Blessed pregnancy

Slide 1

Eikon of the Blessed Pregnancy

Meditation for reflection and prayer

BlessedVirginMary

ChristJesusOur Lord

This is a sketch of an eiconic picture Im working on. I would like to use its constituents to guide our praying tonight.

Most traditional Eikons use gold as their background colour. This is to convey a sense that heaven/God/the spiritual dimension surrounds and is near to us. It informs the everyday and is the bigger reality in which our lives are lived.

TheKingdom of GodIs near

So, we may take the gold background as saying, in effect, the Kingdom of Heaven/God is near. What this means is explained in the gospel prayer: Your kingdom come is explained by your will be done on earth as in heaven

This is a picture of an ordinary women in pregnancy. She could be Mary, in a sense: an ordinary, unfamous non-celebrity bearing a child in complicated circumstances.Magnificat!

The SpiritOf theMost HighWillOvershadowYou.

abc-white-dove-logo-animated-gif-19.gifAll that God does in the world, God does by the agency of the Spirit. These words from the gospel recall the first verses of Genesis when the Spirit hovered over the waters. This time its the waters that will break at the end of the pregnancy; a new creation is in process, enwombed in the first creation, growing within the first creation.

EcceAncillaDomini

Behold the servant of the Lord. Ive added another couple of photos Ive been considering for use in this design.

In traditional eiconography, the principal figures (Christ, saints etc) are supposed to look at the viewer preferably straight on- because the eikon is not just a picture but is meant to be a personal encounter and so the viewer should be addressed by the gaze of the depicted. see next slide.

Though sometimes the gaze may draw our attention to some other even more important presence depicted in the eikon. Its fairly typical for Marys head to be inclined normally to defer to her son.

Mary, like the rest of us, is made out of the dust of the earth: her atoms and molecules are part of the ecosystem that we all share and which provides the substance of our bodies. Thus the body of Christ is very much of the earth created from the ecosystem which sustains us all and for which God has given us the care and keeping of.This combination of globe and bump tries to remind us that not only was Christ born of Mary, but that by her, He was born of the earth which we all share: that the matter which made his body is the same (perhaps literally) as that which makes up our bodies.

There are some tradition eikons which depict the infant Christ within the body of Mary. But as you can see these tend to be highly symbolic: Jesus is born and Marys housing of Christ is more of a hint.

Ever since my own children were on the way, Ive been a bit fascinated by sonograms of children in utero. This one has been altered (by me) to show the child in a traditional pose of blessing us the viewers- I like also that this child seemed to be laughing (though in fact this is hardly likely). The merry very-baby Jesus blesses us even from the womb of Mary.

Ive tried to place the sonogram over the area where Bethlehem is found.

Heres another sketch of the same subject...

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Spiritual

Blessed pregnancy