Sacred Images

In my faith tradition---not where I am now, but in my tradition---we use icons to remind us of what is sacred and in order to make real and better communicate to us what we read in the Bible and what we hear and sing or chant from our traditions. It is not that we pray to the icons or think of them as magic. It's better said that we believe that there are saints, that death does not hold the saints as prisoners, that the saints can intercede for us in the state they inhabit now just as they could when they were living with us, that we don't know all of the saints, and that we pray through icons (rather than to them).

Here are three images that hold what I think of as a common sacred theme that illustrate what I'm trying to say.

The first image is a Coptic icon of the Nativity of Christ. Note that Jesus, Mary, and the wise men have dark skins and that Jesus is giving a blessing. The second image is from Appalachia in the years of the Great Depression. I think that the photograph was taken by Dorothea Lange, but I may be mistaken. The same synergy (dynamic interaction and cooperation) is there as it is in the Coptic icon. The third image comes from Kristin Kennedy of Virginia Lee Studios in Southwestern Virginia. There again is synergy, and the man is looking at us much as one of the wise men in the Coptic icon is.

These are sacred images for me, each in their own way. There is tenderness---and it comes from something great that is both within us and beyond us. There is synergy. There is hope and faith---and faith is always the "confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible." And there is the reality that the Jews were oppressed at the time of Christ's birth in a manger or a cave and that today in Appalachia people live in colonial or semi-colonial conditions and that it is not always easy to find doctors to provide prenatal care and deliver healthy babies.

I imagine that the woman in the coal camp either had a midwife or a company doctor and that her baby was delivered at home, a house rented from the company and paid for by a miner's labor. And I know that conditions changed because people borrowed some courage from the saints and left their Egypts, not fearing the coal operator's anger, and persevered on picketlines because they had a vision of a country of their own. (Hebrews 11)

These are also sacred images for me because carrying and bearing and caring for a child and supporting a family are all hard work, and honest work is scared. We all have within us a precious icon of God, the imprint of God's work and love and solidarity. Our responsibilities to one another are thus sacred or are sacramental. And if we look carefully and give ourselves time, we can see something of God in everyone.

I might have chosen a photograph from Kristin Kennedy's outstanding work showing a mother holding her newborn, but I wanted to make an additional point. It's okay to think of God as feminine or as both feminine and masculine or beyond gender. It's okay to think of God as a Sacred Parent or as Father or as Mother. Mary held Jesus in her arms. Joseph likely held his son as well.