Bowing and Kissing

The Orthodox do plenty of bowing in church. There are, I think, three different times during the Divine Liturgy when the priest bows before the people, and the people bow back. We also bow to persons we pass. We bow whenever the priest censes us, as the appropriate posture for receiving God's blessing. We bow before one another when asking forgiveness. We bow before icons to greet the saint depicted, and/or to humble ourselves before the saint or the event depicted.

We do a lot of kissing, too. We kiss one another. We kiss the book of the Gospels, we kiss the cross, we kiss the chalice, we kiss the priest's hand, we kiss icons.

If bowing or kissing meant worshipping, we'd be polytheists for sure, and some very strange gods we'd have, too!

Once Again...

...with just one example, this time, for simplicity's sake.


I'm going to take another stab at that very difficult task of showing something of the difference between spiritual and emotional (or spiritual and sensory, or spiritual and anything else). Here is an image I posted a couple of days ago in a not very successful attempt.

Do you see anything wrong with this image?

I don't. Okay, you may criticize its sentimentality. I'll grant you that. But it's also well executed, has nice, warm colors, rich textures. There is nothing cheap, tawdry, ugly, decadent, or otherwise bad about it. In fact, it's rather charming, don't you think?

The thing about this picture, and this isn't a complaint, just an observation, is the response it elicits from the viewer. That response isn't necessarily evil. It just isn't spiritual. It's sensory and emotional instead. Let's take a somewhat closer look...
As in many non-Orthodox depictions (wherein aloofness is apparently confused with modesty) the Virgin isn't meeting your gaze. At first glance, she appears to be, but she's actually looking over your head to the heavens. You thus see a beautiful but rather remote Virgin; and you think, How lovely.

You see a very handsome, cuddly, sweet Baby. Awww, how precious!

And that's pretty much what this picture conveys, that an plus appreciation of the colors and textures and composition.

Now compare it with this icon.


How very different is the effect!

What accounts for the difference? For starters, here, the sentimentality and sensuality have been removed; there are no roses, romantic or scenic backdrops, white veils, or bare bottoms. The skin hasn't the tactile appeal of the first image. There is no cute baby fat. Look at the difference in Mary's hands in each image. There is still curly hair on the Baby, but it doesn't look like anything you'd be tempted to run your hand through. The physical beauty of the two in the icon is something you pretty much have to imagine. It is only suggested.

St. Mary, here, is not the beautiful-but-unattainable Virgin so much as the Mother. She meets your gaze; she engages you. She is not just someone whose purity you admire (and/or mildly regret, if you're a man); she is someone you can revere. And talk to.

The Child is a miniature adult, already displaying His spiritual maturity. He is not Someone you might have an urge to squeeze. He is someone you can worship.

There is cognitive, theological meaning in the Theotokos presenting her Child to us and in the Child's right hand, blessing us; but this image is also conducive to spiritual (as distinct from cognitive) insight. You might, for example, inwardly acknowledge the Mother of God as your true Mother, too, and relate to her accordingly. Or you might look at her eyes and see the cross she bore, not only from the death of her Son, but also from having been thought a whore by most people all her adult life. You see what she bore, but you also see the serenity, the radiance, the meekness, with which she bears her sorrow; you detect the joy underneath the trials. You see, in short, that the Holy Spirit has worked Christ's life not only in her womb, but in her living; you can see in her the words of St. Paul, fully realized: "I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me..." You see who you are aiming to become. You renew your commitment to strive for christification.

This image, in short, evokes gratitude and love and prayer. It encourages and reinforces us in the Christian Life. It reaches us at a deeper level than the merely sensory, or merely cognitive, or merely sentimental or merely emotional. That is why it is appropriate for use in church, while the other is not.

They are both nice-looking images; they ostensibly have the same subject matter and there's nothing to censure in either one. But the first is treated in a thoroughly secular fashion; the second, spiritually. The one is for your viewing pleasure (entertainment), while the other is for your spiritual edification.

Worship in Spirit and in Truth: Art vs. Icons

One of the principles of Orthodox icons is the same as the one I have been suggesting regarding hymns. That is, it is not supposed to appeal to the emotions, but to the spirit. It is not supposed to appeal to the senses, but through the senses, to the spirit.

In Orthodox iconography, we try to extract the sensuous elements. We do not, for example, show delicate, glowing, sexy skin or soft, radiant hair or voluptuous curves. (Some of our icons do show one or the other of these, but they still somehow don't end up being realistic enough to be sensuous.) Instead, we seek to depict the deified human soul - and body, of course.





















We do not depict a person’s emotional state so much his spiritual state. We don’t show saints with their eyeballs rolled up to the sky in an ecstasy of emotion ...


















...much less being emotionally ravished.
















(You sort of feel embarrassed, don't you, to look at this? Like you're some sort of a voyeur.)








This is Francis of Assisi, swooning in the arms of an angel. (A half-naked androgynous angel?)




Although Christ came in the flesh and saved us in the flesh, we don’t show Baby Jesus’ bare bottom. Not that we are that prudish, but the point of an icon is to elicit our reverence and worship, not to make us say, "Awww, how cute!"



















We don’t even show Him as a cute little Baby at all, but as a miniature adult, to portray His already-adult spiritual condition.

See the difference?



As my priest once said, if you ever saw a pair like this on the street, you'd run! These images are deliberately not realistic. They are written that way precisely to exclude worldly elements such as some of the above-mentioned. The image is not meant as a decoration or as eye candy or as a skillful composition. It is meant to help you enter into the spiritual realm.







We do not dwell on the more gruesome (that is to say, fleshly) aspects of the Crucifixion, because the spiritual facts are what interest us, Christ's triumph over the devil even as He was dying, and His transcendence of suffering, and his divinity, despite what being crucified looked like.













Orthodox icons do not appeal to our sexuality, either. (Not that there's anything wrong with human sexuality, just that to appeal to it instead of to the human spirit is perverse, while to try to reach the human spirit through a sexual appeal won't work.) Orthodox icons do not depict Jesus as effeminate; and whether you are gay or straight, Jesus is not your heavenly boyfriend.























St. John the Baptist wasn't a homosexual, either, although da Vinci, who (obviously!) painted this, almost certainly was.













I do realized that (apart from the two Orthodox icons) these images are not even meant to be icons, but can you sense how worldly they are? What I'm trying to say is not that the things of the body are wrong or bad. We do all sorts of good and necessary physical things all the time; we eat, drink, procreate, go to the bathroom, bathe, get our exercise, have medical check-ups, and brush our teeth. Those are all good things. But they are all meant to be serve our spirit, and hence to be brought into subjection to our spirit, and our spirit to the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, yes, fleshly things become ugly, even if they delight the tongue or eye or ear or emotions. Rather, they are NOT ugly in themselves, but in our misuse of them, to serve our egos instead of our spirit.

True worship is first and foremost spiritual. Then all the rest falls into its proper place. Then the emotions we experience are of the right sort; otherwise we are just getting high on them. Carnal things are not bad; God, after all, created them! But living according to them, seeing the world through a fleshly lens, interpreting Christianity in a worldly way, that indeed is all wrong. St. Paul warns us that if we live by the flesh, we will die by the flesh.




P.S.) Here are a couple of other things the like of which you don't find in Orthodox iconography.


The holy, heavenly bodiless hosts













"St. Dominic Presiding over the Burning of Heretics"