https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=jfB7iWO8beA
One thing too that struck me reading St. Maximus, which I’m sure you would resonate with, and I want to get your comment on this, is Maximus has a very positive view of nature, the natural world. And so he sees the natural world as in fact, one of the embodiments of the Logos. And he speaks of three different embodiments. He speaks of the embodiment of the Logos in the Virgin, the embodiment in the humanity that he took in the Virgin. And then he speaks of the embodiment in the church and in nature in the sense of he calls it a veil that the Logos wears. And I’m curious, is there a relationship between iconography and the natural world in the sense that is there a regularity to the way iconography presents animals, trees, life basically in the natural world? Well, many icons, they represent the desert. Like most of the icons, they tend to represent the world as the desert. And so you can see, then there’s something of the wilderness, let’s say. So there’s something monastic, very monastic about how the iconographic tradition got developed. So that’s why you’ll see, always see behind Christ these cracked earth, these kind of cracked earth mountains, and you see often cracks at the bottom of the world, you know, with holes where sometimes you can see darkness at the bottom. And so usually it’s seen as wilderness. And so there’s this aesthetical, there’s more of an aesthetical vision in the way that the iconographical tradition got transmitted. But there are other ways to see what St. Maximus talked about, which I see it has to do with ornamentation. So in a church, what you’ll have is you’ll have images, but then also on the between the images, you’ll have foliage, you’ll have, you know, foliage with animals in them and all this kind of natural space. So you can actually get that hierarchy of revelation in the very structure of how images present themselves. Like if you look at a medieval manuscript, like even a Western medieval manuscript, you really get that structure where you have the image in the center, and then on the outskirts of the image, you’ll have foliage, you’ll have all these ornaments that are made of leaves and have animals in them, and sometimes even have monsters and, you know, and gargoyle type creatures. And so there is this idea of this kind of basic cosmic image of everything, of everything kind of participating in this pattern, even up to the end of the world, you could say. And so I think that that’s probably the best way to see it. But in icons, really, we’ve developed this more of an aesthetic image. So the trees are very sparse, you know, there’s kind of like a, there’s more of a desert imagery. If you look at the icons, you’ll start to notice it if you haven’t noticed it before, that that tends to be the way that tradition developed. Interesting. Yeah. And you know, this life being that passage through the desert wandering to, you know, the eschaton being, you know, the promised land. I wanted to ask you about the you mentioned the we were talking about neoplatonism earlier. And, you know, when I first met you, we had we had heard a lecture about the the neoplatonic idea, the Plotinian idea of this sort of journey that goes on from creatures that go that sort of go out from God, and then they go through a process, a cycle, and they come back to God. Yeah, even the pagans seem to have had a notion, as we know, from like the Orphic mysteries and this kind of stuff of nature goes through this sort of cycle, right? Yeah. Of birth, death, resurrection. And then we have a cycle, obviously, in the church as well, where we have the liturgical cycle. And I’ve always just found it amazing, if we think about it, that the whole purpose of the liturgical cycle is actually a commentary in a way on nature, the cycle of the natural world is like, the real meaning of the natural world is this stuff is the the liturgical cycle. Would you would you agree with that? I totally agree. And I think that it’s actually a key that a lot of people want to dismiss because they’re afraid that they are paganism. So a lot of people, if you point to them, right. So you’ve heard that argument before, right? It’s like, oh, the nativity of Christ is just it’s just a solstice, you know, that the Christians try to take over all that kind of nonsense. But I think that we can we can actually flip that back. Yes, because I do believe it is about the solstice. But what it’s doing, it’s actually revealing the cosmic mystery of the solstice in the incarnation of Christ in the darkness of the cave, this hidden mystery, which is not yet completely revealed in the in the lowest place, you know, in the manger in the place where the animals eat, like the lowest part of the world, and then we’ll start to reveal himself, you know, as the year kind of moves on. And so, like, to me, that’s not a problem at all. And I mean, you know, the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the So the fact that we have the Dormition, that the fall, all of these things make complete sense in terms of just the natural cycle of things. But like you said, it’s not people see it in the upside down way. They think that, oh, it’s just Christian trying to take over these pagan holidays. They’re not these pagan holidays. These are just natural cycles that God created. And Christians are now trying to reorient them towards their ultimate meaning. And even if they do use, and I don’t even have a problem to the extent that sometimes Christian actually took some of the pagan elements and then redirected them towards their fullness of meaning either. It doesn’t bother me at all because if you tell me that Christmas isn’t about celebrating the Nativity of Christ, then you’re just, it’s bull. That’s what we celebrate. And if there are some, say the Christmas tree, some people say, oh, this is an old pagan tradition, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, okay, fine. But when I look at a Christmas tree, it’s like, I don’t know. I see a star up there and I see all these lights going down and then I see Christ below in the manger. And I’m like, I know that’s a pretty good pattern. I don’t actually don’t have a problem with it at all.