great and holy (photo) friday: bright sadness

 Amber Schley Iragui © 2007

Amber Schley Iragui © 2008

Amber Schley Iragui © 2009

T H E   R E T U R N
Ruth L. Schwartz

This is what life does, as an act of great
though often misunderstood kindness—it brings us
over and over again to the same sorrows.
For instance, the same emergency room
where I crouch beside the gurney on which lies
someone I love whose face is dulled by pain. And life
says, Here you are again, and gently
pulls the outer leaves away,
like I do with the woolly plants called lamb's ear,
the thickest, softest, gray-green petals I can find,
so I can touch the dew held at the hidden center.
Or I could be the one on the gurney; it doesn't matter.
Of course the dew at the center is love,
though it is also grief.
Of course it is only by touching it, not just with a finger
but with the entire self, exhausted, despairing, and willing,
that we can know they are the same thing,
ceaselessly making and remaking us
in every form that life would have us take,
so it can know itself through us, so we can know
a single thing—just one.

Published in The Sun Magazine, April 2012, Issue 436


It's Friday—Good Friday, Great and Holy Friday. Despite 14 years in the Orthodox Church, this day still brings to mind a sermon I heard on the radio as a child. Since there was no TV in our home, what I heard on the radio formed much of what I knew of life beyond the small circle of our life. The radio sat atop the refrigerator in my parent's kitchen, and it was pretty much always tuned to the local Christian radio station, KPDQ. One year, when I was perhaps 12, Tony Campolo's well-known sermon It's Friday, but Sunday's a-comin'! aired, and goosebumps rose on my pale pre-teen arms as I listened to his voice thunder "It's Friiiiiday! But Sunday's a-coooomin'!" (Unfortunately, my exhaustive Google searches did not unearth a decent video or audio of the sermon as I remember it, although the text can be found here).The contrast between despair and triumph, the faith that Sunday would bring not only Christ's Resurrection but a general resurrection of all that seemed hopeless and pointless in life was not lost on me.

The inner geography of these last few days before Pascha holds both the hot-blooded power of Campolo's sermon and the solemnity of Orthodox Holy Week—culminating in the Vespers of Good Friday. I first witnessed this beautiful service the day before I was chrismated into the Orthodox Church. The dark, cool sanctuary was a somber tomb, and smelled faintly of incense and beeswax. Shafts of afternoon sunlight fell upon an icon of Christ attached to an upright wooden cross, white lilies gathered in vases at its foot. As the service progressed, two parishioners stepped forward and helped the priest remove Christ from the cross. He was then wrapped in a white linen shroud and was proceeded into the alter. I felt as though I was there, or he was here, or somehow this was all happening quite literally before me, and through me. The glory of Orthodoxy, for me, is the earthy physicality of the liturgy itself—one is moved by something that includes the intellect and emotions, but is not limited to them. Later in the service, Christ (via the plashchanitsa), was carried out of the alter and placed on a bier in the nave of the church. At the close of the service we moved forward, one by one, in silence to prostrate before him, and to kiss him. There were tears on my cheeks as I knelt before his crucified body.

And so this day returns to me, again, repeating the story—my story—and bringing with it the added weight of days, days filled now with home and children. Because of children this year I will not be able to attend the afternoon vespers service, and instead I write my memories of the bright sadness of this day. And post these photos, all taken in years past, of bright sadness. It's Friday, but Sunday is coming.

For next week's photo Friday theme I suggest orange. Orange in honor Bright Week, and all that is warm and glowing and full of life.

photo friday: looking up

© Amber Schley Iragui 2012

© Amber Schley Iragui 2007

© Amber Schley Iragui 2012

© Amber Schley Iragui 2012

I am of the opinion that most artists should not open their mouths. Put more kindly, words are not their talent: I often find when I read about art, especially something that was written by the artist, the art itself loses some power. I had originally written about the photos I'm posting today, but then I deleted the post. It was so boring. Whatever mystery or beauty the photos hold was stripped by my mundane observations. There are exceptions, of course. William Blake and Maira Kalman come to mind. Or Allan Say, the author and illustrator of the beautiful children's book, Grandfather's Journey. 

Next week is Holy Week in the Orthodox Christian tradition, and in that vein I'd like to suggest the concept of bright sadness as the Photo Friday / Holy Friday theme. This phrase can be interpreted any way you'd like, and the photos certainly don't need to show Easter or Holy Week in any way. However, as a point of departure, here is what theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote about bright sadness:

{During Lent} a certain quiet sadness permeates the service: vestments are dark, the services are longer than usual and more monotonous, there is almost no movement,... nothing seems to “happen.” At regular intervals the priest comes out of the sanctuary and reads always the same short prayer, and the whole congregation punctuates every petition of that prayer with prostrations. Thus, for a long time we stand in this monotony—in this quiet sadness.

But then we begin to realize that this very length and monotony are needed if we are to experience the secret and at first unnoticeable “action” of the service in us. Little by little we begin to understand, or rather to feel, that this sadness is indeed “bright,” that a mysterious transformation is about to take place in us. It is as if we were reaching a place to which the noises and the fuss of life, of the street, of all that which usually fills our days and even nights, have no access—a place where they have no power...

Thus, as we experience this mysterious liberation, as we become “light and peaceful,” the monotony and the sadness of the service acquire a new significance, they are transfigured. An inner beauty illumines them like an early ray of the sun which, while it is still dark in the valley, begins to lighten up the top of the mountain.

—taken from Great Lent, published by SVS Press