Icons and Image Cholesteral

It's not rare to be watching tv, speaking with someone and checking a text on our phones all at once in today's busy world. In fact, it's the norm. Perhaps the first skill that must be learned with a benefit of more clarity is an awareness of just how many images we see a day and how those images affect us. I would bet that we see thousands if not millions more quickly changeing images than human beings have ever witnessed throuout history. Imagine the difference between a rural worker a century ago in Europe as opposed to an urban dweller spending a good part on the day online in one of America's major cities.

Byzantine Icons, in one way, are much like the icons we access on our many screens all day long. They are not the thing itself, but an access point to allow us entry into a place or subject we wish to emerse ourselves in. The question is, do we select our images or are they force fed to us by others who have their own reasons for wanting our attentionn?

Byzantine Icons have played a role in the calming of the mental waters, the orientation to the unseen but eternal forces and the identification of ourselves as part of a whole that has always existed and will continue to exist well beyond the last breath we take. It is an opportunity to practice the presence of the Divine life that we might only get a glimps of at special moments, like the birth or a child, a breathtaking stary night or the surprise blooming of trees in the spring. These moments wake us up to what always is around us and within us, However we may be too connected to the media, the sounds and the images that keep us from enough time of stillness to become aware of and

actually feel the life of God's universe alive and beating within our own chest.