The first time I worshipped in an Orthodox Church, I was on sensory overload. I went for a class I was taking at Fuller Seminary and it was overwhelming. We chanted, we stood for around two hours, all the time, the overwhelming scent of incense was filling my lungs. Being an artist, I was immediately enamored with the beautiful icons. I went in expecting “smells and bells,” expecting to stand, expecting to see icons, but I didn’t expect to feel so supernaturally drawn to the icon of Christ at the front of the space. I was drawn to it, I studied it, I loved it. I felt stuck. In Windows to Heaven, a book on Orthodox iconography, Elizabeth Zelensky writes that in the Orthodox faith, the icon should be seen as a window that the reader looks through to see the nature of the divine. So, by looking at (or reading, more appropriately) an icon of Christ, we see not the wood and paint, but the actual divine nature of Christ. No wonder I was compelled. Zelensky goes on to write, “It is my prayer that now and then, someone will recognize the image of Christ in me and will […]