All posts by GretchenJoanna

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About GretchenJoanna

Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.

The Icon of the Sign

church, icons, ,

Today is the commemoration of this particular icon of Mary and Christ, signifying the Incarnation: the Icon of the Sign.

OCA: “The Icon of the Mother of God ‘Of the Sign’
depicts the Most Holy Theotokos with prayerfully uplifted hands,
and the Divine Infant is at Her bosom in a mandorla (or sphere).”

Icon Reader also has an article about this icon, “The Theotokos ‘of the Sign’ Icon.” There are many, many renditions of this form, and I especially love the one at my parish:

“Her prayerful stance also gives the impression of presenting us with Christ,
and our attention is drawn – as always with icons of the Theotokos –
to her Son, our Saviour.”

Never look straight up at the sun.

art, beauty, poetry, , , , ,

I traveled north several hours to my daughter’s for Thanksgiving last week, and home again three days later. Through rural areas mostly, my favorite views were of the forests and orchards, oaks and maples and almonds, many of the trees with their leaves glowing yellow and red as the light caught them just right, against a dark green conifer background. The sun was, as this poem says, the artist.

THE SUN

All colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, for it contains them all.
And the whole Earth is like a poem
While the sun above represents the artist.

Whoever wants to paint the variegated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or he will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.

Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at the light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, the dusks and the dawns.

Warsaw, 1943

―Czesław Miłosz

Fern Coppedge, Autumn

 

Behold, the eyes of the Lord.

icons, Psalms, ,

The Lord looked down from heaven.
He beheld all the sons of men.

From His habitation which He prepared,
He looked upon all the inhabitants of the earth,

He that alone fashioned the heart of them,
Who understandeth all their works.

A king is not saved by great might,
nor shall a giant be saved
by the magnitude of his own strength.

Futile is the horse for salvation,
nor by the magnitude of his might shall he be saved.

Behold, the eyes of the Lord are upon them that fear Him,
upon them that hope in His mercy.

To deliver their souls from death,
and to nourish them in famine.

Our soul shall wait for the Lord,
for He is our helper and our defender.

For our heart shall be glad in Him,
and in His holy Name have we hoped.

Let thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us,
according as we have hoped in Thee.

-From Psalm 32b

Text encircling the icon of Christ Pantocrator:

He hath looked out from His holy height.
The Lord from heaven hath looked upon the earth,
to hear the groaning of them that be in fetters.

Everything falls back to coldness.

poetry, , , ,

THE READER

All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of sombre pages.

It was autumn and falling stars
Covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,
A voice was mumbling, “Everything
Falls back to coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermilion pears
Of the leafless garden.”

The sombre pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.

-Wallace Stevens