“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
the rest sit round it and pluck blueberries.”1
——-
I could hear and feel the tempered excitement in the lineup of nature-walkers behind me: students and their professor from a college class on literature and nature. Their energy loaned some brightness to this otherwise overcast day. At the front buzzed the ambitious, energetic youth; in the rear, the elders’ measured steps set the pace for our journey. And me as point, leading us through easy trails, autumn leaves crackling with each footfall. We left behind the mad pace of parking lots and bus fumes in exchange for this slow rebaptism into sacred nature. A journey outward for our bodies. A journey inward for our souls.
I had prepared the site the day before, finding last year’s fire pit inundated with a small rivulet of water from the recent rains. A large buck gazed at me while I gathered wood for our fire. The collection was not haphazard or merely a thoughtless grabbing at sticks. Prayer and ceremony begin with our first intention, and every step after that, from beginning to end, can add to or diminish that original intent. Each stick was collected carefully, mindful of its position, seeking those that broke with a clean, dry snap. I cradled the bundle in my arms like a baby: first the thin, wispy twiglets to instantly catch the new flames, then larger branches as the fire grew outward. My heart smiled while drifting through the trees: the triple joy of walking in nature, collecting prayers from the landscape, and soon connecting with a whole circle of smiling hearts. A couple flat stones and a raft of dry twigs would elevate the fire above the trickling water. The sticks were organized by size and placed next to the shallow fire pit. I paused there before heading out, asking safe journey for my fellow travelers and the blessings that flow so freely through and from the wilderness. May this fire warm both hands and hearts.
The young bees were hearteningly patient with their elders. We stopped here and there for breaks, walking towards rather than walking to our site. This small shift in words, far more than a simple word-play, changes the character of any endeavor. When I’m walking to, I start at point A, I end at point B, and miss the whole invisible journey between. Conversely, walking towards makes ripe the chance for discovery in every present moment. We gathered around a bright orange newt and watched it flop across its own micro boulders and inch-deep ravines. We each picked up one colorful leaf among thousands and studied it for its individuality. A rest-break beckoned our gazes upward at the light sway of trees in the cool afternoon breezes. In towards-ing, our point-B destination became every bird call, every muddy puddle, every breath of earthy loam. We eventually made it to the fire pit in spite of our travels.
Students and I sat on fallen logs that I had circled up. I packed in folding chairs for the elders. There are few things so primordially connective than sitting around a fire with our fellow Homo sapiens. Tens of thousands of years of playing out this exact scene with far more urgency than our afternoon meander through the woods. I imagine the distant past: the skies darkening from pale purples to the early gray of evening. Animals howling in the distance, far enough to stay the panic, but close enough to maintain that edge. A fire-keeper, perhaps fatigued from a long day of hunting, held the group’s survival in his hands. A dark night, at the very least, was a chilly and uncomfortable prospect; at worst it could mean death for the entire band.
Fire, though, is life. And there falls the sacred responsibility of original ceremony: fire by friction. The prayers of these people were not mere curiosity or oddity or routine Sunday habit. What more compelling a prayer than “we need this to live?” And what more sacred than holding onto another day of life? I see in my mind’s eye their faces smudged with the dirt and grime of earth-to-mouth living. A fire-keeper’s success, the glint of crackling flame reflected from his eyes, a deep exhale of primal relief, and those glowing eyes raising up from the magic of fire to gaze into the sparkling eyes of the other human beings in their circle.
Shelter, water, fire, and food: the Sacred Order of the basic necessities of life. Transformed and elaborated by human hearts into spiritual necessities as well, taking each and wrapping it in layers of ceremonial symbolism no matter the culture, no matter the faith tradition. The grand churches and temples are shelters lavishly adorned for meditation and worship, all with the purpose of raising one’s mind from the earth to the heavens. We enter and are physically sheltered from the storms of life, spiritually sheltered from the doubts and distractions of our chaotic world. And there, in peace, we can pray.
Water quenches the thirst of our bodies as well as our souls. We immerse ourselves in the waters of baptism and emerge renewed, cleansed, and refreshed. Water used to purify and sanctify and wash away both inner and outer uncleanness, elevating the newly-washed towards a greater understanding of faith and love.
Fire leaps from earthen pits onto the tips of candles, or into the burning of incense. It illumines our path, drives away the darkness, brings its warmth and joy wherever it burns. Fire joins people and lends its light to eyes, minds, and hearts.
Food is sustenance for body and spirit, a communing when shared with family and community. Sacred food was once offered to the gods; food of no less significance offered now to our fellow human beings. The shared meat around an ancient, tribal campfire has become now symbolic offerings of spiritual nourishment with the same purpose and connectiveness. In some traditions, food even becomes God as a means of tangible, ingested oneness with the Divine.
To my new tribe I offered a short welcome and a few words about fire and primitive skills in general. And then I proceeded to build the fire structure with a reflective grace communicated through movement. The sticks that yesterday were lovingly offered and mindfully gathered were arranged into position. I nurtured a ceremonial experience with the careful and measured placement of each gifted twig on twin rocks, water still flowing underneath. A similar structure was building within each of the participants. This was not a chaotic heap of twigs, but an intentional framework, an external shelter reflecting an internal shelter within which to place both fire and prayer.
I would not dishonor this reverent experience by striking a match or flicking a Bic. No: here, in this place, for this ceremony, we would recreate that ancestral magic of primitive fire. I spoke a bit about the bow-drill set, the mechanics and construction, the process and technique. A thumb-thick dowel is spun against a flat wooden fireboard. The cord on a solid, arm-length bow is wrapped once around the spindle. A bearing-block handhold, palm-sized, is held on top of the spindle for stability and downward pressure. A triangular notch in the edge of the board catches the friction dust which eventually sparks into a glowing ember. The ember is nested into a bundle of fluffy-dry tinder where it’s blown into full flame.
Bow and drill are far more than a primitive lighter: this is prayer, and for me it cannot be otherwise. There have been many times when I’ve made flames, and many when I haven’t, and each time I learn something new. There have been fires lit for sacred ceremonies and fires lit for cooking hot dogs, and each of those has offered equally profound teachings. I have sweat and bled and cried over bow-drill sets, and each time I’ve come away changed for the better. Every time I lift that bow, it’s a ceremony and an act of prayer that will always produce fire whether or not I produce flames.
I continued by sharing the bow-drill’s symbolism as an ancient, tribal creation mythology: the active spindle as male, the grounded fireboard as female, and joining the two within the friction of relationship to create new life. The guidance of nature represented by the circled cord around the spindle. The pressure and stability of God as handhold from above, and the breath of the Creator to blow the small coal-child to life as it’s nurtured within the earthen bundle of tinder. I assumed that college students would need at least a few words to collect their minds into the experience. Really, the primitive tools, as our common human heritage, communicate wordlessly just fine on their own. I finally shut up, leaving room for nature to speak more eloquently in its silence than any words I’ll ever stumble over.
The working of a bow drill requires a reverential stance, one foot atop the fireboard, the other knee bent and anchored on the ground, the torso and head bowed towards the earth with the open sky above. Kneeling with the body, humbling the heart, and drawing the group into the same mindset through this primal, symbolic act. I removed my shoes and paused for an eternal moment, offering my own silent prayer to the effort. Up until this point, the prayers were disembodied intentions. With the first tug on the bow, though, the body joined as an equal partner in this team effort of flesh and spirit combined. The spinning wood sang its raspy song, back and forth, back and forth, spinning the wheels of life from the primordial past and into this nowhere place, in the middle of a nowhere woods, worked by some new nobody, and elevating it all towards something more than it was. Smoke came first as a wisp, and their doubts began to dissipate: this might actually work! The song of the wood intensified, the cloud of smoke billowed as from the very earth itself, arms and body swung as if dancing an invocation. Here built not a frenzy of primitive grit, though, but instead an active peace, a humble and surrendered faith in motion.
The drilling time seemed both eternally long and far too short. As the last stroke stopped abruptly, the woods fell back into their usual silence, which for a few moments seemed out of place after the flurry of movement and hopes. As the smoke dissolved into that silence, a small wink of red rose out of a pile of black dust. Any of their lingering doubts now completely burned away: this thing does work! I slowly lifted the tinder bundle with the same collected calm that remained a solid core from the very beginning of this journey. And with the tiny coal nestled within, I blew life into it. The coal expanded, the smoke increased, the blowing became stronger and louder. And then, when it was ready, and not a moment before:
Fire.
I held sacred fire in my hands of clay.
An elder friend of mine once gave the bow drill a whirl. I coached him through the steps from awkward positioning, to smooth bow action, all the way to a coal on his first couple attempts. And blowing, blowing, blowing, then fire! He held the flaming tinder bundle in his hands, transfixed. I told him that he could drop it, but he didn’t. The flames got closer to his fingers, and I said again with good-humored urgency, let go! He continued to hold on, mesmerized, until the flames finally licked at his fingertips. I smiled as it dropped to the ground, but his face and solemn gaze remained unchanged. “Why did you hold it for so long?!”
“There are so few magic moments in life, and I wanted to hold this one for as long as I could.”
Even after cradling countless flaming tinder bundles in my hands, it’s still nothing short of miraculous. A magic that remained throughout this process. It’s not about the person cranking the bow, but the appearance of the fire; in any well-run ceremony, the officiant should disappear, even to the officiant himself. I transferred that flame into the fire structure and invisibly into the open hearts of those gathered, all of us as equal partners in this effort. Their eyes never left that bundle of tinder, and they sat staring at the new presence in our little circle. Where two or three are gathered, there in their midst will be revealed the Divine.
That Divinity did not come by my efforts or my prayers or my “powers.” God was already there. My awareness of this universal Presence opened the door for the others to see fire through the same lens. I took my remembrance of God, hitched it to a physical act, and collectively yanked us out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary with each stroke of the bow. This also wasn’t the haphazard throwing-together of sticks that most people are used to, nor a beach-party bonfire, nor a marshmallow cookout; those types of fires create their own mediocrity. My acknowledgement here of the sacred revealed what was never absent, and yet what is all-too-rarely acknowledged. And in that container we were joined in mind and in heart, with common intention and united vision, facing inwards towards a shared center which now burned as the manifestation of our prayers in the flesh, brought forth through the body, breathed to life from the heart, by way of the chest, through silent lips. A light and warmth not squandered within but offered externally and shared with each and everyone.
The hushed reverence was soon replaced with the crackle of fire. And as the flames spoke, so too did those gathered. Serious faces softened as conversations and laughter sprang from joyful hearts. The fire was ours, and as it warmed and lit us, we warmed and lit each other through our togetherness. I shared acorn-flour bread around the circle: the breaking of primitive bread and a communing through mutual nourishment. And another nod to our primal hungers, the satisfaction of a full stomach, and the bonds which are strengthened by the simple act of sustaining our neighbor’s life in the form of food.
“After a bow and drill fire-making demonstration by Ernest Thompson Seton, an observer said, ‘I don’t see why you go to all that trouble when you only have to scratch a match,’ Seton replied, ‘Ah! You are thinking only of the fire down there (pointing to the board). I’m also thinking of the fire up here,’ and he placed his hand over his heart.”2
The fire in the pit eventually burned out. I sprinkled some water for safety even though the little stream was still trickling underneath with its still, small voice. I scattered the ashes, covered the area with some leaves, and returned the sitting-logs to the surrounding woods. Our mark on the landscape was now invisible to the eyes, but would remain as a positive, lingering presence in this new temple we helped create. We took a different set of trails for the return route, as different people, walking towards, and still carrying that fire within us, bringing it back to a world that so desperately needs more warmth and light.
No fancy ceremonies or elaborate adornments needed here. Just open your heart, light a fire with prayerful awareness and intention, and there God will be.
——-
Sunday dawn is a time for silence and prayer and reflection. Another careful pulling together of the day’s sheet music and books and binders, and the car-journey away from home, across town, to the church. Others come too, drawn by that call towards connection, a weekly reminder that we’re far smaller than we think, and that we’re invited to partake of far greater than we can fathom.
The journey seems mundane: another repetition of the “same-old.” The church building, too, is mostly humble and unassuming from the outside. White aluminum siding, old wooden doors with barely-translucent cross-shaped window cutouts; just another small-town neighborhood chapel. But unlike every other chapel, this one peaks with a light-blue onion dome. Another smaller, golden dome crowns the entryway. Signage is printed both in English and the exotic Cyrillic lettering. Late in her life, an Orthodox elder visited a Protestant church for the funeral of a dear friend. Upon entering its bare walls and austere furnishings, her first comment, “Where’s the mystery?” An Orthodox church hints at its mystery from first glance street-side.
Exit the world, enter the church, and find the entire cosmos within. We, the earth-bound, stand on the floor, surrounded by all things visible and invisible. Lofted above is the ceiling of sky and universe, chandelier lights suspended as stars and planets in the infiniteness of space. Affixed to every wall are icons of saints: holy women and men who once cried as we do, bled as we do, toiled and suffered as we do. Their eyes pierce through our masks and scrutinize our depths with brutal honesty, revealing our inadequacies in the face of their holiness. But so too do they invite us to travel the same prayerful path towards their grand humility. A few steps elevate the front of the church, and there stands a solid wooden screen broken only by three doors: the walls of paradise hanging somewhere between the earth and the vastness of the universe. Tiers of icons grace this wall from floor to ceiling, drawing our eyes upward from our heavy flesh to the ascendance of spirit. The altar of sacrifice stands within, hidden for now, sheltered there as if in a humble cave or an empty tomb. Priest and congregation face east towards the light and Light of a new dawn. Upwards, closer to the heavens, the ceiling and central dome are ringed with icons of patriarchs and prophets, of evangelists and angels, circling, circling. And central, as if looking directly down from a tear in the heavens, is a massive icon of Christ with a stern expression, watching, waiting, as both loving judge and forgiving father. Eyes and necks craning upwards in awe are now compelled to bow once more towards earth.
Not just heaven alone, but the earth is here, too, and all things of the earth. This shelter’s foundation is rock and concrete, its framework from the trees. Icon pigments are ground from colored earth and semi-precious stones, mixed with egg yolk for application. Candles of beeswax, sliver and gold metalwork covering sacred texts, vases of flowers add their brightness. Palms and branches from Palm Sunday celebrations. Even the feathered angels’ wings bring a hint of birds’ flight herein. The earth provides her gifts, and all of nature is here present in this shelter where the visible and the invisible participate in a united lifting of voices to their Creator. We humans add our own presence to this microcosm, sheltered from the storms and distractions of our lives. Our minds here are jolted out of the flesh, away from the mundane, and into this living container of mystery.
Water here is made sacred and sprinkled in blessing upon person and object alike. Water transformed into sacrament, and through the sacramentality of it, we too are transformed to see in that water the Divinity that is always there present. As the water is prayed over, it is changed, and through the opening of that invisible door, we also are changed.
Calm flames burn in oil lampadas hung in front of the icons, illumining their faces with living light. Red-glowing charcoal transforms the solidity of incense grains into the upward flight of its scent and smoke. People put up candles as prayers for the living and the deceased. We, like candles, receive our life as fire and it softens our cold, waxen hearts with its warmth, burning from wick to base until our flame goes out.
Matter is not subordinate to spirit but participates in partnership with it. The Church’s sacraments always involve a physical substance for the cleansing, healing, and uplifting of our entire being, flesh and spirit both. Even the fleshly remains of the saints are here venerated as relics: small flecks of bone, tiny fragments of cloth or vestments still contain a portion of their lifetime of holiness—the fruit of their struggles—now crumbs of grace that nourish our souls.
When I arrive, the priest is already vested and behind the icon screen, laying out a symbolic sacrifice of bread and wine. Each of his movements are wrapped in rapt prayer, preparing this matter, through faith, to become something more than it is. I arrange the music binders for the choir, bookmark the readings, light the wicks, and prepare for the service. The service: an apt term for the giving that takes place from the congregants, for the congregants. Spirituality isn’t a spectator sport, but a knock-down, drag-out effort to exercise our souls for the hard work of the heart. And such intensity requires a focused and thorough preparation.
Others arrive. The liturgy begins and flows like a calm, growing river carrying us forward by its power. This ceremonial dance is thick with symbolism, built over the centuries, and preserved as Tradition and traditions. We start with peace, with praise. Hymns are sung as offerings of beauty, yet all of them in coarse imitation of the angels’ ceaseless doxologies. Readings, responses, leading us step by step through the eternity of these choreographed, prayerful moments. Three words may take a whole twenty seconds to sing; a simple gesture of the priest can embody the entirety of the Gospels. We participate in a timeless, thousand-year ritual, a feast for the senses. All the externals gather us into the moment, dissolving the veils, and directing our attention inward.
This peace and prayerfulness, though, is not one of passivity or relaxation. Prayer creates tension; prayer is warfare against our weaknesses. The lack of pews encourages congregants to stand throughout the service, to take on a respectful posture in the house of God; would you sit in the presence of an earthly king? We stand aright, we stand with fear, we stand in faith. The mind fights distraction, the legs grow stiff and sore, and this bodily struggle keeps our spirits as taut and ready as a drawn bowstring.
Communion—food—is the central act of this service of the people. For hundreds of years throughout the world, each week, each day, holy men have been exclaiming and empowering these unchanging prayers within their hearts, lifting the bread and wine with trembling hands, offering more than food, but prayers for the people. And at the high point of the service, with plate and chalice lifted to the heavens, mere bread and wine—in the Sacrament of sacraments—become Body and Blood by Divine Grace. The priest, as servant of this Mystery, holds God in his unworthy hands. The doors of the icon screen are thrown open. He steps from the heavens back onto the earth. The simplest, humblest of food and drink has been transformed into the very Creator of our universe. And with the most basic of invitations, the most practiced of our daily routines—”taste and see”—together we partake both physically and spiritually of the fullness of God. How easy to attain this ultimate unity towards which we all strive: come, pray, receive. We walked in as mere mortals, and we depart as little-g gods with this gift of Grace: we as tiny, kindled flames, spreading out from this Source, carrying that Source within, and bringing our hearts’ Holy Fire to our households, to our communities, to our world so starved of that Light. We as walking relics of God’s gift of grace.
A priest once described Sunday church attendance as a dress rehearsal for death. On one hand, we can stay home, sleep in, eat a lavish breakfast, mow the lawn, take a nap, watch the game with beers and friends, then fall asleep with Monday’s work-week dread. Embracing the temporal, attending to the ephemeral, pandering the dust of our flesh, and dulling our minds with entertainment. Anything and everything to distract us from thoughts of the spiritual.
Or we can arise early with purpose, adorn ourselves in our finest dress, make the journey away from the familiar, offer our hearts to prayer and community, and ultimately partake of the Divine. A physical rehearsal and a spiritual roadmap for our soul’s eventual travels into the next life. Crossing that veil, some will follow the good habits of their life’s spiritual practice, walking forward, eyes locked on the blinding light until they dissolve into the abyss of Divinity. Others who have never seen that light, who never chose that pathway, will shield their eyes and look instead behind them, longingly, towards the now-unreachable decay of corruptible flesh, and collapse, self-forsaken, into a pillar of salt.
The service ends with collective thanksgiving. People linger and share in fellowship. There comes a sense of freshness afterwards, a subtle inner ascent for all those present. Binders are closed, flames are extinguished, people exit, and the church building is locked. To outside eyes it may seem as though we pray only once a week. Invisibly, though, our service in this temple created a temple within our hearts. We return from this Great Mystery, each as an altar, where our hands and hearts continue lifting humble, daily-bread offerings to be transformed by Grace into something more.
——-
Like the fire, like the church service, pysanky become visible manifestations of invisible prayers. Approached with the same mindset, and fulfilling the same conditions, a decorated egg inspires that same magic and uplifting of hearts. The whole process is prayer from beginning to end, whether or not that prayer is conscious and intentional. We put into the egg everything we think and feel from the moment of intention.
I once heard from a culinary expert that “food remembers.” When preparing a meal, your thoughts, emotions, feelings, and prayers all go into the food that your hands touch. Chop carrots with peace and love in your heart, and the food remembers and holds those feelings. Cook with a prayer on your lips, and those who partake of the food receive that prayer. Prepare meals with no feelings, no care at all—worse yet with anger or hatred—and that’s what the food will carry. I shudder to think about fast-food preparation. In contrast, some of the best, most delicious food I’ve ever tasted is monastery food, prepared by those whose every moment is immersed in prayer.
A new egg, then, begins not with the choosing of a shell, nor the melting of the wax, nor the first lines drawn. A new pysanka begins the moment I have the thought and intent to create. Those thoughts, the preparations, the surroundings, even down to the smallest details—each part of the process from beginning to end carries great significance and affects the outcome. Food remembers; so do eggs.
My yearly pysanky season coincides with the fast of Great Lent which begins seven weeks before Pascha (Easter). My first step into fasting as a child was to “give up something” for Lent that would require a commitment of sacrifice. For those first years it was candy, and I admit falling to weakness more than once. One year I even attempted soda and candy—quite the leap for a ten-year-old to go 48 days abstaining from his two major sources of sugar!
This “giving up” of a vice or two, while certainly a good and appropriate start for a child, is only a small part of the overall discipline of fasting within the Orthodox Church. Traditional teachings prescribe essentially a vegan diet (excepting shellfish), no wine or oils of any kind except on the weekends, and a reduction to only one meal a day. The first few days and the last two of Great Lent call for a fast from all food intake. And while monasteries may keep this rule in full, laity instead seek the guidance of their priest to determine the extent to which they should—and are physically able to—observe these fasting rules within the limitations of their lives in the world. The body is part of the totality of our being and is thus never excluded from the spiritual ends towards which we strive, nor is it pushed so far beyond its limits that the denials themselves become distractions rather than aides to spiritual growth.
The abstention from certain foods is not an end unto itself; why would God care what we eat? Fasting from foods disciplines the mind and the heart to resist our physical cravings while choosing instead to honor our commitment to spiritual pursuits. We subjugate the weak flesh to the willing spirit and strengthen that willing spirit by the effort. Each skipped meal, each rumble of the stomach is a reminder that we live not for food, but for God. And as the body is cleaned throughout the season of Great Lent, the spirit is also cleansed, bringing a lightness to the flesh, a clarity of mind, even an increased energy level despite the limited food intake. It’s a season of paradoxes (paradox is often described as a signpost of wisdom) where less becomes more, where sacrifice reaps abundance, where we are filled through our emptying, and we are raised by means of our own diminishment. Fasting is a “joy-creating sorrow:”3 difficult, yes, but without passion and suffering there is no glory in the Resurrection; to divorce fasting from the Paschal preparations is to gut the essence of the Feast, leaving behind the hollow façade of a spectator event. The fasting and subsequent feasting is our participation in the suffering and resurrection of the season.
Moreso than a fast from food, though, we are also called upon to fast from sin. It’s possible to follow every dietary restriction and yet never once call it a true fast. This season is only complete when we extend more kindness towards our neighbors and forgive those who have harmed us. When we invest more focus on prayer instead of the day’s gossip or the latest headlines. When we choose silence and contemplation over shallow, idle conversations. When we exchange our own satiety with increased acts of charity and almsgiving for the poor and needy. It’s a replacement of vice with virtue using dietary changes as the doorway and guide-rails along that journey. The conscious closing off of the stomach encourages an opening of the heart equal to or greater than any changes to our food consumption.
And it’s within this context of this intense physical and spiritual asceticism that the pysanky are made.
The creation of a pysanka begins with choosing the right canvas. Happy, organic chickens lay the strongest eggs; I avoid the thin, misshapen shells of factory farms. I seek for a smooth symmetry with no bumps or rough patches or translucent oily spots. Longer or shorter, thinner or wider: the designs can cater to any shape, but a poor surface will be struggle from the get-go. I open three cartons at the store, and like a switchboard operator of old, I deftly grade and shuffle them from one hollow to the next until I have a dozen just-right eggs for the table. Only once (knock on wood) has my fussiness required a “cleanup in aisle fifteen.”
Prior to their use, I empty each shell of its contents. The prick of a needle-drill like the prick of fasting-hunger in the stomach; through that hole comes yolk and white, squeezed out by the pressure of air, then rinsed with a few shakes of water. An egg with its contents intact will usually dry over the years, moisture slowly evaporating out of its pores; eventually the shell rattles when moved as if dice are contained within. A full egg, however, carries the risk of potential “popping” where the buildup of rotten air has no escape and the pressure cracks the shell, filling house and home with the most awful of stenches. One pysanky explosion and it’ll be hollowed-out for even the staunchest of traditionalists!
To me, the empty shell better reflects the emptying character of Great Lent: by surrendering its inner substance, the egg is open to receive the prayers that it will eventually contain. The shell of my body, through fasting, is also prepared for the faith and prayers and patience—the virtues in all their forms—that this season is meant to cultivate. It cleanses the year’s built-up stench and bestows a clean vessel through our sacrifice. Etched on my flesh, as on the egg, in outward signs and symbols are the physical forms of spiritual blessings, fully received only within the mutual draining-out of our material substance. We fast both, the egg and I, and our “empty cups” eagerly yet humbly anticipate the inpouring of grace.
A vinegar wipe-down is the traditional method for cleaning the eggs; Ivory dish soap is a modern alternative. The shell can build up dirt and oils, and this initial washing and rinsing prepares it for dye- and wax-adhesion. I thereafter hold the egg with a tissue to keep dye-resistant skin oils off the clean surface.
I lay out my work area with ceremonial detail, collecting only the best tools and materials for the task. The room is cleaned and cleared of clutter. A special cloth is spread out to protect the table and change the character of the space. Each item has its place and setting: an electric-heated stylus—a kistka—and its interchangeable tips, beeswax, magnifying glass, egg bowl, pencils, cleaning wire, design books. I transform the dining room table into a separate, sacred altar: unassuming, even somewhat disheveled in its appearance, yet ripe for a pleasing sacrifice of time and heart.
The planning of the design begins with a layout of pencil lines. The egg is held upright on newsprint and rubbed back and forth with gentle downward pressure to produce a smudge at the two tips. I connect the smudges vertically on both sides to divide the shell’s surface into equal hemispheres. I then create four long slices by adding a second vertical line perpendicular to the first from top to bottom and back again. An equator drawn along the center bulge produces an eight-section “gateway division”4 that opens the egg to the imagination. Fancy egg lathes and circular cardstock templates can shore up a shaky confidence; a stretched rubber band around the shell offers a more minimalist approach to straight lines. But an experienced hand can sketch by eye alone, imagining the curved surface as two-dimensional and tracing a half-way line between horizons. These lines are scaffolding and shelter within which to house the designs. To practice, I’ve often raided the refrigerator and roughed out a dozen eggs that were intended for breakfast.
Pysanky convey my visible, artistic intentions-in-story, and the planning stages often take longer than the egg production itself. I choose the designs and colors to match my highest intentions for its intended recipient. Themes of bounty and fertility for newlyweds. Healing shades of blue for a sick friend. Bright butterflies to celebrate the birth of a child. White-on-black simplicity for the gravesites of the deceased. I don’t approach these symbols as magical runes with inherent powers, though: they’re creative outpourings, a visual prayer-poetry of feelings in traditional forms using the language of symbols to express love and connection. Before people had writing, they had pictures. And unlike our global babel of words, the universality of these images can reach into our ancestral past and pull us more viscerally into their depth and meaning.
The designs are written on the egg with a kistka stylus: a metal cone affixed to a wooden or plastic handle. The cone is filled with beeswax, heated over a candle flame, and used to draw lines of molten wax on the shell. My electric kistka of choice provides the convenience of constant heat for a steady flow of wax.
Pysanky technique is described as a “wax-resist” process. I first cover my pencil lines with wax, adding additional design elements to the white shell. I then dip the egg into yellow dye: the wax lines “resist” turning yellow and retain what white shell they protect beneath. I add more wax lines to the yellow sections of the egg, protecting those wax-covered yellow areas throughout the rest of the process. Eggs are dyed from lightest to darkest with yellow traditionally giving way to orange, then red, then black. I add more wax as I go, building the design by covering more of the shell after each color change.
The egg emerges from the final dye as a ghastly black lump with no hints of the colorful process that came before. I rub a thin layer of olive oil into the shell, and then melt off the wax next to a candle flame. The first tissue wipe is a fireworks-explosion through the blackness as the hidden colors are unveiled. Once the wax is fully removed, I finish each egg with several coats of high-gloss polyurethane varnish to protect and highlight the bright designs; also a final sealing-in of the prayers. Pysanky are produced through my hand, never by it. I hold a completed egg with gratitude and wonder: another spark of beauty borne to this world.
The culmination is the handing-over of the pysanka to its recipient. The process alone created the prayers, but adding that physical transferal completes the journey from initial intent all the way through to gifting. Once the egg rolls from my hand into theirs, the prayers have been passed along in their fullness and the circle is then complete. Eggs may break in the future. Tragic, of course, but I rarely feel sadness. The egg itself is mere shell and disguise for a much deeper and indestructible spiritual connection between one heart and another. And that loving connection unbreakably adds something more to the artist, to the recipient, and to the world as a revelation of the Divine through beauty.
——-
I once asked a tree how to pray. Its answer, embodied by its very nature, was eloquent simplicity: sink deep your roots into the soils of life; lift your arms unceasingly towards the heavens.
Creation is the in-dwelling expression of our transcendent Creator, and a sacred means through which we can commune with God. We, like priests—as co-creators—raw-collecting our materials, changing their formlessness into objects of reverence, lifting them with our most sincere intentions, and asking blessings upon these new creations to honor our common Creator. We, as conscious human beings, in clunky, child-like imitation of our Father, speak “Let there be,”5 and sacrament is borne. Crackling fire, the mystery of Communion, decorated eggs: God is already within those physical items before we offer our poor invocations. The sacraments are, in part, a sanctification of material objects. But they are also an unveiling of our eyes to witness the holiness that is everywhere present and eternally filling all things. Matter conveys grace; coupled with a creative, prayerful heart, through matter we “ascend through the creation to the Creator.”6
Moses once approached a bush aflame with God’s energies, barefoot as he walked upon sacred ground. That same spark of the Divine burns within all creation:
I reshape wood, employ the laws of physics, and reveal God within the fire.
A priest’s prayers, in communal liturgy, transform bread and wine into Body and Blood.
A naked shell is clothed with ancestral symbols of universal intentions.
Fire, church, pysanky: a trilogy of ceremonies. In each, the earth and nature provide the raw materials. Our hearts desire connection with God. Our hands lovingly work that created matter into offerings to our Creator, even as our Creator lovingly works us into the offerings of His hands. We and nature both are sanctified by this transformation, by this communion, and we enter into living relationship with the Divine. People as the priests of creation, praying like the trees: from grounded feet; through upraised hands; and empowered by conscious, human hearts.
Click for next chapter: Baba – Orange
.
.
.
1 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856), Book Seven
2 quoted in Harlow, 1986, p. 68
3 St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
4 Badulak, Helen, et al. Pysanky in the 21st Century. The Kutztown Publishing Co., Inc., 2004.
5 Genesis 1:3
6 Bishop Kallistos Ware. “Through Creation to the Creator.” Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration, edited by John Chryssavgis and Bruce V. Foltz, Fordham University Press, 2013, pp. 86-105.