I can't help thinking that there is something contradictory between stability and conversion, even though my aim is not to pick a fight with Benedictine spirituality. It's something I've wrestled with—the call to commit to something while being open to change and, possibly, leave it behind. Transformation always involves some shaking up, some reviewing of priorities and some tearing away from what felt secure. I guess that's where the listening comes in. There is a time for everything and we have to trust that we will hear when it's time to transform and when it's time to put our roots down deep.
‘I am increasingly drawn to icons in prayer, but am neither Roman Catholic or Orthodox’, yes, I’ve increasingly found the Orthodox practice of bringing out the icons and kissing them rather attractive, for reasons I don’t quite understand! It did significantly increase my interest in them after hearing Jonathan Pageau explain his nativity scene icon, that really communicated how they can contain concentrated symbolic meaning, as well as being very beautiful. In terms of ‘icons of modern saints’ I don’t have anything quite like your picture of Brené, but I do have a reproduction of Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’ that evokes a saying by ‘my modern saint’, the recently deceased Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. The saying is ‘the wave is already water’, which gives a sense of our dual nature not unlike that of Christ i.e. that we’re simultaneously the universal and the particular, ‘human and divine’, ‘temporal and eternal’. He is also what you might call an ‘icon of the heart’, an inner voice that lives in me, which in Jungian terms I see as a manifestation in the psyche of the archetype of the ‘Wise Old Man’. So I guess Brené maybe a ‘Wise Older Woman’ figure for you, an actual ‘inner voice’?
I can't help thinking that there is something contradictory between stability and conversion, even though my aim is not to pick a fight with Benedictine spirituality. It's something I've wrestled with—the call to commit to something while being open to change and, possibly, leave it behind. Transformation always involves some shaking up, some reviewing of priorities and some tearing away from what felt secure. I guess that's where the listening comes in. There is a time for everything and we have to trust that we will hear when it's time to transform and when it's time to put our roots down deep.
Yes!
Such a beautiful painting. I love this idea. Reminded me of my friend Martin Wroe’s book, ‘The Gospel According to Everyone’ https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9781447809739/the-gospel-according-to-everyone
Brilliant, Elizabeth! Thank you for your usual mix of hope, humour and humility :-)
And thanks for your encouragement
‘I am increasingly drawn to icons in prayer, but am neither Roman Catholic or Orthodox’, yes, I’ve increasingly found the Orthodox practice of bringing out the icons and kissing them rather attractive, for reasons I don’t quite understand! It did significantly increase my interest in them after hearing Jonathan Pageau explain his nativity scene icon, that really communicated how they can contain concentrated symbolic meaning, as well as being very beautiful. In terms of ‘icons of modern saints’ I don’t have anything quite like your picture of Brené, but I do have a reproduction of Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’ that evokes a saying by ‘my modern saint’, the recently deceased Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. The saying is ‘the wave is already water’, which gives a sense of our dual nature not unlike that of Christ i.e. that we’re simultaneously the universal and the particular, ‘human and divine’, ‘temporal and eternal’. He is also what you might call an ‘icon of the heart’, an inner voice that lives in me, which in Jungian terms I see as a manifestation in the psyche of the archetype of the ‘Wise Old Man’. So I guess Brené maybe a ‘Wise Older Woman’ figure for you, an actual ‘inner voice’?
He did well didn’t he?