Here we are in the heart of summer – the “dog days,” as some people call them. These are the long, hot, humid, days when life quiets and slows, and stores and churches empty out from seasonal rapture to the shore, or the northeast, or abroad. At St. David’s, the pace is pretty chill as the singing of summer music camps wafts upstairs, as we send youth off to shoot the rapids on the New River Gorge, and as we watch wildlife scurry around the graveyard from the office windows (there’s a huge woodchuck over there, and a fox).
These particular dog days have correlated with a visit from my husband Michael and our family dog Milo – a homely, 10-lb Chihuahua with a significant underbite and an obsessive compulsion for tennis balls. Don’t tell Michael, but I was as excited to see Milo as I was to see him.
We had another dog, Manuel, who died in March after a 14-year run as the center of our family. He was a lover – a pastoral presence who licked tears, stole food with the cunning of a jewel thief, enthusiastically chased squirrels but never caught one, and loved walks around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. Manuel had weekly office hours in the Carleton College Student Affairs Office. Students would come to hang out and pet him to calm their nerves and soothe their anxieties. The Student Affairs Office even made buttons and stickers with Manuel’s face on them. Michael is a professor there, and remarked how very funny it was to walk across campus and see faculty and students he did not know wearing buttons featuring our dog. During a Carleton summer abroad program in Ireland, a student exclaimed to Michael, his instructor, “Oh my gosh – you’re MANNY’S DAD?!?!?” Manuel’s campus-wide reputation far exceeded Michael’s.
For 14 years, every evening when I came home from work, and after church on Sundays, I’d enter the back door of our home and there would be Manuel, wagging his tail so hard it moved the front part of his body back and forth. It felt as though he had been waiting for me all day, and me finally arriving home was the best thing that ever happened to him. It never failed – he was always there, always overjoyed, always exuberant at that back door.
Over time Manuel became an icon for me.
The word “icon” is a transliteration of the Greek word εἰκὼν (eikon) and is found mainly in Paul’s letters (Epistles). While Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians are familiar with the biblical theme of Jesus as the Word of God made flesh (John 1:1-14), Orthodox Christians also celebrate the biblical theme of Jesus as the Icon or Image of God. As the 7th Ecumenical Council held in the city of Nicea in 787AD proclaimed, icons are in color what the Scriptures are in words: witnesses to the incarnation, the fact that God has come among us as a person whom we can see, touch, and hear. As Paul writes in his letter to the Colossians (1:15): “He [Jesus] is the icon of the invisible God.”
An icon is something through which we can tangibly see God, an image of God, or a glimpse of God. That’s why Manuel was an icon for me – I imagined that’s how God sees me – sees all of us. It’s like that bumper sticker: “I want to be the person my dog thinks I am.” The truth is – we are! We say all the time that we are “beloved,” that God beholds us as “beloved.” I think that is how I have come to understand that truth through the icon of my sweet, vulnerable, loving dog shaking with anticipation and excitement just because I showed up. We are made in God’s image, created by God – who knows us inside and out; the good and the ugly, the sinner and the saint. It doesn’t matter – God looks at us like that sweet dog full of love and adoration – as a dewy-eyed lover that prizes us for all of who we are, over-the-moon just because we’ve shown up.
This summer why not look around for your icon? Where do you see images of God? What makes it real to you in a tangible way, something about the nature of God in our midst? What does your icon have to teach you?
I have a whole month left at St. David’s, and I will (and am) savoring every, single minute. I am so happy here in this community of faith with all of you. Please share your icons with me.
Grace and Peace,
The Rev. Devon Anderson
Interim Rector
Published July 25, 2024