The Dance with the Wonder Working Icon

little movements are sometimes the greatest.

O' tender icon

who empties me 

with thin blue

brushstrokes of rain,

I weep soft tears 

– a child of the Mother.

The dance of life includes significant outer movements and imperceptible inner movements like tears of mercy and grace. Tiny movements can be most potent, as I discovered in an icon painting workshop hosted by Bread of Life, an urban retreat center in Sacramento.  

One of my "hobbies" is to wordlessly and playfully invoke the presence of things and people in homemade shrines. But paint an icon? Painting intimidated me until last year when I met Carol Hawkins, my painting teacher. Having lived a life that epitomizes high performance and self-expression, I know how to conjure a world. But, Carol's class invited me into the humble novitiate of a brushstroke, the layering of color, the geometry of a face, and "not needing to know." Years of improvising and release from judgment paid off. Painting someone else's image became a meditation. It felt bold to ask Carol for private instruction, but she said yes and began coming to see me each week. We'd select an artist's whimsical or solemn portrait to sketch on a canvas. She’d frequently reach for my brush and transmit her painterly wisdom with few words. Giving the brush back, she’d chat breezily about life, global news, and family—nothing high-brow in any of it. I was simply learning to paint. 

I think about transmission– mystical, parental, liturgical, shamanic, artistic, and genetic. Bodies send and receive data through mirror neurons, tiny kinesthetic catcher's mitts, that link and allow us to sense subtle and grand movements in each other's beings. When a child leaps, we feel lifted. When someone is hurt, we clench. Dance is the art of kinesthetic transmission. In the Cosmic Dance, dancers attune to the imperceptible movements in body, soul, and the imaginal realms beyond normal human sensation. By dancing, Hafiz, Rumi, and million dancing ancestors "know things."

On the other hand, "you never know."

Even after decades in theology and the arts, I know very little about Greek Orthodox art. I've collected a few icons but have had no spiritual practice with them until a recent May morning when I entered the courtyard of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer and walked into a narrow, cinderblock classroom. Peter Pearson, the instructor, had "set the table" with sixteen places; each had a styrofoam plate, three small blue brushes, a plastic well for water, and a small pile of papers, including a color copy of Jesus the Good Shepherd and a black and white outlined version. A humble feast. 

Looking around the room, I recognized that requisite church narcotics anonymous sign hanging on one wall with a large, unfinished-looking framed drawing of Christ beside it. I sat in a folding chair midway down the three long tables. My peers were primarily women of a certain age, able to afford the three days to paint an icon. Nothing in the environment demanded purity or precision. Especially not our teacher, Peter, an Episcopalian who, having taught icon painting for decades, caught the bug when his elementary school teacher invited him to her house, and he saw his first icon. The next day he went to the public library to learn more. 

Over and over, Peter circumambulated the table to give each of us a dab of paint and brief instructions. Each time the room fell silent except for contemplative music playing through a speaker attached to his iPhone. There was no other explicit ritual other than the daily opening prayer. Peter never said, "be quiet." His playful refrain and possibly his prayer was, "Don't futz. Do the step. Wait for the paint to dry. It will all make sense in the end." 

And so, I began. With a ruler, I measured and drew the frame. I transferred the icon lines onto a white wooden board with the help of carbon paper. I painted them with black craft paint, then covered them with a layer of translucent yellow. Alongside others, in an unambiguous sequence, moving from one step to the next, I painted layer after layer, section by section Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Peter called it "painting with smoke." Other than an hour's lunch we all just painted.

Along the way, I learned about wonder-working icons and that icons transmit what a human looks like when God is done with them. Peter reinforced that icons are not acts of self-expression. They're about remembering. An iconographer hopes to disappear into the lineage and memory of Saints, Angels, and Holy Beings. In his book, A Brush with God: An Icon Workbook; he says, "As iconographers, we point to a reality that we have never seen with our own eyes. In fact, all our images of God, heaven, the angels, and the saints, whether in poetry, prose, ritual, music, or icons, represent our limited attempts to speak of the unspeakable."

A bell rang in me when Peter mentioned that Orthodox liturgy is more like "dancing" with the icons, chants, and space. My imagination ignited when he recalled those gold leaf interiors of Orthodox chapels where they might swing the candlelit chandeliers and watch the icons dance.

The last morning, our icons seemed almost complete. How would we spend a whole day? Then, I remembered that the smallest things take time and care. Finishing touches make an icons sing.

Painting the Good Shepherd icon would have been enough. Meeting other attendees would have been enough. I was blessed with more. The last morning, Peter held up an icon no bigger than a piece of paper called "Our Lady of Kyiv" painted by a woman

in the room. To my surprise, spontaneous tears welled up in me. In the icon, Mary's head tilts toward the child Jesus whose cheek meets hers. His gaze melts into her as his hands reach to her face in an open embrace. Wrapped in her earth-colored maroon cloak, she holds Jesus and looks out at you. 

Peter placed Our Lady of Kyiv on the ledge of a whiteboard across from me. Each time I looked up at her, tears welled. I asked my classmate about her icon. She said that her daughter suffered a birth trial when she painted it and that she often touches it in prayer. 

At the end of the day, I shared my experience. Peter said, "Yes, Our Lady of Kyiv is a Wonder Working Icon." Wonder Working Icons needn't be the best painting. God chooses them to transmit healing and mercy."

Now, I join all who dance with wonder-working icons. I celebrate Orthodox Christian wisdom as Peter understands, "For the most part, Eastern Christianity has always recognized that it can only say so much about God in finite, human ways before it must go silent before the mystery of the Infinite and Unspeakable. Instead of defining ultimate reality in theological concepts, the East has relied upon its artists, musicians, and poets to proclaim what can only be understood in the heart."

Mystic Postscript

The following morning at 6:30 AM, I was awakened by the sound of men chanting. I looked at my iPhone and saw "A Byzantine chant of the 5th Great Ascension." I’ve never listened to any recordings of Byzantine Chant on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Music sites. I searched for the Ascension chant but couldn’t find it again. Perhaps Siri wants me to tune in and rise in an entirely new way.

To meet Peter and his icons, go to A Brush With God: Icon Talk at Saint Vincent Archabbey Seminary.

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oh and newbie issue—-I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of this Vimeo anti-icon. ;0)