God is a God of the center and the edge, the fabric and the fringe. It has been so from the Beginning.
He spoke creation into existence and in it He spoke of Himself to it.
He creates light and dark, sun and moon, land and seas, earth and heavens. But within each creation there is a dawn and a dusk, the photographer’s coveted liminal lighting; the waters and the earth, and the tidal pools and beaches than belong to neither; the sun and the moon, and the waning and waxing and eclipsing of their mutual light; the earth and the heavens into which Everest and Kilimanjaro encroach and the forests and varied creatures on them that exist above and below the rare air.
In His law He creates a nation. They are His people but the boundaries of their fields and the chaff of their labor beyond what is offered to Him alone is given to the stranger, the sojourner, and the outcast so that they may live among them in peace. “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 23:22
“I am the Lord your God.” But the boundaries of my divinity, otherness, sovereignty, and self existence are encroached. Because you became strangers and soujourners, I become created and take to Myself your human nature which I created. I am now the Liminal God of two natures: both the solid firmament and the fathomless ocean of mercy, land and sea; the sun of righteousness and the morning star, dawn and dusk; the bread of life and the kernel of wheat, the harvest of the owner and gleaning at the edge of the field by the stranger.
In the Gospel reading this past Sunday (Luke 8:41-56) a dead child and a dying woman encounter God. One reaches for the outermost boundary of His person: the thin, dirty thread of the fringe of His garment and she is healed. The other’s father pleads for mercy and she is taken by His very hand, He speaks, and His flesh and His word gives her life. Both the woman and the child are restored to their community. Life is given in the full intentional harvest within the nation and to the stranger secretly gleaning at the furthest-most edge of the field.
Everything in the Tradition points us to this.
The icons depict this overlapping boundary in the “mandorla”: literally “the almond”, the shape of the middle of a Venn Diagram in which two distinct things create another thing by the two sharing a space and their meanings but in that overlapping space they do not losing their own “thing” nor their own meanings.
In the icons there are events that are both earthly and material but also spiritual and divine. Those events are depicted in a “mandorla”, the overlapping of the boundaries of heaven and earth, the physical eye and the noetic, spiritual perception.
This mandorla is not just in the icons but is present in every aspect of the Orthodox Tradition.
The iconostasis is not a barrier, a demarcation between our fleshly darkness and the divine Light within the Holies, a boundary to keep the sinners from entering, but it is the representation of the dawn of our salvation, the space between darkness and light. It is the representation of the liminal space between us and the altar, between our humanity and the holiness and otherness of God: On it we see Jesus Christ as a man the True God in our flesh, Mary who bears God in her humanity, the saints who participated in the divine nature in their flesh. They are the shoreline, the tidal space between the ocean of our sins and solid firmament of the Holy of Holies, the altar upon which Christ is enthroned and sacrificed. The iconostasis is the joining of the boundaries of creation and divinity in the flesh of Christ. “Therefore, brothers, we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by this new and living way which He initiated and opened for us through the veil [as in the Holy of Holies], that is, through His flesh…” (Hebrews 10:19-20)
Even the placement of the icons in the Tradition of the architecture of the churches proclaims this truth. The Platytera is placed above the altar. It is Mary, more spacious than the heavens, who contains the un-created, un-containable God in the created space of her human womb.
Her icon is depicted above the altar of His divine fleshly sacrifice for our sins and the divine Pantocrator (Creator and Judge of All) in the heavens above us. Apart from her the Cross, the Gospel, the Bread, the Wine, the created Body and the Blood and the mystery of the Eucharist would not exist upon the altar nor for us beyond the iconostasis.
She is the dawn, the connection between God’s un-created light and our sin-created darkness. Our Creator, our Judge, our Sacrifice, our Savior is both God and Man, wholly Other and fully flesh and blood within her womb.
Even the floor-plan in the architecture of the church proclaims the liminal spaces of salvation. The altar is our saving sacrifice. The nave is the nation of His people, the harvested field connected to the altar by the iconostasis. The narthex, the outer boundary, is connected to the church but is separated from the harvested field of the nave. The narthex contains the world of sojourners, strangers, philosophers, dreamers, spiritual but not religious observers, pagans who look within and find light, penitents seeking mercy in their darkness, the dying reaching for a thread of a garment with an unclean hand in desperation.
Salvation is not just those who are in “The Ark” in the storm. It is also Christ walking in the sea and in the threatening storm outside the boat. It is people trying to walk on water toward a mysterious god who appears as man who walks on the sea as if it is land, whom they know is Master of the sea and storm, who summons them to Himself. He is an uncertain savior, but they are sinking and drowning in the waters. But it is God walking in their storm, hearing their cry, and reaching out and saving them while the other Eleven (or even the 99) row safely within the Ark. In their desperation they find God’s hand grasping them in their sinking doubts and fears. It is Christ, the God whose fleshly feet walks the space between the firmament and the waters and wanders in the space between the Ark and the storms because that is where the sojourner and stranger and even the ones who stepped out of the Ark thinking they see their Salvation in the storm are drowning. And it is He. And He saves.
gods have boundaries. God has fringes, shorelines, dawns, dusks and mandorlas (the noetic almond)…
and the mandorlas drive some people nuts.
I just cracked up at the last line -- so very Steve! Another beautiful, beautiful post. Maybe time for another book, essays perhaps?
"The narthex, the outer boundary, is connected to the church but is separated from the harvested field of the nave. The narthex contains the world of sojourners, strangers, philosophers, dreamers, spiritual but not religious observers, pagans who look within and find light, penitents seeking mercy in their darkness, the dying reaching for a thread of a garment with an unclean hand in desperation."
Can I steal this?
Your writing is very refreshing to me. I followed the narthex link and read the attached article. I often experience a sort of Orthodox fundamentalism among those in my multi-parish community north of Seattle. After 12 years I feel the most comfortable in the narthex, if you know what I mean. This narthex-threshold experience is not new for me. I've always felt the most free and alive out here on the edge. I'm not sure what to make of it. I tend to be more judgmental of "religious" types than I am of those you describe in the narthex.
In your drawing I noticed that the periphery of each circle does not pass through the center of the other. Is that on purpose? The most natural way to do that drawing is to create the second circle by placing the point of the compass on the edge of the first circle.