The icon of the Holy Trinity was a gift from my beautiful godmother Melissa. She purchased it while celebrating Great and Holy Pascha in Greece, in the city where her ancestors had lived. The icon is hand painted in rich, warm tones of blue, red, and gold. The back says in English and Greek that it was blessed in the Holy Land. In it, the three angels sit around Abraham’s table, gesturing toward the lamb in the dish in the middle. Looking at it this morning, I notice that while they gesture toward the lamb, the mountain and oak tree in the background gesture toward them, arching their bodies in veneration.
In Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons, Henry Nouwen writes that the icon of the Holy Trinity was the beginning of his slow healing, as the angels beckoned him away from the house of fear and into the house of love. When I think about my relationship with the icon, I realize the same is true for my own healing.
The icon brings me back to my time attending Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in St. Augustine, Florida, as an inquirer. The priest at Holy Trinity, Father Maximos, was a monk and classic rock aficionado. He would recite lyrics from time to time and ask who knew the song or artist. I always knew.
“When the music’s over…” he sang The Doors classic one time after liturgy as we were leaving the church.
“Turn off the lights,” I replied, completing the lyric. He was impressed. He proceeded to turn off the lights.
During my period as inquirer, music re-entered my life after several years of intense phobia, thanks in part to Father Maximos’s shameless love for it. I began listening to “safe” music in the car. One of those “safe albums” was called Didn’t He Ramble by a soulful Irish folk singer named Glen Hansard. When his song “Her Mercy” came on, I would think of the Theotokos: Mercy, mercy, coming to you. Feel her beauty flowing through you. She will unbind you, set the word free. Mercy, Mercy.
My music phobia began when I first converted to Christianity in my early twenties. During that time, I came into contact with well-meaning but strict Pentecostals who tended to view secular music as spiritually dangerous. Though I’d grown up with parents who had the classic and independent rock stations on all day (even when we weren’t home), and though my happiest memory was seeing Counting Crows at Jones Beach Theater with my mom at eight years old, the Pentecostals’ caution rubbed off on me. And it rubbed off badly.
In an effort to purge my home of demons, I deleted all of my favorite music (to the extent that it’s possible to do so in our digital age). I burned all my musical biographies in the wood-burning stove, including my prized possession: A large gray book of Bob Dylan’s lyrics from 1962-85, complete with recreations of sketches and notes from his journal. I tore up my collections of Leonard Cohen lyrics, frantically praying, “Lord, is there anything he has written that pleases you?”
And I swear, when I flipped open the book, it opened to Cohen’s poem “Prayer for Messiah.” I wish I could say this small miracle kept me from burning the book, but it didn’t.
Several years into my conversion to Orthodoxy, after a long stretch of heartbreaking silence and bad Christian pop, I’ve fallen in love with music again, my music. I’ve replaced the Bob Dylan book with an identical copy I found on Poshmark. According to my Spotify Wrapped playlist, I’m actually in the top 0.001% of Dylan listeners worldwide. I’m not in the 0.001% of many things in life, so I’ll take what I can get.
My healing in this area corresponds to my entry into this ancient incarnational tradition. Orthodox Christians, for the most part, truly believe what they pray: That God is everywhere present and fills all things. They have a much healthier relationship with music, literature and culture than my Pentecostal companions did, which was a part of the draw. That, and the fact that the Orthodox sanctuary truly felt like a sanctuary. No yelling, no flailing, no smoke except incense smoke. Only worship.
But now and again while bopping around to Townes Van Zandt in my kitchen, the accusations creep back in: That I love music too much. That I “worship” the likes of Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark more fervently than Christ himself. My husband and loved ones gently point out that a special interest is different from an idol. My therapist points it out as the classic OCD distortion: “If I love it, God must hate it.” My priest wonders if it’s the enemy trying to hijack my image of God, trying to get me to believe a lie about His character: The lie that He is some kind of cosmic germaphobe and that some places, no matter how real, are too messy for Him to inhabit.
While I’m past the point of burning my records and musical books, and I’m no longer having to evacuate coffee shops because “Sympathy for the Devil” is playing, I still struggle with that feeling that music is contraband. Though that feeling doesn’t stop me from listening to music (right now I’m in my “outlaw country” 1970s Texas singer/songwriter phase), I will spend a corresponding amount of time ruminating and arguing with myself about whether God is displeased with me or not. Some days I’ll spend up to eight hours in this deep rumination spiral, during which I compulsively avoid my icons and rush through prayers to avoid encountering God’s displeasure, even though I know rationally He is not a micro-managing taskmaster.
To counter this, my therapist suggested I listen to my favorite songs while I look at the icon of the Holy Trinity. The simple exercise reminds me that just like 90.7 FM WFUV played all day long in the house where I grew up, there is music–constant music–in the house of love. When I can manage it, it is profoundly restorative–to hear Dylan sing together with the angels at the table, Take off your thirsty boots and stay for a while.
Image via Wikipedia.
