Icons and eye contact

 In my previous blog post, I wrote about how Gregor Samsa responded to hearing his sister playing the violin. The music reminded him that, in spite of appearing to be a monstrous insect, he was still human. And, as he recalls his humanity, he tries to make eye contact with his sister.

Eye contact is a recognition and affirmation of our shared humanity. So, perhaps we should try to make more eye contact with those around us. To say without words to them that we are both members of the human race – whatever our differences of class, race, gender, or age.

That makes me think of icons and the way in which, in so many of them, Christ and his mother and the saints make direct eye contact with us. Their eye contact is both a welcome and a challenge. Become what you were meant to be, they seem to say – fully human.

Here is a typical example. It is an ancient style of icon known as a mandylion, referring to the cloth-like background on which the face of Christ appears. This style is also sometimes called ‘not made with hands’. Both names refer to a legend in which Christ himself provides someone with an image of his face miraculously imprinted on a cloth.

This icon actually forms the centrepiece of our own icon corner. We commissioned it from the Scottish iconographer, Katherine Sanders in mid-2021. Acquiring it radically altered my appreciation of icons in general.

After placing the order, there was the inevitable wait. These things take time – if, like Katherine, the iconographer is in demand, there can be a ‘gestation period’ of several months. But, at last, the icon arrived and was unveiled in early 2022.

My first impression on taking the icon out of its packaging was that someone had joined us in the room. That impression has not gone away, and it has affected my perception of our other icons, even the ones that were mass produced! On reflection, it is that sense that the icon is challenging us with its gaze that gives it its presence.

So, I now find that icons have a presence that I would not associate with mere objects. In their proper (religious) context, icons are not commodities. We do not (cannot) possess them. They are not at our disposal. Rather, they are guests we have welcomed into our home.