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study the painting of icons. The figure on the icon is not meant to represent literally what Peter or John or any of the apostles looked like, nor what Mary looked like, nor the child, Jesus. But, the orthodox painter feels, Jesus of Nazareth did not walk around Galilee faceless. The icon of Jesus may not look like the man Jesus two thousand years ago, but it represents some
quality
of Jesus, or his mother, or his followers, and so becomes an open window through which we can be given a new glimpse of the love of God. Icons are painted with firm discipline, much prayer, and anonymity. In this way the iconographer is enabled to get out of the way, to listen, to serve the work.
    An icon is a symbol, rather than a sign. A sign may point the way to something, such as:
Athens—10 kilometers.
But the sign is not Athens, even when we reach the city limits and read
Athens.
A symbol, however, unlike a sign, contains within it some quality of what it represents. An icon of the Annunciation, for instance, does more than point to the angel and the girl; it contains, for us, some of Mary’s acceptance and obedience, and so affects our own ability to accept, to obey.
    Francis of Assisi says that “in pictures of God and the blessed Virgin painted on wood, God and the blessed Virgin are held in mind, yet the wood and the painting ascribe nothing to themselves, because they are just wood and paint; so the servant of God is a kind of painting, that is, a creature of God in which God is honoured for the sake of his benefits. But he ought to ascribe nothing to himself, just like the wood or the painting, but should render honour and glory to God alone.”
    I travel with a small icon, a picture pasted on wood, which was given to me with love, so that the picture, the wood, and the love have become for me a Trinity, an icon of God. Of themselves they are nothing; because they are also part of God’s munificent love they are everything.
    (A parenthesis here about quotations and credits. I was taught in college how to footnote, how to give credit where credit is due, and in the accepted, scholarly way. But most of the writers I want to quote in this book are writers whose words I’ve copied down in a big, brown, Mexican notebook, what is called a commonplace book. I copy down words and thoughts upon which I want to meditate, and footnoting is not my purpose; this is a devotional, not a scholarly notebook. I’ve been keeping it for many years, and turn to it for help in prayer, in understanding. All I’m looking for in it is meaning, meaning which will help me to live life lovingly, and I am only now beginning to see the usefulness of noting book title and page, rather than simply jotting down, “Francis of Assisi.”)
    An iconographer is a devout and practicing Christian, but all true art has an iconic quality. An Eastern Orthodox theologian, Timothy Kallistos Ware, writes (and where? in a magazine called
Sobornost,
probably about a decade ago, edited by the Rev. Canon A. M. Allchin, of Canterbury Cathedral, England) that
an abstract composition by Kandinsky or van Gogh’s landscape of the cornfield with birds…is a real instance of divine transfiguration, in which we see matter rendered spiritual and entering into the “glorious liberty of the children of God.” This remains true, even when the artist does not personally believe in God. Provided he is an artist of integrity, he is a genuine servant of the glory which he does not recognize, and unknown to himself there is “something divine” about his work. We may rest confident that at the last judgment the angels will produce his works of art as testimony on his behalf.
    (Angels again!)
    We may not like that, but we call the work of such artists un-Christian or non-Christian at our own peril. Christ has always worked in ways which have seemed peculiar to many men, even his closest followers. Frequently the disciples failed to understand him. So we need not feel that we have to