how divine protects me, or us, from overload, allowing me to get used to it, spoon-feeding awareness at first, then taking it further.

Gabriel

If Mary is presence, acceptance, receiving with gratitude,
Gabriel is the one who bestows, or rather communicates the gift.
He changes her life, turns it upside down. Yes, she is accepting of it all as it all comes from god;
but he is the energy of change-
and not only here:
in Islam, Gabriel is the archangel communicating with Muhammed, all visions and texts (subsequently Q’aran) are received via Gabriel. (Interestingly, Islam means “surrender”, reminiscent of the energy of Mary).
Now Gabriel is saying something, but what exactly?
There is this bubbling presence, this lightness of being, pulsating energy right there, on my board, where Gabriel is to be shown in glass.
No drama, no struggle, no frustration-
there is blissful, joyous presence, telling me something.
His eyes and his nose are in place, he is quite gorgeous, really- not necessarily male or female- archangel!- there is no rush on his part to follow through with the rest of the icon. SO I sit there, content to be, content to witness his presence.