Teresa, I know of at least three icon-writing groups here in DC and they are ecumenical, this thing has broken out of the Orthodox/Catholic nexis.

My favorite icon at the moment is a modern one of St. Francis de Sales, he of the voluminous spiritual direction letters, sitting in an airport with a laptop on his knees, checking his email.

But my favorite is an old icon, Andrei Rublev's The Holy Trinity -- I hae a cheap Russian version of the picture on the table next to my bed. A trip to Moscow would be worth it just to see it directly in the Tretyakov.

Wow.

Thank you.

I have the Rublev on my walls.

Jo, I'm not sure about icons on t-shirts. Something about that bothers me.

Teresa, leave my typo the way it is. Dog works in mysterious ways ;>)

Melanie

The church itself is done in the horrible rec room look that came into vogue in the '70's, but the windows are quite remarkable in their way. The parish is in South Buffalo, and apparently has some history in the labor and social activism movements in these parts.

The homily at the funeral was unusually good, and the whole experience put me mind of the scene in "On the Waterfront"-- the sermon from the hold on Christ's daily crucifictions.

We now return you to your regular conversation.

We were quite fortunate to be taken up to see inside the katholikon, as it was still technically under construction and the county really would frown on members of the public inside. As you can see, little of the inconography has been installed, but the priest who conducted out group showed us the great brass chandelier that hung in the center of the nave. It includes a great ornate ring of lamps with spots for icons to be installed in between, hung from a single point on the ceiling so it can be swing and spun during certain points in some services. It is challed the choros agion or dance of the saints because the spinning and flashing of the icons represents the joyous dancing of the saints in heaven.

One interesting point -- we got to see some of the sketches for the inconography, which will come from Greece. What we saw was striking and quite stylized and elongated -- quite ethereal in effect and rather different than I had seen before (perhaps it was just the sketch). We were told that this is the style in Greece, where there is also somewhat of a revival in iconography.

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I recall that some folks had problems with this last time and thought this might help, but wasn't willing to do what was needed to test it. This time I remembered to test this notion on the Titian and Perugino links, both of which failed to load and gave 403 explanations.

I would get it on a tshirt but I'm afraid that might offend people. I think it's okay to have pictures of, for instance, the cross on a tshirt, some verses of scripture.

But should one wear a picture of a figure of religious veneration on a shirt? I'm not sure if I would be comfortable with people putting a picture of Jesus on a tshirt, for instance--and that's my only comparison, as I'm not Catholic. So a question for Catholics: would it be a comparable thing? Would you be offended if people went around with one of your saints on a shirt?

First, a minor point. The Assumption isn't dogma, it's doctrine.

Second, for Cassandra: No, I wouldn't be offended, if the intention was other than to mock.

(BTW, I've seen tee-shirts with pictures of Christ on them, in all manner of styles. There's the parody of the Gold's Gym tee-shirts, showing Christ lifting a cross in the manner of a barbell. Then there's the one of a bloody Christ, crowned with thorns, doing pushups with a cross on His back. Then there's one of Christ in agony, turning to the viewer and saying, in a word balloon, "Who do you say I am?" Plus innumerable other marks and mods.)

In any case, I'm with James; in fact, I have a T-shirt with Pope Joan on it. (Well, OK, she's not a saint, but the Benedictine nuns I bought it from also had Mary the Egyptian, Catherine of Siena, etc. Oh, and the Amazons...all woodcuts from the Heidelberg Chronicles. Lovely stuff.)

We just returned from Mythcon. The conference chair is Orthodox and we visited with her after the conference. She showed us her church (beautiful with all the icons, of course) and her home with its many icons. The Orthodox keep an icon corner in their home (even though they may have many more icons throughout the house) where they do their private prayer. (Of course, this same woman confesses that when she first converted to the Orthodox faith, she had in her icon corner images of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis as well.)

Berni

This is all bringing back memories of my very beloved AP English teacher from my senior year, who painted icons. One guy in our class painted one of her, standing next to her dachshund Gretchen, which she loved very much.

I think the John Paul II Cultural Center here in DC is having an exhibition on Russian Icons, for those interested.

I am not too comfortable with Lentz's "icons", but I am also not above writing a story in which Jack Frost paints icons on the windows of an abandoned Orthodox church;-) It's a Christmas story, which might be a nice relief from the summer heat if anyone would like to read it-- go to the http://www.sfcanada.ca and click on the "members' fiction" link.

re: your remark on dogma and authority-- we Orthodox sidestep this all nicely with an airy quotation whose source I don't remember-- "It is wise not to dogmatize about the Mother of God"!

Matushka Donna Farley
Surrey, BC.