Seen and Unseen

For the last few days my kitchen has become a small icon factory as I pursue one of the Lenten projects this year. This was to offer people a chance to take away from church a little icon, encouraging the idea of having a focus of spirituality in their own homes. One of the congregation who does carpentry produced some small wooden blocks, about 3 inches by four, and I then primed them with gesso and mounted prints on them - nothing more complicated than running them off my own desktop printer - before varnishing them. The results actually look quite good and the varnish enriches the colours nicely. The icons are at least as impressive as much of what you buy on Etsy, anyway.

I had three basic designs: Christ the Wisdom of God, the famous Rublev Trinity, and the Mother of God of Vladimir, but people could request any saint they wanted. The most interesting moment was when a chap I know very vaguely came into the church and asked for an icon of St Seraphim of Sarov, which I really wasn't expecting (St Seraphim is one of my minor patrons). The most pleasing aspect is that half a dozen of these couple-of-dozen-or-so images are going to families who aren't regular church attenders, but either come to Messy Church or are people we know in other ways. I hope to get the icons out before Holy Week begins.

Conversely I went round the church on Saturday putting up the veils for Passiontide, and found myself getting curiously emotional as I covered our own icons (not something the Orthodox would do, but then we are in the West). It's as though, as we turn attention towards the Crucifixion, the saints can't bear to look any more. They'll re-emerge once the horror is past.