https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=7zFBoNFo4yA

What got you to carving or painting? I studied contemporary art here at Concordia. At that time I wasn’t orthodox, I was evangelical. I was really struggling to unite my faith and the painting and the fact that my Christianity, contemporary art and also being a Protestant, which is very iconoclastic. So it was just a huge struggle. All through college I was just beating myself over the head constantly trying to get this to make sense. And then finally I just gave up and I just destroyed all my paintings and just decided that’s it, I’m not going to be an artist, I’m going to be a regular person and have a job and I’ll do that. My wife thought that was hilarious by the way, she was like, yeah you don’t know yourself Jonathan. So that’s when I kind of went through just a general spiritual crisis and I discovered the Church Fathers and then I discovered the traditional art of the Church. At first I discovered kind of medieval art, western medieval art and I thought wow this is it, this is what I’ve been looking for. It was just this amazing language, visual language that the whole Church had kind of developed all at the same time and I thought this is so powerful. And so I was like I want this, I want to do this. And at first I thought I can’t because it’s gone, the medieval Middle Ages are finished. But then I discovered the Orthodox Church and I discovered the mystical tradition and I discovered the icons and I thought yes it’s alive and well. So that’s when I became Orthodox and when I became Orthodox, when I was a catechumen I was at the sign of the Theotokos here and I wanted to paint icons so badly. But I couldn’t find a teacher. I think now it’s easier to find a teacher but at that time it was nearly impossible to find a teacher. And I knew that I couldn’t do it on my own, I just knew that I wasn’t going to be able to do it. So I was just fuming, just bubbling inside. I would spend all day at McGill going through old books of ancient manuscripts and just medieval images and just spending all day looking at icons but I couldn’t. So one day my parents cut down a linden tree in their yard and they said hey Jonathan, I hear this wood is good for carving. Why don’t you, do you want a few pieces and figure it out? And I’m like yeah. And I thought I’ll make a blessing cross. So I got this piece of linden and I had no tools. Basically I had X-Acto knives and I carved this whole cross out of X-Acto knives and I still have it today. It’s really a testimony to my shame. I just keep it. It’s very bad. But I still showed it to the priest who was following me and he was like okay, keep going. And then I got some proper wood and some proper tools and I carved an icon again and this time the priest was like okay, yeah, really, keep going. And then that was it. It was almost like I fell accidentally just out of a desire to paint icons and not being able to. And I really enjoyed it and I just kept going and yeah, here I am. Very strange. Cool. Yeah. And yeah, it is my job. I don’t believe in myself but I do the full-time icon carver. Who would have thought? How did you find the wood next to it? I think it’s kind of like this weird long process, kind of very like this, where at first I read, at first I was kind of reading the Church Fathers because I had been told that there are no Christians from Constantine to Martin Luther. I was pretty suspicious about that. And so I just started reading Church Fathers and then reading St. Augustine at first, which was more accessible, and then slowly read. And then when I read St. Gregory of Nyssa, I was like, wow, this is amazing. I was like, why did they hide this from me? And just trying to figure out how this was still alive. And I was reading kind of more traditional authors from other traditions, even from Sufis, and trying to find my way. And then I found the book, The Meaning of Icons, and that book has an introduction by Vladimir Lossky, which is just, it’s called Tradition and Traditions. And it’s so weird because a lot of people really don’t like it because it’s very technical and very kind of dry, I guess. But I was crying. I was reading that, I was like crying. I was like, this is it. This is what I’ve been looking for. And I had never been in an Orthodox Church yet. So I just asking around, like, where’s an Orthodox Church? Like, how can I find an Orthodox Church? It was actually a Baptist pastor who was teaching Greek at McGill. He said, I have a student who’s Orthodox. Maybe you want to meet him. And he’s like, but I’m not sure I want to give you his number because I’m not sure I want you to go to an Orthodox Church. He was joking though. So I did. And as soon as I went into the sign of the Theotokos, and it was during Lent, and it was during a pre-sanctified liturgy. And so I just walked into this dark church and it was all prostrations and just all repentance. And Father John had such a strong voice. And I was like, OK, this is it. I already knew I was home. That was it.