I’m glad you got to go.

I am very glad you got to go… and I have to admit that I prob­a­bly wouldn’t go, fi I had the chance, because I would feel the same way. I wouldn’t like to see peo­ple view­ing the icons as “art”, stand­ing in front of them and talk­ing… it would be dis­ap­point­ing to me as well.

Good to know I’m not the only one. Maybe the trick is also to be there when it’s not peak hours, but we didn’t have a choice.

I got the DVD, and that was lovely. Tell us about the church atmos­phere they tried to cre­ate? That’s what I gath­ered from the DVD anyway

How­ever, as I have posted other places, this is EXACTLY the sort of envi­ron­ment that occurs at the REAL St. Catherine’s monastery. Peo­ple come from all over the world to gawk. I’m not even Ortho­dox, but I was appalled by the behav­ior of some folks doing photo ops at the Burn­ing Bush. Day after day bus loads of folks tramp up to the place with no thought to head cov­er­ings or ven­er­a­tion. For many, it’s just another tourist site along with the Pyra­mids and the Sphinx.

Rev­er­ence and sense of sacred IS ulti­mately a very per­sonal thing.

Bel­ladonna,
Now that’s some­thing I had really won­dered about. I know that it’s not easy to get to St. Catherine’s, and my only anec­do­tal info about it came from “Walk­ing the Bible” (the book, not the PBS series.) But I had won­dered if those peo­ple who arrive don’t have the ten­dency of ALL tourists to treat EVERYTHING as a tourist attrac­tion, rather than just shut­ting up for one minute and *look­ing* and *listening*.

Can you point me to your blog entries about this? I did a quick search, but came up empty.

Mimi,
Sorry to delay answer­ing. I wanted to con­fer with Greg on this to be sure of my answer. But when I asked him about the church atmos­phere of the exhibit (which I had read about on their Web­site as well), he thought a minute and then said, “Well, my opin­ion is that they really pooched that aspect of it.”

And unfor­tu­nately, I agree. From the Web­page, I thought that they would have cre­ated the idea of a church to give the icons a con­text. (In fact, I think I wrote that that was the part I was the most excited about). But the only thing that was remotely rem­i­nis­cent of church was that the room was slightly dark­ened. They didn’t have incense, they didn’t pipe in Byzan­tine chant­ing, they didn’t give any sense of church archi­tec­ture or make a kind of iconos­ta­sis that would have shown how some icons have pri­or­ity over oth­ers and how they’re approached. They did show the film that you saw on the Web­site at the exhibit, and the plac­ards next to the icons were respect­ful of Ortho­doxy. But other than that, I can’t see the dif­fer­ence between this and any other icon exhibit.

Hate to keep diss­ing it. I would still say that those in the area should go see it. The icons and illus­trated man­u­scripts are worth the trip,

As a non-Orthodox believer (yea, I know, a het­ero­dox), I want you to know that the St. Catherine’s icons, the EO believ­ers who were there the day we were, and Fr. Justin (from the monastery).. com­bined… all con­tributed in early 2007 to me being a seri­ous inquirer in late 2010.

I got to chat with Fr. Justin a lit­tle bit. They tried very hard to cre­ate a rev­er­ent exhibit. The EO believ­ers I saw there, many from the ME, were liv­ing wit­nesses by their devo­tion to Christ God. The exhibit helped me to “get it” about icons.. that they are our fam­ily in Christ God, that might cloud of wit­nesses sur­round­ing us.

For me, it was a beau­ti­ful and respect­ful exhibit that has helped me begin my long jour­ney toward the EO church, as God leads.

I was deeply moved, and am so very glad St. Catherine’s shared God’s trea­sures in such a pub­lic, sec­u­lar space. We were there in March 2007, and Fr. Justin said the num­ber of vis­i­tors had bro­ken all pre­vi­ous Getty records. The Getty was overwhelmed.

I saw grown men begin to cry as they ven­er­ated a par­tic­u­lar icon. I saw women from the ME stand in front of icons a hold an impromptu Sun­day School les­son with the 2nd or 3rd gen­er­a­tion American-born youngsters.

Bot­tom line, the day we vis­ited the St. Catherine’s icon exhibit was a holy day for us.

Just wanted to share a per­spec­tive from an inquirer who was deeply moved by the exhibit.

Oh, I for­got! When we were there in March 2007, they had re-created the nave of the chapel. They had a kind of iconos­ta­sis and they might have added the music; that part I can’t remem­ber tonight.

The day we were there, all of the vis­i­tors were very respect­ful. Maybe because it was toward the end of the time­frame and most of the vis­i­tors seemed to be EO believers?

Anony­mous:
I am SO glad you posted this! I wrote this back in late ’06, and when I re-read it now, I was appalled that I would’ve crit­i­cized the museum. I don’t know if I was just in a bad mood that day or what, but the ben­e­fits of pre­sent­ing such incred­i­ble icons to a wider world by far out­weigh any problems.

And in your case, they were even an out­reach that brought you to the Ortho­dox Church. I’m so glad you went to see them and I’m glad that they spoke to you in the way they did.