Orthodox

Today I went to hear a lecture by Frederica Mathewes-Green at the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. A friend invited me and I really appreciated the invitation because otherwise I wouldn't have known about the lecture.

Frederica Mathewes-Green is a pretty famous person in her own right, author, sought after speaker, etc. and I probably wasn't very aware of that when I went to the lecture. Mostly I enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time with my friend and I wanted to take advantage of a chance to learn more about the Orthodox Church. I'm not attracted to the Orthodox Church, it just bothers me that I don't understand it.

The lecture demonstrated that our speaker really did know a lot about pop culture. Bottom line...we (Christians) can't change culture except in the way that we interact with people on a personal level. Culture is bigger than one person, one movie, one great book, etc. But culture does change all the time, discarding things that don't work. Society wants to be better and healthier but about the time you get one thing corrected, something else goes wrong.

I thought Mathewes-Brown was pretty astute when it came to culture, but I came away with the usual frustration regarding things Orthodox. I don't get the fascination with icons. In the section of her speech about culture, which was mostly discouraging, but when she got around to talking about "the good news" and I wrote down one of her phrases..."the secret power of icons." "The secret power of icons." That's a part of the good news about Christians and the Church in our culture.

She talked a lot about icons, one in particular which showed the three visitors who came to visit Abram and Sarai. She got a lot of meaning out of that icon. I just didn't see it.
What is the secret power of icons? It's totally a secret to me.