The image struck me with full force as I sat one day at my desktop computer. I was staring at a copy of an icon from St. Catherine’s monastery in Sinai, Egypt. In vivid color, the Theotokos was holding Christ from within a mantle of glowing flames. Known as “The Virgin of the Burning Bush,” or “The Mother of God, Unburnt Bush,” this icon was my first introduction to theology about the Theotokos, while still a fairly new Anglican convert curious about church history.
Weeks later, I was still mulling over this image - not only the visual one I had seen, but the deeper, poetic fuse it lit within my imagination, burning a clear ember line straight from Old Testament into New. Here Mary was still a mother, yet there was something strong and mystical and almost wild about this image. She was the Mother of God, the Mother of Fire, enveloped within that which she contained.
Several months went by, and COVID appeared in full force. My husband and I, a college student and a freelance writer, found ourselves in the possession of several COVID relief checks. Most of it was much needed, but a little bit was leftover, the first extra cash we’d had in a while. Could we afford our very first icon, perhaps even a hand-painted one?
A bit of Google searching led me to a copy from the apse of the chapel of Saint Iakovos Adelphotheos at The Monastery of Sinai, “The Mother of God of the Bush,” from the thirteenth century. In it, the Theotokos is standing - this time alone - at prayer with her arms raised, her mantle a wreath of flames. We bought it, giddy with our luck, and hung it in a small nook in our apartment.
Although at that time I still considered myself Protestant, I began sitting in front of this icon every night in silence. Perhaps it was this experience - beginning to form a relationship with the Theotokos face to face, although my head knowledge was so slim - that began to teach me what it meant to get to know the saints not just as characters in a history book, but as living and breathing realities in my own life. Perhaps it also planted the first seeds of recognition that would awaken in reading the words of St. Maria of Paris - that “every human is an icon of God,” a mystery before which I should stand in humility and reverence.
But that is all in retrospect. What happened next was the month of September, and the worst wildfires my home state of Oregon had seen in decades. For the first time in memory, evacuation watches were being given to the actual metro area of Portland, and friends and family of mine were having to flee their homes. Out my window, the sky glowed orange. And I sat there each night, in front of this image of a woman who bore a Fire within herself, a woman who had also fled her home one night in search of safety. Quietly, softly, a new door opened inside me.
O Mother, who fled with child at night, flee with us, I prayed.
O Fire she took within herself, mantle us.
Let it be enough that we yield before what we cannot comprehend, that we gathered up ourselves and went, without despair. May we too find ourselves coursing new paths by moonlight, wreathed everywhere in flames, but not consumed.
Gratefully, we never did have to evacuate and our friends returned safely home. Several years later, my husband and I would find ourselves entering the Orthodox Church, walking through that door that had slowly opened ever wider since that fire-tinged night.
Icon is by Virginia Wieringa.
Jenna Funkhouser is a freelance writer and poet who has loved writing for Axia this past year. Born in Portland, Oregon and a parishioner at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church there, she is currently living on the island of Patmos, Greece, for a one-year residency with the Orthodox nonprofit Gardens of Discovery.
Below are a few links to view the icon(s) I mention:
https://mused.com/stories/53/icons-of-the-virgin-of-the-burning-bush-in-sinai/
https://orthodoxmonasteryicons.com/products/theotokos-the-burning-bush-icon-3