¡Colores!; 407; Icons: Windows to the Soul; Robert Lentz Interview 4

it's being homeless bears stearns big issue here is bleak just going through the brief story of the history of hours just as passionate and noodle story of all north of the cicada nachos and this was a pretty sharp critique in mood basically the pros and cons of the various religions world the world religions in those days they were on a par for religion's of the western world is long judaism the two branches of christianity any news on people i knew that if he was going to become part of this great world if it was ever going to stop being a primitive people in the woods set the others came to buy furs from but the others came by amber and incense he was going to have to take one of those religions on the myths is that he said ambassadors to the various

religions and they brought back what was kind of thousands of people in russia would convert he rejected is long and judaism because of those strictures as long because it didn't allow drinking and you know the russians love to drink judaism for other strictest that he knew the russians would not put up with roman catholicism because he was afraid of the pope who was already beginning to make claims to the universal power in europe to be the arbiter of all disputes to be when he became a late middle ages of the greatest political he went to design soon is that investors wanted the sense in constantinople then walked in the obvious sophia during a service and they came back saying you know we didn't go through and have them foreigners at the service moved it so deeply it was as if we had been transported into heaven and in many ways you know to the truth of

businesses is extremely powerful byzantine christianity has never lost sight of the importance of smell and listening and pies and touch and taste but when you go to a full byzantine service on the holy day that starts the night before and moves through the following morning in the navy in church seven eight hours of its a monastery ten hours you're given incensed a small college in sweden since you're surrounded by images depict haven't windows into heaven was constant singing very little is spoken in the eastern church i floating very hard for eastern christians to become western christians simply because they would find it so born to listen to listen to all the spoken words of the reading and haranguing pockets of several recent church things of song but also you walk around intersections individual services

i you're given food to eat apart from communion bread and there's wine and rose water splashing your face after standing for five hours a night before to wake you up you're given rosewater which smells so good and though there was truth to that that that that through the service for the senses a week we touched the divine and it has ambassadors felt that they have touched the divine through the ways these elements of them combined in constantinople they brought christianity eventually open to russia that it was the harsh greek orthodox christianity at the monastery i study and was a fierce place we talked constantly about sexless marriages the russian armaments can divorce the hearts of trouble it took about two hundred years but after two hundred years everything the greeks brought had been softened whether it was the icons whether was the music

whether it was the law within the parameters available to them the russians have softened and much of what they have brought in was taken russia is one of the few countries it's called mother mother russia and so many things of the ancient worship of the mother came into the russian church moscow was the one church in the world that wears red on easter sunday red is the color of menstrual blood color burst blood and connected with the resurrection wearing red on easter sunday is something that comes straight out of major components beginning of red easter eggs the aid itself are all taking images that are very important to russia seine lies the prophet took the place of the old fire god there's this whole christianity and intuition after all of the years since the revolution christianity that former christian does not completely died out in russian girl is stronger and russia

than other forms of christianity are in the free world and in a few years how this isn't it also restored think thinking about making its important she says the court luke was obtained or not but the fact that the people wanted to remember him as a painter that icons the first icons were ascribed to him is saying that you say waffles important the icons are too because the gospel ranger rice repeated the first one if you want to reverse these words been reversed image to it was one of those really healthy human impulses that became a christian most about safety and it's helped keep eastern christianity saint in the way that was done in their very few fundamentals eastern orthodox and

then i was curious if you could mention something about we were russian orthodox church years you actually if you just tell us something about how you feel compelled to south america as part of your religious service what you encountered there as you had mentioned to me the first time we know what's on it really takes a lot to get a first for a white man to do i knew what it was like to be unpopular i knew what it was like to have tough to learn our fight so that you can defend yourself when you went to school because you are catholic and i don't think i ever took it for granted that i was part of the majority from the time i was a child there was always something about our family

and made us less american and a lot of people's eyes then your ordinary was as a franciscan i lived in mexico city and i knew firsthand people who lived in shots made of a discarded cardboard and crates and the orthodox church i don't speak russian very well i barely speak russian and therefore was not of much use of most parishes because the russian parishes when a russian speaking priest i knew enough knowledge to be ordained and suddenly there was this need for a priest on in santiago chile to take care of orphans an orphanage there were palestinians there was a priest refused services for the nuns because of an illegal trip he was on any of these little kids were an orphanage i speak spanish fluently and made a lot of sense descended on earth to finish the last six months of my training to be ordained to be the priest this orphanage i went down and read everything i could about chili and mood not to take anything

political i've been there for two months when the secret police locked door bound whales about five in the morning rain was pouring into the house and six in with machine guns pulled me out of bed handcuffed me for miles apart looking for guns anything else i might have simply causes from north america and was therefore a suspicious as being perhaps a revolutionary i learned later that ten others were surrounding else's machine gun so that if i tried to run out the door and be shot and after they found nothing after they had humiliated me and mocked me that they simply left of the handcuffs off and left and i was left their crumbling very close to an awareness of what it might be like to disappear to be one of the city's ills it was a month before i could walk out of the door the law without fear the government says these and then the secret police the government pretended they were

communists and yet people describe them to settle let's also he's a captain squad assad so they closed the people around the compound of the orphanage supposedly triple a communist cell i cannot live viral ammonia and there was very little that they were it would do for me that even diagnose it correctly i was near death and finally the russian bishop hold me back to the united states and those given medical care and my experience in chile and it was very important for me to know what it's like to wear handcuffs it was very important for me to know what it's like to have no rights whatsoever to be at the mercy of brutal who is it our desire to be close to death i don't think it would have a takeaway from vertigo i'm sure that the other side as much influence of allocating as a

teaching the urban monk to my teacher and we're all on it is finally can you can you draw a drop some color contrast between just it iconic graphic symbol with disaster prone regions and whatever occasional scone or and the byzantine i can just calm and regional forces what is the real tradition of icons i mean given that you know where we drink our deepest impressions co owner dreams of creatures <unk> therefore i'm wondering in their senses or tradition the tradition the christian tradition tradition a signature event that what makes a visiting icon byzantine as a style know what makes russian poetry russian as the language poetry is poetry you can

translate the poetry out of russian and lock something because of original language that was written was russian byzantine iconography as a language is a visual language and late russian history it was used for portraits that an unintended with icons portraits of the czars and the borders you can say many things without the visual language of byzantine icons byzantine icons of a byzantine christian icons we'll be icons dated without visual language treating its subject matter which is defined by the byzantine church my icons of byzantine in their language but i no longer feel compelled to depict only what is defined by the byzantine church i use the byzantine language to express that which i experienced

personally so there are those who would say my icons are heretical and i would agree with the mayor i am not painting strict byzantine christian images i'm getting byzantine images of that which i know and if they want to call my experience a radical it's the right it obviously is not in line with what they had to find that's so diverse so i would compare my work or poor contrast my work the reality which is underneath is has the divine mystery which contemplatives of all races and times if they could sit down together and peace would find themselves in harmony when they speak about it they may use different images but they could listen carefully in here with your the person saying they would realize you are talking about the same thing that's what's so important to the dogma quite often wants to shout truth into a tiny box box far too tiny to include the truth to

enclose the truth when you try to put the truth into a box that small you've killed it and then the content and it's not the world are not unrecognizable all it's obviously a distortion it's too small to be true for one they can't go forward in this country i think language of the byzantine power of the form byzantine what value to cable to me about the byzantine form visit the language to express is something transcendent by an abstract depiction of light more than anything else light in many cultures is seen as an expression of the divine and i kind of like as the all important factor and it's not like that shines from the outside it's like it's coming from the inside

out that six of that's related to sex it's expressed his suv the abstract coloring are highlighting on the car rinse the cathedral as western as it had to be in santa fe if you look at the garments it says a flight electrical light and short circuit it all over the garment life is coming out of the face to face is a lighted highlighted in ways that are sometimes totally irrational at your face with it but studio light the light is coming out the light is very bright around the eyes in particular sometimes the eyes of a very large for gazing because gazing as far more important in the east and in the third world than talking ears or hearing you know we're a culture of words a north american tour in western europe or culture of words we have to listen to those words if to analyze them but in the byzantine east indian in so many cultures of the third world gazing is all important and therefore an icon because of the most important thing when the turks took over churches

and asia minor minor in in the middle east in greece in the balkans if they couldn't destroy the frescoes they took spears and i scratched the eyes out because once the iceberg on the icon was gone the figures are elongated or a lauded gestures express what's going on within the soul and stylized way and these files asians as specific as and maybe two us particular part of the world are understandable in the same way that the duty of a sand painting or the grace of an african west african sculpture is understandable there's a universal qualities captured in a culturally specific way of depicting something these things are important to me and therefore i retain the byzantine style in my work or her own little world

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