Sunday, March 7, 2010

Nostalgia

Click any image to zoom.

Sorting through some family archives, I ran across a small group of old ikons—that is, what we used as ikons in the 1960's and 70's. In those days, it wasn't possible to find authentic Byzantine ikons anywhere that we knew of, though the revival had already begun. When we went to visit an old granny living in her tiny farm house, or an old uncle in a nursing home, it was ikons like these that we saw pasted to the walls above their beds, interspersed with family photographs and other mementos. The simple, down-to-earth homey religion of these elders made everything around them shine and seem real. We prayed with them in front of these tinseled images as devoutly as we do standing in front of any Byzantine ikon. You'd think the spirituality was different then, molded by these gaudy pictures, but honestly, it wasn't. Their religion was the faith of the fathers, the faith of the apostles, the holy faith, then, now and always, regardless of what we had or have as ikons.

I just thought I'd bring them all together here in one place. The last three are prayer cards that we used in our bibles as book marks. It's pretty obvious what is shown in each ikon, so I'll leave it to you to see them for yourself, and download any you wish.

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