Blog Posts
We want to hear about an encounter you had with an icon - anywhere, anytime. What was memorable about this encounter? What do you still carry with you from that encounter today?
The piece should be between 500 and 1500 words long. Send to axiawomen@gmail.com with the subject line "My Icon Story." We'll be picking at least six for our blog over the coming months. Deadline is October 15.
We can't wait to read what you write!
(Orthodox women only, please.)
“For me, it is always about bringing the beauty of Christ into the fraught here-and-now, whether that means helping people see Christ in an icon that was made by human hands or working myself to be an icon of Christ to somebody who is suffering.” –Jaime Rall
“I often think that we need beauty as much as we need food, water, or shelter. And I don’t mean beauty from material wealth. Rather, beauty in nature, in quality of thought and action, in ethical and moral vision, in human understanding, in divine awareness, and in forms of expression –whether spoken, sung, imaged, crafted, or prayed.” (Church historian Susan Ashbrook Harvey)
The incredible variety across saints’ lives has kept me in the church. If a princess can grow up to be an honored empress (St. Theophano), a deposed queen (Sts. Alexandra & Valeria), an abbess (St. Elizabeth the New Martyr), or a runaway-turned-monk and in each case find her way to sainthood, then there must be a path to sainthood for me, too. This story is about the princess who ran away to be a monk, one of my favorites.
As we approach the middle of the year, it seems like a good time for a prayer inspired by our spiritual advisor, Judith Scott. This version includes our featured saints from 2023:
We walk in the company of the women who have gone before: judges, prophets, martyrs, warriors, poets, lovers, and saints, mothers of the faith, both named and unnamed, demonstrating how many beautiful and courageous paths we can walk together toward Christ.
We walk in the company of St. Marina, who understood deeply the communal nature of both brokenness and salvation and lived heart-wide, her hand over her mouth to cover her neighbors' faults.
We are glad to be able to share with you, by permission, a reflection by Abbess Katherine Weston–superior of the St. Xenia Monastic Community for over 30 years and the President of the Fellowship of St. Moses the Black–in which she considers the role of deaconesses and abbesses.
Today, because of the recent and conspicuous ordination of a female deacon in Zimbabwe, I want to start to say something about ordination.