Category: Icons

Doors, Windows, Mirrors, and the Secret Place

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 30 Leave a Comment on %s
My first impression of the monasteries on Mt. Athos began with their doors: massive, thick, iron and steel configurations with bars and locks. They are not decorative in the least. They are meant to keep out marauding Turkish pirates and the like. The walls of the monasteries are similar in their function. The whole structure, complete with the crenelations on the tops of the walls are more castle-like than anything else Iā€¦

Hagia Sophia and the Evil Eye

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 39 Leave a Comment on %s
The opening psalm of Great Vespers sings: ā€œO Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom have You made them all!ā€ It is a line we hear so frequently in the Church that it is easy to overlook its significance. The universe of all created things does not simply exist – it exists in a manner that reveals a wisdom beyond our understanding. Nothing in modern science has diminished the wonder thatā€¦

Words As Icons

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 56 Leave a Comment on %s
Creation has a sacramental purpose: it reveals God. For from the first making of the world, those things of God which the eye is unable to see, that is, his eternal power and existence, are fully made clear, he having given the knowledge of them through the things which he has made (Rom. 1:20) This is inherently true in things as they exist in nature. However, it becomes another matter as thingsā€¦

Beauty and Iconoclasm – Where We Find God

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 37 Leave a Comment on %s
Every human being is an icon of God…so iconoclasm is a much larger matter than smashing statues and such. It also includes the hatred of others and the injustice that grinds them into the dust. The quiet iconoclasm of poverty and the like are insidious in that theyā€™re so quiet they look like an act of nature. Iconoclasm can only be overcome through love, the love of the beauty of the imageā€¦

Venerating Icons – It’s So Much Other Than You Think

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 101 Leave a Comment on %s
In 1991, I sat in a room at Duke University with Geoffrey Wainwright, Stanely Hauerwas, and Susan O’Keefe. The purpose was the defense of my thesis, “The Icon as Theology.” I was an Episcopal priest, who was turning his doctoral work in Systematic Theology into an M.A. and heading back to parish life (a long story, that). The defense was friendly, thorough, with few surprises. The one major surprise, of course, cameā€¦

When Icons Became Windows

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 48 Leave a Comment on %s
Some thirty years ago I was doing doctoral work at Duke University under Geoffrey Wainwright. I was drawn to Wainwright on account of his commitment to liturgical tradition and practice as the ground of theology. A course that became a turning point in my studies was on the nature of language in theology. Like all work in the program, it was not a course filled with answers, but a careful discipline ofā€¦

Truth, Lies and Icons

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 62 Leave a Comment on %s
As verbal beings, we live in a world of icons. We experience the world in an iconic fashion. A major difficulty for us is that we have lost the vocabulary of iconic reality. We have substituted the language of photography. The dissonance between reality and our photographic assumptions has led us to doubt both. Man is an iconographer and needs to re-learn what that means. +++ Franz Kafka famously wrote: ā€œThe Lieā€¦

Words As Icons

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 41 Leave a Comment on %s
Creation has a sacramental purpose: it reveals God. For from the first making of the world, those things of God which the eye is unable to see, that is, his eternal power and existence, are fully made clear, he having given the knowledge of them through the things which he has made (Rom. 1:20) This is inherently true in things as they exist in nature. However, it becomes another matter as thingsā€¦

The Demons of Our Time – Within Us

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 58 Leave a Comment on %s
In 1872, Dostoevsky published his novel, The Demons [Š‘ŠµŃŃ‹]. It demonstrated in a microcosm, the insanity that lay within the revolutionary movements of 19th century Russia. That insanity broke upon the world in 1917 and has remained present with us, in one form or another, ever since. The madness that he describes takes place in a small town, away from the great capitals of Russia. It involves a relatively small cast ofā€¦

The Life of Beauty in an Ugly World

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 30 Leave a Comment on %s
In my last article, I described our personal existence as something that is not self-contained but found only in relation. Who-I-am is seen in the face of the one beholding me. There is an element of this in the perception of beauty that is worth noting. Some years ago, my wife and I visited the Grand Canyon. Its beauty is impossible to describe. I consistently felt frustrated with my camera ā€“ itā€¦