Surrounded by Icons: Season's Recap

​‘We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…’ (Hebrews 12:1)
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I walk into the small church, and the first thing I notice is that the walls to my left are covered with icons – of Christ, angels, saints. Hardly an inch of brick shows between each frame. The faces watch me through the dark fog of incense and candlelight as I sit in a chair near the back.

I have heard of icons being described as windows into heaven, mirrors reflecting holy light. Is this why they strangely make me feel at home here, even though I have never to my memory encountered anything like this place? It is like a footpath lined with tall, leafy deciduous trees quietly breathing, exuding life, oxygen into the atmosphere.

I am surrounded by icons.

The priest in bright robes slowly walks out of one of the doors screening the altar area. He is clasping a censer, which looks like a lantern dangling from golden chains, but instead of light, it gives off clouds of smoke every time he shakes it before each person as he drifts to the back of the church. The clanking chains sound like sea waves crashing, and waves of people bow in response, some making the sign of the cross. Now he is curving round back towards the altar. He looks at me and shakes the censer towards me. I feel this is a greeting of some kind, perhaps a blessing. I bow in gratitude.

I later learn that Orthodox priests cense both icons and people in this manner to show honour to God. As St. Basil says, ‘The honour paid to the image passes to the prototype.’ Just as when one kisses a photograph of a loved one, they are honouring not the photo but the beloved, so when the priest censes an icon, honour passes through the wood and paint to the saint it depicts. And when the priest censes a person, honour even passes through that person to Christ, the prototype of us all.

I am surrounded by icons.

Behind my desk in my classroom where I teach, on a cable box running along the wall, sits an icon of various people serving the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner – each one Christ in disguise (see Matt. 25). Every morning, I look at the icon to remind myself that in a mysterious way, each of the students I will teach this day is Christ.

In other words, when I teach, I am standing before twenty to thirty living icons. (How I sometimes wish my students were as calm as icons!) Beyond the classroom, whenever I meet someone, I am meeting a living icon, since every person is made in God’s image. (The word ‘icon’ comes from the Greek word eikon, which means ‘image’).

My wife, children and wider family. My colleagues, my neighbours, people at church. The commuters I pass on my drive to work. The strangers I meet once whom I may never meet again, at least not in this life. Even my enemies.

I don’t usually think of them as living icons. Sometimes I get stuck on someone’s behaviour at a certain moment or their reputation or my prejudices against them. Sometimes I’m preoccupied with my musings that I fail to recognise that before me is a reflection of God that I am called to honour, just as the priest censed me on my first visit to an Orthodox liturgy. As Joe Bisicchia writes, ‘Perhaps we suffer / too much self-admiration to notice… / how bread breaks / in every face’.

But such poets help me to notice and remember. KPB Stevens describes how Christ’s light deepens his vision of the people he loves so that their often clunky forms are ‘almost lost’, and ‘they hide within the radiance’.

I would push this image even further: perhaps their forms are not lost in the radiance as much as found in it. An iconographer would tell you that each depiction of a holy person uniquely captures their personality through such distinctions. The bald head of St. Paul, for example, or the dismembered and restored hand of St. John of Damascus. Some icons include key objects from a saint’s life, such as, in the case of St. Melangell, a hare. Despite the common features that icons share, such as halos or gold, each one is simultaneously unique and identifiable. The saints’ distinctions are not lost in their holiness but transfigured.

In other words, perhaps we are called not to be illusions (meaningless fantasies) or elusions (in which our identities are forever hidden) but allusions, in which we mature distinctly while finding our home in Christ, the fullness of the image of God.

So if we are living icons – masterpieces, saints in the making – then how do our lives, including their peculiarities and particularities, offer glimpses into God’s presence? Do I step out of the way enough to let God’s light shine and to notice his image in others?

I'd like to think that reading wholesome literature, such as we strive to share on Foreshadow, can help us here, can remind us of who we are called to become, can teach us to honour God’s image in each person. Like a wall of icons, many of the works we have shared this past season have reflected truth and beauty, sometimes in unexpected places, such as in ‘Herald Across the Divide’, ‘Burning Bush’, ‘Pharasaic’, ‘Dust’, ‘Carpet’, ‘St. Luke at Nazareth’ and ‘Vesper Sparrow’.

Others have portrayed choices and turns in the lives of ordinary people that reflect the archetypal victory of Christ, such as in ‘The Story of Prisoner 16670’, ‘That Poet’, ‘Like a Land of Dreams’, ‘Doubt’, ‘Waiting for the Word’, ‘Narration’ and ‘Poems to God, No. 139’.

May we always be, and remember that we are, surrounded by icons.

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Josh Seligman is the founding editor of Foreshadow.

Note: We are now accepting submissions in line with our next theme: ‘Offerings and Open Hands’. At its heart, the theme is about offering ourselves to God in trust that in so doing, he will bless and transform us for the life of the world.

Also keep your eyes out for a new Foreshadow project called Anaphora, a resource hub for people reflecting on the relationships between teaching, faith and literature.